waiting for new outbursts of revolution in the West, painfully slow in ripening; within the country, a period of slow constructive work and of merciless rigor, of a long and persistent struggle of proletarian discipline with the threatening elemental petty bourgeois dissoluteness and anarchy,—such, in short, are the distinctive features of the special stage in the Socialist revolution that we are passing through. Such is the link in the historical chain of events which we must now grasp with all our strength to come out with honor, before we pass to the next link,—which draws us on by its particular glow, by the glow of the victories of the international proletarian revolution.
Try to compare with the ordinary, popular idea of a "revolutionist," the slogans which are dictated by the peculiarities of the present situation: to be cautious, to retreat, to wait, to build slowly, to be mercilessly rigorous, to discipline sternly, to attack disintegration.
It is surprising that some "revolutionists," hearing this, become full of noble indignation and begin to "attack" us for forgetting the traditions of the November revolution, for compromising with bourgeois specialists, for compromising with the bourgeoisie, for petty bourgeois tendencies, for reformism, etc., etc.
The trouble with these woe-revolutionists is this: that even those of them who are actuated by the best motives in the world,—and are absolutely loyal to the cause of Socialism,—fail to comprehend the particular and "particularly unpleasant" stage that must inevitably be passed through by a backward country which has been shattered by a reactionary and ill-fated war and which has started the Socialist evolution long before the more advanced countries. They lack firmness in difficult moments of a difficult transition. It is natural that this kind of "official" opposition to our party comes from the Left Social-Revolutionists. Of course there are, and always will be, individual exceptions to group and class types. But social types remain. In a country where the petty bourgeois population is vastly predominant in comparison with the purely proletarian, the difference between the proletarian and the petty bourgeois revolutionist will inevitably appear,and from time to time very sharply. The petty bourgeois revolutionist hesitates and wavers at every turn of events, passes from a violently revolutionary position in March 1917, to lauding "coalition" in May, to hatred of the Bolsheviki (or to bewailing their "adventuressness") in July, to cautiously drawing away from them in Nov-
