The Russian socialist movement was in the beginning not social-democratic. Even the kind of socialism that Bakunin represented had not arisen on the ground of social-democratic theories. It was a kind af socialism that grew out of the particular agricultural character of the country. This socialism called itself the movement of the Narodniks. This movement was a special Russian school of socialism. Later there also arose in Russia, under West-European influence, a special social-democratic school of socialism. Principal founder of this school was Pleckcmov, who formed his views under the influence of Marx and Engels. Thus there were formed in the year 1883 the beginnings of the social-democratic-marxist party. As this school did not fetch the corner stones of its theories from the tendencies of the Russian labor and peasant movement but from other countries and developed particularly by leaning on the German labor movement, its principles and theories will be familiar to the West-European workers and to the German workers in particular. It is Marxism. Under the rule of the Russian knout a revolutionary fighting spirit has, naturally, flourished among them, like among all Russian revolutionaries, as they were compelled to be radical against czarism.
The social-democratic party of Russia became, however, very early divided in a right and a left wing. In the year of 1905 it came to an open break and a split between the two wings. The radicals were in the majority and called themselves "The Majority" or Bolsheviki. The moderates were in the minority, in Russian Mensheviki. With the minority, the mensheviks, remained Plechanov, and to them belonged also Martov and Abramovitch. The leader of the bolsheviks was Lenin. Plechanov died soon after the outbreak of the Russian revolution. He was considered the father of Russian social-democracy.
The program of the m.ensheviks is similar to that of the left wing of German social-democracy or the right wing of the independents. They consider themselves of the same standpoint as the right of the Independent Socialist Party of Germany. (U. S. P. D.)
We are here more interested in the program of the bolsheviks, because that party is in power and has become the ruling party of Russia. It is, consequently, their program which is more or less realized. And even if we cannot trace the Russian conditions completely to their program, as life always turns out different from the wording of the program, still, the program of this party has, without doubt, had influence on the development since the bolsheviks took the power, as well as on the present situation, if we admit at all that man can exert influence on social events. If we now pick out the most important points in the bol^ shevik program, we have in a sense a criterion on, to what extent the conditions in Russia are traceable to the politics and the theory of the bolsheviks and to what extent they are traceable to the revolution itself.
To the fundamental principles of the Russian bolsheviks belongs the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, the conquest of political power through the social-democratic party, which is falsely said to mean through the proletariat; the confiscation of the factories, mines, shops, furnaces, in short, of the whole industry as well as the land, and transforming it into state property; the organizing of economic life through the state. It says word for word in their program: "The state power ceases to be a parasitical apparatus which stands above the process of production; it begins to change into an organization which easily fills the function of managing the economic life of the country." The suspension of the political rights of the exploiting class, as well as all other curtailments of freedom which proved to be necessary for the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the organizing of consumption through the obligatory membership of all citizens of the state in the Consumers' Unions, are necessary consequences. These are then state organs.