ABSTRACT
The Russian revolutionary movement, until about 1880, had one striking peculiarity. The Populist revolutionaries held that they were not called on to fight for a constitutional regime, as that would be contrary to the real interests of Russia. But sooner or later, it seems, the lessons of life were destined to shake this conviction, which had appeared firmly established in Russian revolutionary minds. Plekhanov declared that it was time to get rid for ever of the conception that Russia must follow, in its development, a different road from that of the Western countries. When Struve drew up the Party manifesto, little groups of Social-Democrats, small in numbers and without connecting links, were scattered among various Russian towns. Every Bolshevik must profess dialectical materialism or the materialist philosophy evolved by Karl Marx within the framework of Hegel's system of logic. In creating the Russian Bolshevik Communist Party Lenin did not model it on the customary type of European political parties.
