LENIN ON ORGANIZATION 
organizations of the Social Democrats being iden- 
tical. In Russia, however, the yoke of autocracy 
at first glance effaces all distinctions between a 
Social Democratic organization and a workers’ 
union, since all workers’ unions and all circles are 
prohibited, and since the chief manifestation and 
weapon of the economic struggle of the workers 
—the strike—is regarded as a crime (and some- 
times even as a political crime!). Conditions in our 
country therefore strongly “impel” the workers 
who are conducting the economic struggle to 
engage in political questions. They also “impel” 
the Social Democrats to confuse trade unionism 
with Social Democracy (and our Krichevskys, Mar- 
tynovs and their like, who speak enthusiastically of 
the first kind of impulsion, fail to observe the “im- 
bulsion” of the second kind). And indeed, just 
Picture to yourselves people who are 999%, immersed 
in “the economic struggle against the masters and 
the government.” Some of them during the whole 
course of their activity (four to six months) never 
once come up against the necessity for a more 
Complex organization of revolutionaries; others, 
berhaps, come across the fairly widely dispersed 
Bernstein literature, from which they convince 
themselves of the profound importance of “the 
Course of the gray, daily struggle.” Others, finally, 
Will be carried away, perhaps, by the seductive idea 
of showing the world a new example of “close and 
Organized contact with the proletarian struggle’’— 
contact between the trade union and Social Demo- 
65