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 dissoluteness. Is it 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 compromises with the bourgeoisie, for petty bourgeois tendencies, for reformism, etc., etc ?
The trouble with these super-revolutionists is this: that even those 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" state that must inevitably be passed by a backward country which has been shattered by a reactionary and ill-fated war and which 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 Socialist-Revolutionists of the Left. 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 event; passes from a violently revolutionary position in March, 1917, to lauding "coalition" in May; to hatred against the Bolsheviks, to bewailing their" adventurousness" in July; to cautiously drawing away from them in the beginning of November; to supporting them in December; and lastly, in March and April, 1918, such types usually turn up their noses scornfully and say, "I am not of those who sing hymns to organic work, to practicism and gradualism."
