LENIN ON ORGANIZATION 
which (or almost the whole) works under the con- 
trol and guidance of the Party organization, but 
which does not as a whole belong to the Party.” 
This imposes still greater demands upon Party 
members: Only those who directly belong to one 
of the Party organizations and work in it actively 
can be regarded as Party members. In this man- 
ner Lenin laid a firm foundation to the Party of 
“professional revolutionaries” and rendered difficult 
the penetration of petty-bourgeois elements. Thanks 
to this the Bolshevik Party was saved from being 
swamped by petty-bourgeois intellectuals, as was 
the fate of the Mensheviks, and was helped to re- 
main true to its program and tactics in the most 
difficult years of the reaction. 
After the Second Congress the Mensheviks re- 
vealed similar opportunism on the questions of cen- 
tralism, local autonomy for branches and democ- 
racy. The Bolsheviks advocated centralism, the 
absolute subordination of the local organizations 
to the leading centre, the appointment of commit- 
teemen, and cooption (while the reaction raged). 
On these questions the Mensheviks followed the 
economists. They were opposed to the absolute sub- 
ordination of local organization to the leading cen- 
ter, they were opposed to strict Party discipline and 
in favor of wide autonomy for local organization. 
In spite of the weakness of the local organization, 
in spite of the raging Czarist reaction, and the strict 
Secrecy in which the Party organizations had to be 
maintained, the Mensheviks insisted upon dem- 
13