The Friends of the People

"Friends of the People" (Chto Takoye “Druzya Naroda,” kak oni voyuyut protiv Sotsial-Demokratov?) was an early work by Vladimir Lenin, written in 1894. In this pamphlet, Lenin critiqued Russian populism, a movement that sought to organize peasants for revolution. He argued that the populists misunderstood the "material social relations" and "ideological social relations" of society, a distinction he drew from Karl Marx. Lenin contended that Russia's development was increasingly shaped by capitalist forces, and that the peasantry's role was being diminished by the growth of factories and commercial capital. He asserted that Marx's theories, particularly those in Das Kapital, could be applied to Russia to understand its social and economic structure, and that a Marxist party was necessary to guide the proletariat towards revolution.1