I do not refer to the theorists of the
party, who, many years before the revolution--even before the revolution
of 1905--as a result of their analysis of class relations in Russia,
came to the conclusion that the triumphant development of the revolution
must inevitably transfer the power to the proletariat, supported by the
vast masses of the poorest peasants. The chief basis of this prognosis
was the insignificance of the Russian bourgeois democracy and the
concentrated character of Russian industrialism--which makes of the
Russian proletariat a factor of tremendous social importance. The
insignificance of bourgeois democracy is but the complement of the power
and significance of the proletariat. It is true, the war has deceived
many on this point, and, first of all, the leading groups of bourgeois
democracy themselves. The war has assigned a decisive role in the events
of the revolution to the army. The old army meant the peasantry. Had the
revolution developed more normally--that is, under peaceful
circumstances, as it had in 1912--the proletariat would always have held
a dominant position, while the peasant masses would gradually have been
taken in tow by the proletariat and drawn into the whirlpool of the
revolution.
But the war produced an altogether different succession of events. The
army welded the peasants together, not by a political, but by a military
tie.
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