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LENIN ON ORGANIZATION

which (or almost the whole) works under the control and guidance of the Party organization, but which does not as a whole belong to the Party." This imposes still greater demands upon Party members: Only those who directly belong to one of the Party organizations and work in it actively can be regarded as Party members. In this manner Lenin laid a firm foundation to the Party of "professional revolutionaries" and rendered difficult the penetration of petty-bourgeois elements. Thanks to this the Bolshevik Party was saved from being swamped by petty-bourgeois intellectuals, as was the fate of the Mensheviks, and was helped to remain true to its program and tactics in the most difficult years of the reaction.

After the Second Congress the Mensheviks revealed similar opportunism on the questions of centralism, local autonomy for branches and democracy. The Bolsheviks advocated centralism, the absolute subordination of the local organizations to the leading centre, the appointment of committeemen, and cooption (while the reaction raged). On these questions the Mensheviks followed the economists. They were opposed to the absolute subordination of local organization to the leading center, they were opposed to strict Party discipline and in favor of wide autonomy for local organization. In spite of the weakness of the local organization, in spite of the raging Czarist reaction, and the strict secrecy in which the Party organizations had to be maintained, the Mensheviks insisted upon dem-

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