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

160V. I. LENINdoviks or are they filling their party more and more withthis mud? Do they still adhere to the theory of unity ofthe national opposition? Did they adopt that theory onlyyesterday? Will they abandon it tomorrow for a few weeks?No one knows. The S.R.’s themselves do not know it,because the entire history of their party is one of systematicallyand continuously obscuring, confusing, and glossingover their differences by means of words, phrases and stillmore phrases.Why is that? It is not because the S.R.’s are bourgeoiscareerists like the Cadets. No, their sincerity, as a circle,cannot be doubted. Their trouble is that it is impossiblefor them to create a mass party, impossible for them tobecome the party of a class. The objective position is suchthat they have to be merely a wing of peasant democracy,an unindependent, unequal appendage, a “subgroup” ofthe Trudoviks, and not a self-contained whole. The periodof storm and stress did not help the S.R.’s to rise to theirfull stature. It threw them into the clutching arms of thePopular Socialists, a clutch so strong that not even a splitcan unlock them. The period of the counter-revolutionarywar did not strengthen their connection with definite socialstrata—it merely gave rise to new waverings and vacillations(which the S.R.’s are now trying hard to conceal)about the socialist nature of the muzhik. And today,on reading the passionate articles of Znamya Truda aboutthe heroes of S.R. terrorism, one cannot help saying tooneself: your terrorism, gentlemen, is not the outcome ofyour revolutionism. Your revolutionism is confined toterrorism.No, these judges are far from being able to judge Social-Democracy!Proletary, No. 19,November 5, 1907Published accordingto the text in Proletary