LENIN ON ORGANIZATION
to which that primary and most essential branch
of our militant activities has been firmly established.
Moreover, the paper must be an all-Russian paper.
As long as we are unable to bring united influence
to bear on the population and on the government
with the aid of the printed word, it is utopian to
think that we shall be able unitedly to exert other
more complex and difficult, but more effective forms
of influence. Our movement, intellectually as well
as practically (organizationally), suffers most of all
from its dispersion, from the fact that the vast
majority of Social Democrats are immersed in local
work, which narrows their point of view, limits their
activities and affects their conspiratorial skill and
training. It is to this dispersedness that we must
ascribe the vacillation and hesitation of which I
spoke above. The first step towards removing this
defect and transforming several local movements
into a united national (Russian) movement is the
creation of a national newspaper. Finally, it is a
political paper we need. Without a political organ,
a movement deserving to be called a political move-
ment is impossible in modern Europe. Without
such a paper we shall be absolutely unable to fulfill
our task, namely, to concentrate all the elements
of political unrest and discontent and with them
enrich the revolutionary movement of the prole-
tariat. The first step we have already accomplished;
we have aroused in the working class a passion for
“economic,” factory, denunciation. We have now
to make the second step: to arouse in every to any
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