Lenine's true name is Uljanov,
Trotzky's--Bronstein, Zinoviev's--Apfelbaum, Sukhanov's--Gimmer,
Kamenev's--Rosenfeld, Steklov's--Nakhamkis, and a number of others whose
identity is not even always known. Trotzky's assertion that the Workmen's
and Soldiers' Government is a government of workingmen, soldiers, and
peasants is therefore nothing but a perversion of facts.
There is, however, nothing extraordinary in the fact itself that
intellectuals are the real leaders of all Russian parties. Better education
and wider knowledge of the affairs of the world have always appealed to
the dark masses who realize only dimly their own desires and grasp at any
concrete formulation of reforms which contains a tangible promise or seems
to express those desires. At the same time they often put their own meaning
into the words of their leaders, which is true even of factory workers in
the larger cities. As for the peasants, representing about 90 per cent of
the entire population, they are still very poorly educated, questions
of national import remain outside their horizon, and even their language
is not the language of the educated Russian, inasmuch as it lacks the rich
vocabulary of modern life and is devoid of the very conceptions to which
this vast treasury of words applies. Their mind, great as it is in its
potentialities, still moves in the furrows of familiar ideas abhorring
things too much at variance with inherited traditions or actual experience.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25