108 THE CLASS STRUGGLE PLECHANOV AND BRESHKOVSKAYA 109 ment for an immediate peace. Both papers are fighting to check the widening and deepening of the revolution.
Because of our feeling of profound respect for the past of Plechanov and Breshkovskaya, we cannot lightly pass over what Plechanov and Breshkovskaya are now doing.
If the former Plechanov and the former Breshkovskaya could arise again, they would condemn, with the greatest of contempt, the present Plechanov and Breshkovskaya, who are working against the revolution.
There is great similarity between the activities of Plechanov and those of Breshkovskaya, so great that the workers and soldiers of Petrograd often speak of Broshko Breshkovskaya as Madame Plechanov.
But there is also a difference between the activities of Plechanov and those of Breshkovskaya.
The role of Plechanov is an active one, that of Breshkovskaya a pessive onc. Plechanov founded Unity. Breshkovskaya was absorbed by Volya Naroda. Plechanov led on after him the frightened intellectuals among those who had formerly been Social Democrats. Breshkovskaya is dragged along by the band of frightened intellectuals who were formerly Social Revolutionists, like ex Ministers Savinkov and Lebedeff, one of whom was so active in Kornilov conspiracy. Around Plechanov there revolves the adventurer and counter revolutionary, Aleksinsky, but he is powerless to dominate Plechanov. Near Breshkovskaya there stands the adventurer and counter revolutionary Savinkov, and he orders the grandmother of the revolution about.
Listen to the speeches of Plechanov and Breshkovskaya. In these Breshkovskaya is not always Madame Plechanov.
Plechanov translates the ideas of the bourgeoisie, its imperialism and its love of conquest, into a language which the proletariat can understand. He serves as a translator for the bourgedisie, and smuggles into the ranks of the working classes the contraband ideas of the feudal landholders, the manufacturers and the bankers.
Breshkovskaya talks a great deal to the tune of knowledge is light, and ignorance is darkness, the land for the people, our great country, rich and fair, but there is no order in the land, etc. etc. Her speeches are harmless. She has simply ceased to be a revolutionist, she has become old, it is time for her to rest, and they go to work and drag her from one end of Russia to the other, and force her to serve the cause of the Savinkovs and Lebedeff. She fails utterly to understand what is going on about her. The land for the people, she says, but when the question of handing over the land to the agricultural committees is put to a vote in the preliminary parliament she, together with the rest of the Volya Naroda crowd, votes against this transfer of the land.
Poor Babushka! To spend thirty two years in prison, in jail, and in exile, to give all one life to the struggle for land and for liberty, and then, when the principle of land and liberty is about to be fulfilled to come out against that which all her life she has fought for!
But such is the tragedy of life. And there have been many such. Remember Morozov of Schlüsselburg, now safely harbored in the party of the counter revolutionists, the party of the Cadets. Remember the many leaders of the German SocialDemocrats; up to the war they had fought the German bour.
geoisie, and served the interests of the working class, and then.
when the war came they deserted from the camp of the chann pions of the working class and entered that of the opponents and are now exerting all their powers to weaken, to undermine the cause of revolutionary socialism, which for so many year they had faithfully served.