the bourgeois character of the Russian Revolution. This is the "opinion" of international Social-Democracy.
Now it will not be superfluous to glance at our fellow countrymen, the Russian Mensheviks. They too argued approximately like their Western-European colleagues. We will take, for example, a classic Russian Menshevik like George Plekhanov, who was most consistent in his theories. Analysing the character of our revolution in his peculiar style, with his "bookish simplicity," he wrote:
"Marx directly stated that a given method of production cannot leave the historical stage of a given country as long as it does not serve as an obstacle and facilitates the development of its forces of production. The question now arises, how does it stand with capitalism in Russia? Have we grounds for asserting that its day is done, i.e., that it has reached that high stage of development at which it no longer facilitates the development of the forces of production of the country, but on the contrary hampers it? Russia suffers not only from the fact that capitalism exists here, but also from the fact that the capitalist method of production is insufficiently developed, and this indisputable truth has never been challenged by any Russians calling themselves Marxists."[1]
And in an open letter to the Petrograd workers written on October 28th, 1917, Plekhanov brought forward other arguments. He wrote:
- ↑ G. Plekhanov" "A Year at Home." Complete Collection of Essays and Speeches, 1917–18. 2 vols., published by Povolodsky and Co., Paris, 1921. Vol. 1, p. 26.
