Collected Works of V. I. Lenin - Vol. 16 - From Marx to Mao

378V. I. LENINand secure the speediest development of the productiveforces. The policy of the liberals, on the contrary, entruststhe whole matter to the Russian Junkers, who are retarding“the course of the economic development” of Russia ahundredfold.In 1905-07 the contradiction existing between the liberalbourgeoisie and the peasantry became fully revealed. Inthe spring and autumn of 1905, as well as in the spring of1906, from one-third to one-half of the uyezds of CentralRussia were affected by peasant revolts. The peasants destroyedapproximately 2,000 country houses of landlords (unfortunatelythis is not more than one-fifteenth of whatshould have been destroyed). The proletariat alone wholeheartedlysupported this revolutionary struggle, directed itin every way, guided it, and united it by its mass strikes.The liberal bourgeoisie never helped this revolutionarystruggle; they preferred to “pacify” the peasants and “reconcile”them with the landlords and the tsar. The same thingwas then repeated in the parliamentary arena in the first twoDumas (1906 and 1907). During the whole of that periodthe liberals hindered the struggle of the peasants and betrayedthem; and it was only the workers’ deputies who directedand supported the peasants in opposition to the liberals.The entire history of the First and Second Dumas is fullof the struggle of the liberals against the peasants and theSocial-Democrats. The struggle between Bolshevism and Menshevismis inseparably bound up with that history, being astruggle over the question whether to support the liberalsor to overthrow the hegemony of the liberals over the peasantry.Therefore, to attribute our splits to the influence ofthe intelligentsia, to the immaturity of the proletariat, etc.,is a childishly naïve repetition of liberal fairy-tales.For the same reason Trotsky’s argument that splits inthe international Social-Democratic movement are caused bythe “process of adaptation of the social-revolutionary classto the limited (narrow) conditions of parliamentarism”, etc.,while in the Russian Social-Democratic movement they arecaused by the adaptation of the intelligentsia to the proletariat,is absolutely false. Trotsky writes: “While the realpolitical content of this process of adaptation was limited(narrow) from the standpoint of the socialist, final aim,