The nebulousness of their political
ideology fully corresponded with the formlessness of the revolutionary
consciousness of the masses. These elements were extremely condescending
toward us "Sectarians," for we expressed the social demands of the
workers and the peasants most pointedly and uncompromisingly.
At the same time, the petty bourgeois democracy, with the arrogance of
revolutionary upstarts, harbored the deepest mistrust of itself and of
the very masses who had raised it to such unexpected heights. Calling
themselves Socialists, and considering themselves such, the
intellectuals were filled with an ill-disguised respect for the
political power of the liberal bourgeoisie, towards their knowledge and
methods. To this was due the effort of the petty bourgeois leaders to
secure, at any cost, a cooperation, union, or coalition with the liberal
bourgeoisie. The programme of the Social-Revolutionists--created wholly
out of nebulous humanitarian formulas, substituting sentimental
generalizations and moralistic superstructures for a class-conscious
attitude, proved to be the thing best adapted for a spiritual vestment
of this type of leaders. Their efforts in one way or another to prop up
their spiritual and political helplessness by the science and politics
of the bourgeoisie which so overawed them, found its theoretical
justification in the teachings of the Mensheviki, who explained that the
present revolution was a bourgeois revolution, and therefore could not
succeed without the participation of the bourgeoisie in the government.
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