bourgeoisie. Whoever in the least weakens the iron discipline of the party of the proletariat (especially during its dictatorship), aids in reality the bourgeoisie against the proletariat.
Beside the question of leaders, of party, of class, and of the masses, it is necessary to raise the question of the "reactionary" Trade Unions. But first I shall take the liberty of making a few concluding remarks based upon the experience of our party. There, we always heard attacks upon the "dictatorship of the leaders." I remember having heard such attacks for the first time in 1895 when formally there was as yet no party, but only a central group, which began to form itself in Petersburg, and which was to assume the leadership over the district groups. At the ninth conference of our party (April, 1920), there was a small opposition, which also spoke against the "dictatorship of the leaders," of "oligarchy," etc. There is, therefore, nothing wonderful, nothing new, nothing terrible in the "infantile disorder" of "Left Communism," in Germany. It is an affliction which passes by without injury to the organism, which, in fact, even strengthens it afterwards. On the other hand, the rapid shifting from legal to illegal work which made it especially necessary to "hide" the movements of the general staff, that is to say, the leaders, sometimes gave rise to dangerous situations. The worst case was in 1912, when an agent-provocateur, Malinovsky, got into the Central Committee of the Bolsheviks. He betrayed scores of the best and most devoted comrades, causing their imprisonment and hastening their death. That he did not cause more mischief was due to the efficient co-ordination between the legal and illegal forms of our activities. Malinovsky, as a member of the Central Committee of the Party and a deputy in the Duma, was forced, in order to gain our confidence, to aid us in establishing daily papers, which even under the Czar knew how to carry on the fight openly against the opportunism of the Mensheviks, and to preach the fundamentals of Bolshevism in properly disguised forms. With one hand, Malinovsky sent to jail and to death scores upon scores of the most active Bolsheviks, while with the other he was compelled to aid in the training of scores and scores of thousands of new adherents through the medium of the legal Press. It will not harm those
