To that class alone he and his followers pinned
all their faith and hope, and that class was a small minority of the
population and bound to remain a minority for a very long period of years.
Here, then, we have the key. It cannot be too strongly stressed that the
Bolsheviki did not base their hope upon the working class of Russia, and
did not trust it. The working class of Russia--if we are to use the term
with an intelligent regard to realities--was and is mainly composed of
peasants; the industrial proletariat was and is only a relatively small
part of the great working class of the nation. _But it is upon that small
section, as against the rest of the working class, that Bolshevism relies_.
Lenine has always refused to include the peasants in his definition of the
working class. With almost fanatical intensity he has insisted that the
peasant, together with the petty manufacturer and trader, would soon
disappear; that industrial concentration would have its counterpart in a
great concentration of landownings and agriculture; that the small peasant
holdings would be swallowed up by large, modern agricultural estates, with
the result that there would be an immense mass of landless agricultural
wage-workers.
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