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On the other hand, the extreme left wing of the Social Democrats Lenine and his friends wanted the party to proclaim itself in favor of the complete nationalization of all privately owned land, even that of the small peasant owners, but were willing, provided the principle were this stated, to accept, as a temporary expedient, division of the land in certain exceptional instances.
We can get some idea of this strife from a criticism which Lenine directs against the Mensheviki: In its class composition this party is not Socialist at all. It does not represent the toiling masses.
Walling, who spent nearly three years in Russia, including the whole period of the Revolution of 1905-06, writes of Lenine's position at that time: Like Alexinsky, Lenine awaits the agrarian movement ... and hopes that a railway strike with the destruction of the lines of communication and the support of the peasantry may some day put the government of Russia into the people's hands.
Lenine at least knew that the game was up. He knew that the game into which he had so coolly entered when he left Switzerland, and which he had played with all his skill and cunning, was at an end and that the Germans had won.
Certainly, this cannot be said to be an accurate description of the position of men who believe in the rule of a nation of one hundred and eighty millions by a small party of two hundred thousand or less or even by an entire class representing not more than six per cent. of the population and Lenine and his friends, recognizing the fact, decided to change the name of their group to the Communist party, by which name they are now known in Russia.
The exposure made a great sensation in Russian Socialist circles at the time, and the fact that it was Nikolai Lenine who had proposed that Malinovsky be chosen to sit in the International Socialist Bureau naturally caused a great deal of unfriendly comment.
Attention is called to this passage here, not for the sake of pointing out the obvious need for some exact definition of the loose expression, "the poorest peasantry," nor for the sake of any captious criticism, but solely to point out the important fact that Lenine only admits a part of the peasantry the poorest to share in the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Lenine wrote: The Germans have only one Liebknecht, no newspapers, no freedom of assemblage, no councils; they are working against the intense hostility of all classes of the population, including the wealthy peasants with the imperialist bourgeoisie splendidly organized and yet the Germans are making some attempt at agitation; while we, with tens of papers, with freedom of assemblage, with the majority of the Council with us, we, the best situated of all the proletarian internationalists, can we refuse to support the German revolutionists in organizing a revolt?
This was taken to mean that he was literally dead. In the same way, while probably no one seriously believes that Lenine is in Barcelona, the mere fact that Madrid thinks it possible shows very plainly that something is going on.
Lenine denounced the offensive against Germany as "an act of treason against the Socialist International" and poured out the vials of his wrath against Kerensky, who was, as we know, simply carrying out the decisions of the Soviet and other working-class organizations.
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