THE present volume of the Selected Works of Lenin covers the period from the defeat of the first Russian revolution of 1905-07 to the outbreak of the imperialist war in 1914.The history of the Party during these years can be divided into two parts:

1. The period of reaction- -1908 to 1911- when the working class, bleeding from the wounds inflicted by the tiumphant counter-revolution, was suffering from apathy and depression, and the Party, passing through a stage of disintegration and chaos, was assailed by enemies within its ranks both from the Right and the "LEeft" On the one side were the Menshevik liquidators, who in their progress along the path of opportunism adopted an open anti-Party altitude: they rejected the very idea of an illegal revolutionary party, advocating instead the formation of what Lenin apt-ly termed a“Stolypin Labour Party,” and turned their backs on underground, revolutionary activities; they called on the work-ing class to adapt itself to the legal possibilities" of the time and to fight for minor, partial reforms instead of for the main revolutionary slogans of the Party, as advanced by Lenin and the Bolsheviks. In other words, they called upon the working class to betray its revolutionary past and to make peace with the reaction under Stolypin and the bourgeoisie, which was coming to terms with the autocracy. On the other side was a small insignificant roup of Bolsheviks who attacked the Party line from the “Left and under cover of“Left" phrases rejected every kind of“legal" work, called for a boycott of the Duma and for the boycott of all the legal forms of organisation and struggle of the working class. The advocacy of this revision of the Party policy from “Left”positions was accompanied and fostered by attemnpts to revise the very philosophy of Marxism, to turn from its corner-stone, dialectical materialism, to idealism and religion, from Marx to Kant and the neo-Kantians, Mach and Avenarius.