Naturally, too, Lenine and his followers have always regarded movements which aimed to divide the land among the peasants, and so tend to give permanence to a class of petty agriculturists, as essentially reactionary.  The exigencies of the struggle have forced them into some compromises, of course.  For example, at first they were not willing to admit that the peasants could be admitted into their group at all, but later on they admitted some who belonged to the poorest class of peasants.  Throughout, however, they have insisted that the peasant class as a whole was a class of petty bourgeoisie and that its instincts and interests would inevitably lead it to side with the bourgeoisie as against the proletariat.  Of course, this is a very familiar phase of Socialist evolution in every country.  It lasted in Germany many years.  In Russia, however, the question assumed an importance it never had in any other country, owing to the vast preponderance of peasants in the population.  Anything more un-Russian than this theorizing cannot be well conceived.  It runs counter to every fact in Russian experience, to the very basis of her economic life at this stage of her history.  Lenine is a Russian, but his dogmas are not Russian, but German.  Bolshevism is the product of perverted German scholasticism.

Even the industrial workers as a whole, in their present stage of development, were not to be trusted, according to the Bolshevist leaders.  They frankly opposed the Mensheviki when the latter proposed to hold their great convention of industrial workers, giving as their reason the fear that the convention majority would not consist of class-conscious revolutionary Marxian Socialists.  In other words, they feared that the majority would not be on their side, and they had not the time or the patience to convert them.  There was no pretense of faith in the majority of the industrial proletariat, much less of faith in the entire working class of Russia.  The industrial proletariat was a minority of the working class, and the Bolsheviki pinned their faith to a minority of that minority.  They wanted to establish, not democracy, but dictatorship of Russia by a small, disciplined, intelligent, and determined minority of working-men.

The lines of cleavage between the Mensheviki and the Bolsheviki were thus clearly drawn.  The former, while ready to join in mass uprisings and armed insurrections by the masses, believed that the supreme necessity was education and organization of all the working-people.  Still relying upon the industrial proletariat to lead the struggle, they nevertheless recognized that the peasants were indispensable.  The Bolsheviki, on the other hand, relied exclusively upon armed insurrection, initiated and directed by desperate minorities.  The Mensheviki contended that the time for secret, conspiratory action was past; that Russia had outgrown that earlier method.  As far as possible, they carried the struggle openly into the political field.