NICOLAI LENIN
to listen that Lenin was a second edition of Netchayeff,[1] and that he in his fight against the "elder statesmen" was only pursuing ambitious aims. The entire atmosphere of the Social Democratic Party was hostile to Bolshevism.
On the eve of the third Congress (that is the first congress of the Bolsheviks), Bebel rendered the following service to the Mensheviks. When our congress met, he sent us a letter in the name of the Central Committee of the German Social Democracy, in which he said the following: "Children, don't you want to make peace? I, Bebel, offer you and the Mensheviks arbitration. Why this split? Submit your troubles to our court of arbitration." Such was the letter addressed by Bebel to Comrade Lenin, who brought it to the congress, and the congress declared: "We highly respect our Comrade Bebel, but on the question as to how to carry on the fight in our country against the Tsar and the bourgeoisie, we must ask permission to hold our own views. Permit us also to deal with the Mensheviks in a way which agents of the bourgeoisie deserve." Bebel was much amazed by the "impertinence" of our comrades, but there was nothing for him to do or to say, except to shrug his shoulders.
I quote this incident in order to show the kind of atmosphere, Russian and international, in which Lenin was fighting at the head of the then still inconsiderable army of the Socialist revolution.
***
Already in the revolution of 1905 Lenin was playing a leading part. This, to the outward gaze, was not so
- ↑ Netchayeff was an early Russian revolutionary, an anarchist who got up a conspiracy at the end of the sixties by rather unscrupulous means, which included intercourse with the Tsar's police and fraudulent practice upon N's own comrades—all, of course, "for the good of the movement."—Trans.
— 22 —
