ABSTRACT
There was good reason for the sudden upsurge in Lenin's political interests. Lenin was travelling about on legal business. He observed that, as the peasants fled the villages and went to the cities, they transformed themselves into industrial workers or proletarians. In his preoccupation with the peasant problem, Lenin was still following the main stream of Russian revolutionary thinking. Lenin's early manuscripts, most of which have not been preserved, probably illustrated a confrontation between Marxism and populism. Lenin's firm commitment to Marxism indeed presupposed insight into the populist ideology which he had rejected. Lenin, Lalayants, and Sklyarenko were called 'the trio', and they were often together, meeting at the Ulyanov home, on the banks of the Volga, or in beer gardens. Although Lenin still had merely a superficial familiarity with Marx, he now was thoroughly acquainted with the Social Democratic doctrine.
