2. What was our previous program?
Our present program was adopted by the eighth Party Congress at the end of March, 1919. Prior to this we had not a precise program, written on paper. We had nothing but the old program elaborated at the second Party Congress in the year 1908. When this old program was compiled, the bolsheviks and the mensheviks constituted a single party, and they had a common program. At that date the organisation of the working class was only just beginning. There were very few factories and workshops. Disputes were actually still goimg on as to whether a working class would ever come into existence in Russia. The “narodniks” (the fathers of the present social revolutionaries) considered that the working class was not destined to develop in Russia, that in our country there would be no extensive growth of factories and workshops. The Marxists — the social democrats, subsequently to divide into bolsheviks and mensheviks — supposed, on the other hand, that in Russia, as elsewhere, the working class would continue to grow and would constitute the main strength of the revolution. Time proved that the views of the narodniks were wrong and that those of the social democrats were right. But at the date when the program of the social democrats was elaborated by the second Party Congress (both Lenin and Plekhanov participating in the work), the strength of the Russian working class was extremely small. That is why no one then imagined that it would be possible to undertake the direct overthrow of the bourgeoisie. At that time the best policy seemed: to break the neck of tsardom; to win freedom of association for the workers and peasants in conjunction with all others; to establish the eight-hour day; and to reduce the power of the landowners. No one then dreamed that it would be possible to realise the rule of the workers once and for all, or immediately to dispossess the bourgeoisie of its factories and workshops. Such was our old program of the year 1908.