LENIN ON ORGANIZATION 
tionary in Russia. A man who is feeble and vacil- 
lating 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 profes- 
sional 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 con- 
cerned, 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. 
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