Page:Vladimir Ilyich Lenin - On Organization (1926).pdf/61

. . . . We will attempt to answer this question by giving a brief description of the activities of a typical Social Democratic circle during the years 1894–1901. We have already described the unbounded enthusiasm displayed for Marxism by the student youth of that period. This enthusiasm Marxism aroused not only, indeed not so much, as a theory, or because it was a reply to the question, what is to be done?–but as a call to arms. The new soldiers went into the fight armed with amazingly primitive weapons and with astonishingly little preparation. Indeed, in the majority of cases there were neither weapons nor preparation of any kind. They went to war like peasants from the plough, armed with simple cudgels. A circle of students, unconnected with the older active members of the movement, unconnected with groups in other places or even in other districts of the