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

88V. I. LENINand the so-called “American” form (a bourgeois republic,the abolition of landlordism, the creation of a farmer class,i.e., of a free bourgeois peasantry, by means of a markedchange of the given historical situation). The proletariatmust fight for the second path as offering the greatest degreeof freedom and speed of development of the productiveforces of capitalist Russia, and victory in this struggle ispossible only with a revolutionary alliance between theproletariat and the peasantry.This is the view embodied in the resolution of the LondonCongress on the Narodnik or Trudovik parties and onthe attitude of the Social-Democrats towards them. TheMensheviks, as we know, are hostile to this resolution, particularlyas regards the special question which we are analysinghere. But how shaky the economic basis of their caseis can be seen from the following words of a most influentialMenshevik authority on the agrarian question in Russia,Comrade Maslov. In the second volume of his AgrarianQuestion, published in 1908 (the preface is dated December15, 1907), Maslov wrote: “As long as [Maslov’s italics]purely capitalistic relations have not developed in the countryside,as long as subsistence rent [Maslov wrongly usesthis unfortunate expression instead of the term: feudalbondage rent] persists, a solution of the agrarian questionmost advantageous for democracy will still be possible.The past history of the world shows two types of capitalistdevelopment: the type prevailing in Western Europe (notcounting Switzerland and some odd corners of other Europeanstates), which is the result of a compromise betweenthe nobility and the bourgeoisie, and the type of agrarianrelations which have been established in Switzerland, theUnited States of America, and the British and other colonies.The data which we cite on the status of the agrarianquestion in Russia does not give us sufficient grounds to sayfor certain which type of agrarian relations will becomeestablished in our country, while our ‘scientific conscience’does not allow us to draw subjective and arbitrary conclusions...”(p. 457).That is true. And it is a full recognition of the economicbasis of Bolshevik tactics. It is not a matter of “revolutionaryintoxication” (as the Vekhists and the Cherevanins