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tionary in Russia. A man who is feeble and vacillating on theoretical questions, who has a narrow outlook, who justifies his slackness by the elemental character of the masses, who more resembles a trade union secretary than a people's tribune, who is unable to conceive a broad and bold plan, who is incapable of inspiring respect in his enemies, and who is inexperienced and clumsy in his own professional art—the art of combatting the political police—such a man is not a revolutionary but a hopeless amateur!

Let no active worker take offense at these frank words, for as far as insufficient preparation is concerned, I apply them first and foremost to myself. I used to work in a circle which set itself a great and all-embracing task; and every member of that circle suffered to the point of torture from the realization that we were proving ourselves to be amateurs at a moment in history when we might have said, parodying a well-known epigram: "Give us an organization of revolutionaries and we will lift Russia from its hinges!" And the more I recall the burning shame I used then to suffer, the more bitter are my feelings towards those pseudo-Social Democrats whose teachings "defile the calling of revolutionary," who fail to understand that our task is not to degrade the revolutionary to the level of an amateur, but to exalt the amateur to the level of a revolutionary.