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

94PREFACE TO THE COLLECTIONTWELVE YEARS 52The volume of collected articles and pamphlets hereoffered to the reader covers the period from 1895 through1905. The theme of these writings is the programmatic,tactical, and organisational problems of the Russian Social-Democraticmovement, problems which are beingposed and dealt with all the time in the struggle againstthe Right wing of the Marxist trend in Russia.At first the struggle was fought on purely theoreticalground against Mr. Struve, the chief spokesman of ourlegal Marxism of the nineties. The close of 1894 and thebeginning of 1895 saw an abrupt change in our legal press.Marxist views found their way into it for the first time,presented not only by leaders of the Emancipation of Labourgroup 53 living abroad, but also by Social-Democratsin Russia. This literary revival and the heated controversybetween the Marxists and the old Narodnik leaders, who(N. K. Mikhailovsky, for instance) had up till then heldpractically undivided sway in our progressive literature,were the prelude to an upswing in the mass labour movementin Russia. These literary activities of the RussianMarxists were the direct forerunners of active proletarianstruggle, of the famous St. Petersburg strikes of 1896,which ushered in an era of steadily mounting workers’movement—the most potent factor in the whole of ourrevolution.The Social-Democrats in those days wrote under conditionswhich compelled them to use Aesopian language andconfine themselves to the most general principles, whichwere farthest removed from practical activity and politics.