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

388V. I. LENINRevolution of 1905-07 accentuated, brought out into theopen and placed on the order of the day the antagonism betweenthe peasants and the liberal bourgeoisie over the questionof the form of a bourgeois regime in Russia. The politicallymature proletariat could not but take a most energeticpart in this struggle, and its attitude to the various classesof the new society was reflected in the struggle between Bolshevismand Menshevism.The three years 1908-10 are marked by the victory of thecounter-revolution, by the restoration of the autocracy andby the Third Duma, the Duma of the Black Hundreds andOctobrists. The struggle between the bourgeois classes overthe form of the new regime has ceased to be in the forefront.The proletariat is now confronted with the elementary taskof preserving its proletarian party, which is hostile both tothe reaction and to counter-revolutionary liberalism. Thistask is not an easy one, because it is the proletariat thatsuffers all the brunt of economic and political persecution,and all the hatred of the liberals because the leadership ofthe masses in the revolution has been wrested from them bythe Social-Democrats.The crisis in the Social-Democratic Party is very grave.The organisations are shattered. A large number of veteranleaders (especially among the intellectuals) have been arrested.A new type of Social-Democratic worker, who is takingthe affairs of the Party in hand, has already appeared, buthe has to overcome extraordinary difficulties. Under suchconditions the Social-Democratic Party is losing many ofits “fellow-travellers”. It is natural that petty-bourgeois“fellow-travellers” should have joined the socialists duringthe bourgeois revolution. Now they are falling away fromMarxism and from Social-Democracy. This process is observedin both factions: among the Bolsheviks in the shape ofthe “otzovist” tendency, which arose in the spring of 1908,suffered defeat immediately at the Moscow Conference, andafter a long struggle was rejected by the official centre of thefaction and formed a separate faction abroad—the Vperyodfaction. The specific character of the period of disintegrationwas expressed in the fact that this faction united thoseMachists who introduced into their platform the struggleagainst Marxism (under the guise of defence of “proletarian