The enormous majority of the population of Russia consists of petty owners. Although they groan under the yoke of the capitalists and the landlords, they are so much accustomed to their system of separate, proprietary, individual economy, that it is very difficult to win them over to the idea of the common cause, to induce them to participate in the upbuilding of a cooperative commonwealth. Ingrained in the mind of every petty proprietor is the notion of grasping something that shall be entirely his own and shall have been taken away from another, the notion of working only for his own account. This is why there will be great difficulties in installing communism in Russia, even if the other difficulties be left out of account.
Our weakness is also reflected in the working class. Generally speaking, the Russian workers are revolutionary minded; they have a fighting spirit. But we find among them backward elements, persons unaccustomed to organisation. Not all the workers are like those of Petrograd. Many of them are backward and ignorant; such persons are quite unused to work in a team. There are a great many workers who are newcomers into the town. Most of these have the peasant mentality, and solidarise themselves with the peasantry.
These deficiencies of the working class disappear in proportion as the workers are compelled to struggle for their own cause. It is, however, obvious that the backwardness of a certain proportion is a hindrance to the realisation of our task. But, of course, it does not render realisation impossible.