Collected Works of V. I. Lenin - Vol. 3 - From Marx to Mao

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 6
This book was written in the period preceding the Russian
Revolution, during the slight lull that set in after the
outbreak of the big strikes of 1895-1896. At that time the
working-class movement withdrew, as it were, into itself,
spreading in breadth and depth and paving the way for the
beginning in 1901 of the demonstration movement.
The analysis of the social-economic system and, consequently,
of the class structure of Russia given in this
work on the basis of an economic investigation and critical
analysis of statistics, has now been confirmed by the open
political action of all classes in the course of the revolution.
The leading role of the proletariat has been fully revealed.
It has also been revealed that the strength of the proletariat
in the process of history is immeasurably greater than its
share of the total Population. The economic basis of the
one phenomenon and the other is demonstrated in the
present work.
Further, the revolution is now increasingly revealing the
dual position and dual role of the peasantry. On the
one hand, the tremendous survivals of corvée economy and
all kinds of survivals of serfdom, with the unprecedented
impoverishment and ruin of the peasant poor, fully explain
the deep sources of the revolutionary peasant movement,
the deep roots of the revolutionary character of the peasantry
as a mass. On the other hand, in the course of the revolution,
the character of the various political parties, and the numerous
ideological-political trends reveal the inherently contradictory
class structure of this mass, its petty-bourgeois
character, the antagonism between the proprietor and the
proletarian trends within it. The vacillation of the impoverished
small master between the counter-revolutionary
bourgeoisie and the revolutionary proletariat is as inevitable
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