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

153BUT WHO ARE THE JUDGES?Malicious chuckling over the split between the Mensheviksand the Bolsheviks in the R.S.D.L.P, in general andover the sharp struggle at the London Congress in particularhas become a regular feature of the bourgeois press.No one thinks of studying the differences of opinion, ofanalysing the two tendencies, of acquainting the readingpublic with the history of the split and with the natureof the differences between the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks.The publicists of Rech and Tovarishch—the Vergezhskys,the E. K.’s, the Pereyaslavskys, and other pennya-liners*simply fasten on all kinds of rumours, serve up“piquant” details of “scandals” for blasé society gossips, andgo out of their way to addle people’s minds with trashyanecdotes about our struggle.This genre of vulgar scoffing is being taken up, too, bythe Socialist-Revolutionaries. The editorial in ZnamyaTruda, 80 No. 6, drags out Cherevanin’s story about theincident of hysteria at the London Congress, sniggers atthe expenditure of “tens of thousands”, and smacks its lipsat “the pretty picture of the internal state of Russian Social-Democracyat the present moment”. With the liberalssuch introductions are preliminaries to lauding the opportunistsà la Plekhanov; with the Socialist-Revolutionariesthey are the preliminaries to a severe criticism of them (theSocialist-Revolutionaries are repeating now the argumentsof the revolutionary Social-Democrats against a labourcongress! They have bethought themselves!). But both ofthem gloat over the hard struggle in the Social-Democraticranks.* Lenin gives this word in English.—Tr.