LENIN ON ORGANIZATION
which (or almost the whole) works under the control
 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 manner
 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 remain
 true to its program and tactics in the most
difficult years of the reaction.
After the Second Congress the Mensheviks revealed
 similar opportunism on the questions of centralism,
 local autonomy for branches and democracy.
 The Bolsheviks advocated centralism, the
absolute subordination of the local organizations
to the leading centre, the appointment of committeemen,
 and cooption (while the reaction raged).
On these questions the Mensheviks followed the
economists. They were opposed to the absolute subordination
 of local organization to the leading center,
 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