NICOLAI LENIN
in this book the foundations of Communism were laid. He fought in this book all the bourgeois influences, in their most subtle and elusive forms, and succeeded in defending the materialist conception of history against the most cultured representatives of the bourgeoisie, and those writers among the Social Democrats who had succumbed to those influences.
Then came the years 1910–11. A fresh wind began to blow, and it became evident in 1911 that the Labor movement was being reborn. The Lena days[1] opened a new page in the history of our movement. At that time we had already at Petrograd a "legal" paper called "Zvezda" (Star), at Moscow a monthly periodical, "Mysl" (Thought) and a small labour group in the Duma. The principal worker in these papers and behind the Duma group was Lenin.
Lenin managed to teach a few Labor members of the Duma the methods of revolutionary parliamentarism, You ought to have heard the conversations between Lenin and our young deputies when he was propounding to them the lessons in such parliamentarism. Simple Petrograd proletarians (Badayeff and others) would come to us and say: "We want to engage in serious legislative work; we want to consult you about the budget, about such and such Bill, about certain amendments to certain Bills introduced by the Cadets," etc. In reply Comrade Lenin laughed heartly, and when they, somewhat abashed, would ask what was the matter, Comrade Lenin would reply to Badaeff: "My dear man, what do you want a budget, an amendment, a Bill for? You are workmen, and the Duma exists for the ruling classes. You simply step forward and tell all Russia in simple language about the life and toil of the working class. Describe the
- ↑ The wholesale massacre of strikers on the Lena Goldfields (a British company), in 1910.—Trans.
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