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less distinctive. It means majority, the opposite of Menshevik, minority," and was first used to designate the dominating faction of the Russian Social Democratic Party, whose guiding spirit was Vladimir Ilitch Ulianoff, otherwise known as Nikolai Lenine. For a long period the struggle of the Bolsheviki and Mensheviki for control of their party organization was of small consequence to the world at large, although it was kept under close scrutiny by the secret agents of the Tsar. But when the veil of the old order was rent and the revolutionaries, who had for years wandered as exiles about the capitals of Europe, came back to their own country and assumed control of its affairs, the word Bolshevik began to have a sinister significance. The Bolsheviki were no longer merely the dominating element of a group of socialistic agitators working largely under cover of secrecy. They came to be an implacable majority, and the subjugation of Russia has merely provided the base of operations for a campaign to conquer the world.

Against the turgid background of Russian revolutionary conspiracy the course followed by Bolshevism becomes reasonably clear. The issue it has raised, the methods it has followed and the theories it has advanced leave no doubt of the merciless character of the struggle it purposes to carry on against the established order in both hemispheres. It has shown itself to be as much the enemy of the small farmer and property holder in the United States, as it was the enemy of the imperialistic grand duke in Russia. It is equally hostile to American trade unionism and capitalism, holding both to be the offspring of the same pernicious system. Lenine himself places the German Socialist leader, Scheidemann, and Samuel Gompers, President of the American Federation of Labor, in the same despised category-traitors to the Bolshevist cause. From a survey of its past may be gathered some idea of evil portent it holds for the future.

The story may be written mainly around Lenine who, by his turbulent revolutionary career, was well fitted for leadership of the destructive "red" hosts. Those who have known him admit the strength of his personality, but his ideas were oftentimes not the ideas of his associates. He was always the extremist, uncompromising in his attitude and unyielding in his demands. If he failed in one way to induce his revolutionary colleagues to adopt his views, he sought another, but he never

gave ground or abandoned a conviction. In the end he succeeded and the policies of the present Soviet government are for the most part the application of his theories. Even Trotzky, who once opposed him, the milder Plekhanov and the anarchistic Maxim Gorky, forgetting old differences, have come back into the Bolshevist fold of which he has been the shepherd, and in other countries, even in the United States, the name has become the catchword of international Socialism, and detached radical groups are arraying themselves under its flaming banner.

Lenine, who appears at various times as Ilyich, Ilyin and Tulin, unlike most of his associates, is a hereditary nobleman, his family boasting of greater antiquity than even that of the ill-fated Nicholas Romanoff, last of the Tsars. His father was a councillor of state of the government of Simbirsk, but the other members of the family were, almost without exception, revolutionaries. One brother, Dmitri, was under police observation at Podolsk. A charge of treasonable activity was lodged against a sister, Maria, and another sister married Mark T. Elizaref, whose name appears on the police records. A brother, Alexander, was executed in 1887 for participation in the attempted assassination of Alexander III.

Early in his career Lenine showed that he was not to be the least among this revolutionary brood. From the University of Kazan to which he went from the Simbirsk gymnasium, he was expelled in 1887, at the age of seventeen, for political agitation. Thenceforth he became a suspect, and his movements were shadowed by the secret police until this hated imperialistic institution went down amid the ruins of the Romanoff dynasty.

In 1895 Lenine joined the growing colony of Russian revolutionary emigrés. With Plekhanov, now one of the Bolshevist leaders, he built up one of those mysterious organizations through which, in spite of the secret agents of the Tsar, the leaven of revolutionary propaganda was injected in the amorphous mass of Russia's industrial and peasant population. Shortly afterward he returned to Petrograd where he devoted his activities to the editing and publication of the "underground" revolutionary newspaper, Rabotcheye Dyelo, "Labor's Work." In this enterprise he fell into the hands of the police and was condemned to exile for a period of three

years, a sentence mild in the extreme compared to the capital punishment meted out indiscriminately by the Bolsheviki to persons suspected of "counter-revolutionary" activity. He was also forbidden to reside thereafter in Petrograd and Moscow, and for a further term of three years in industrial and university towns and at Irkutsk and Krasnoyarsk, a decree he ignored on more than one occasion. At the conclusion of his exile he went abroad, in 1900, as a delegate to the Central Committee of the Russian Social Democratic Party. This point marks the beginning of Lenine's leadership of the radical element among the revolutionary emigrés and the inception of the movement which has culminated in the establishment of the Bolshevik state upon the ruins of the Russian empire.

