Collected Works of V. I. Lenin - Vol. 13 - From Marx to Mao

REVOLUTION AND COUNTER-REVOLUTION115advocate a “democratic” coalition with the Cadets. Thereal Cadet elements in this turbid stream express the counter-revolutionaryinterests of the bourgeoisie and theboundless servility of intellectualist philistinism. As for theelements which have not yet sunk quite to the level of Struve,their dominant feature is failure to understand theconnection between revolution and counter-revolution inRussia, an inability to see everything we have experiencedas an integral social movement developing in accordancewith its own inner logic.The period of revolutionary onslaught demonstrated inaction the class composition of Russia’s population andthe attitude of the different classes towards the old autocracy.Events have now taught everyone, even people whoare utter strangers to Marxism, to reckon the chronologyof the revolution from January 9, 1905, that is, from thefirst consciously political movement of the masses belongingto a single definite class. When the Social-Democrats,from an analysis of Russia’s economic realities, deducedthe leading role, the hegemony of the proletariat in ourrevolution, this seemed to be a bookish infatuation of theoreticians.The revolution confirmed our theory, because itis the only truly revolutionary theory. The proletariatactually took the lead in the revolution all the time. TheSocial-Democrats actually proved to be the ideologicalvanguard of the proletariat. The struggle of the massesdeveloped under the leadership of the proletariat with remarkablespeed, much faster than many revolutionarieshad expected. In the course of a single year it rose to themost decisive forms of revolutionary onslaught that historyhas ever known—to mass strikes and armed uprisings. Theorganisation of the proletarian masses went forward withastonishing speed in the course of the struggle itself. Othersections of the population, comprising the fighting ranksof the revolutionary people, followed the proletariat’slead and began to organise. The semi-proletarian mass ofvarious kinds of non-manual workers began to organise,followed by the peasant democracy, the professional intelligentsia,and so on. The period of proletarian victories was aperiod of growth in mass organisation unprecedented inRussian history and vast even by European standards.