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

354V. I. LENINthat”, Plekhanov keeps on repeating and he calls the Bolsheviks“ignoramuses” (p. 127). That abuse is an expressionof his impotent rage. Plekhanov has failed to grasp thedifference between a peasant bourgeois revolution and anon-peasant bourgeois revolution. By saying that Kautsky“exaggerates the speed of development of our peasant”(p. 131), and that “the difference of opinion between us[between Plekhanov and Kautsky] can only be one of nuances”(p. 131), etc., Plekhanov resorts to the most miserableand cowardly shuffling, for anyone at all capable of thinkingcan see that the very opposite is the case. It is not aquestion of “nuances” or of the speed of development, or ofthe “seizure” of power that Plekhanov shouts about, butof the basic view as to which classes are capable of beingthe driving force of the Russian revolution. Voluntarilyor involuntarily, Plekhanov and the Mensheviks are inevitablyfalling into a position of opportunist support to thebourgeoisie, for they fail to grasp the counter-revolutionarynature of the bourgeoisie in a peasant bourgeois revolution.The Bolsheviks from the outset defined the generaland the basic class conditions for the victory of this revolutionas the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat andthe peasantry. Kautsky arrived at substantially the sameview in his article, “The Driving Forces”, etc., and he repeatedit in the second edition of his Social Revolution, in whichhe says: “It [the victory of Russian Social-Democracy inthe near future] can only come as the result of a coalition[einer Koalition] between the proletariat and the peasantry.”(Die soziale Revolution, von K. Kautsky, Zweite Auflage.Berlin, 1907, S. 62.) (Space does not permit us to dealwith another addition Kautsky made to the second edition,in which he sums up the lessons of December 1905, a summingup which differs radically from Menshevism.)Thus we see that Plekhanov completely evaded the questionof the underlying principles of the general Social-Democratictactics in a bourgeois revolution that can be victoriousonly as a peasant revolution. What I said at Stockholm(April 1906)* about Plekhanov having reduced Menshevismto absurdity by repudiating the conquest of power* See present edition, Vol. 10, p. 283.—Ed.