The aims of Lenine and his associates at this time were set forth in the first number of the party organ of the Social Democrats, Iskra, "The Spark," which he, with Martov (Tsederbaum) and Potressov, established. They are defined thus:

The task which the Russian democracy is called upon to perform is to inoculate the masses of the proletariat with political ideas, and a socialistic frame of mind, and to organize a revolutionary party closely in touch with the spontaneous and unorganized labor movement development and the organization of the working classes.

At this, the very outset of the enterprise, it was made plain that there was to be no compromise with the bourgeois revolutionary element. The Iskra group declared its hostility toward the "economists" who proposed that the Social Democrats confine their activities to the struggle with capital and trust to the liberal bourgeoisie to conduct the political struggle for which they were better equipped. Zarya, "The Dawn," a publication which did not transgress police regulations, was established to carry on this fight against the Social Revolutionary Party which recruited its adherents mainly from the ranks of the bourgeoisie.

In this mild conflict, begun nearly twenty years ago, is foreshadowed the relentless struggle of the Bolsheviki not only for economic but also for political supremacy. In the call sounded by its leaders there echoed, even at this time, an ominous note. It was not altogether by favor of circumstance that the provisional Russian government, of which Kerensky

was the head, was overthrown and the flood of Bolshevist propaganda loosed upon the world. Neither Kerensky nor the imperialists before him feared greatly the small group of radicals. The former, especially, believed that their strength would ebb under the enlightening influence of a constitutional democracy. Both made the mistake of not taking into account the formidable effect of German aid and German moneyanother of the Prussian blunders for which the German people are now paying a terrible cost.

Lenine, intolerant of divergent opinion, did not confine his energies to the spread of revolutionary propaganda, but sought to gather all revolutionary groups into one cohesive organization which could enforce discipline and direct all activities. He said in a pamphlet published in 1902:

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As long as home-made circles do not realize their limitations and have not ridden themselves of them, political problems will remain inaccessible to them. Only through firm revolutionary organization will we be able to guarantee it a resisting power as a unit and realize both social democratic and trade-union aims. The nucleus of the future party must be a country-wide central which will unite itself and gather in one drive all and every manifestation of political opposition, protest and indignation-an organization composed of professional revolutionists and led by real leaders who have the confidence of the whole people.

This policy began to take shape at the first congress of the Russian Social Democratic Party held at Minsk in 1898. It was to some extent tactical, as Witte and his lieutenants attempted to divide the forces hostile to the State by supporting the economists," holding out to them the bait of State Socialism, and cutting the ground from under the political agitators who were bent upon revolution. The manœuvre, largely through the efforts of Lenine and his associates, failed. The revolutionary movement grew apace and the shadow of terror which fell athwart the paths of the leaders of the old regime deepened.

It was with the triumphant consciousness of the growth of their strength that the delegates to the second congress of the party gathered in London in 1903. They were to weld into a unit the scattered revolutionary groups and focus all effort

upon the forthcoming upheaval. Lenine, as usual, took the centre of the stage, but even with his dominating personality he was unable to compel complete acquiescence in his views. A very definite line of cleavage between the moderates and the extremists appeared. Eventually, as this divergence of policy -which at first had to do merely with the internal organization of the party-became fixed, the Lenine faction composed of the radical element went under the name of Bolsheviki, the majority. The Mensheviki, the moderates, became the minority. The attitude of the majority, which led to the breach that has existed ever since, was formulated by Lenine:

The stronger the inner party organization which must be composed only of real Social Democrats and free from vacillating elements, the wider, more fruitful and richer will be its influence for leading the surrounding labor masses. During revolutionary periods in particular, practically every laborer is an adherent of the labor party, which is labor's vanguard. By the very reason of our cause being a class party, we must make a distinction between a party member and a party adherent. To have the party big numerically does it no good. We know very well that not every striker can be a Social Democrat. Control over those who carry out occasional jobs for the party committees without being a party member, is a fiction and, besides, such special jobs should be discountenanced as far as labor masses are concerned. Noncompulsory participation in party organization will only open the door to free lances and intelligentsia who, in general, as a class differ inconveniently from the proletariat in that they are less capable of organization and discipline.

From the beginning it has been evident that the movement, of which Lenine has been the leader and chief spokesman, was to be an inexorable class war. Faint-heartedness was not to be tolerated; the free lances and intelligentsia, the prototype of the American “parlor-Socialist," were regarded as a detriment rather than an advantage. Even labor was to be used merely as an instrument and its aims were to be kept distinct from the aims of the revolution.

Lenine prematurely jumped to the conclusion that the second congress had accomplished its purpose and a single party had been established. Subsequent events proved his error. In