rban
and rural proletariat and the poorest peasantry in the form of a powerful
All-Russian Soviet authority." 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.

Turning to another part of the same important document--Article III,
Chapter VI, Section A, paragraph 25--we find the basis of representation in
the All-Russian Congress of Soviets stated. There are representatives of
town Soviets and representatives of provincial congresses of Soviets. The
former represent the industrial workers; the latter represent the peasants
almost exclusively. It is important, therefore, to note that there is one
delegate for every twenty-five thousand city voters and one for every one
hundred and twenty-five thousand peasant voters! In Section B of the same
Article, Chapter X, paragraph 53, we find the same discrimination: it takes
five peasants' votes to equal the vote of one city voter; it was this
general attitude of the Bolsheviki toward the peasants, dividing them into
classes and treating the great majority of them as petty, rural
bourgeoisie, which roused the resentment of the peasants' leaders. They
naturally insisted that the peasants constituted a distinct class,
co-operating with the proletariat, not to be ruled by it. Even Marie
Spiridonova, who at first joined with the Bolsheviki, was compelled, later
on, to assert this point of view.

It is easy to understand the distrust of the Bolsheviki by the Socialist
parties and groups which represented the peasants. The latter class
constituted more than 85 per cent. of the population. Moreover, it had
furnished the great majority of the fighters in the revolutionary movement.
Its leaders and spokesmen resented the idea that they were to be dictated
to and controlled by a minority, which was, as Lenine himself admitted, not
materially more numerous than the old ruling class of landowners had been.
They wanted a democratic governmental system, free from class rule, while
the Bolsheviki wanted class rule. Generalizations are proverbially
perilous, and should be very cautiously made and applied to great currents
of thought and of life. But in a broad sense we may fairly say th