Fundamentally the Bolsheviki are Marxian Socialists, believing that all history is simply a record of the varying phases of the eternal class struggle between the ruling classes and the oppressed proletariat. Compared to this struggle, between the rulers and the ruled, all other struggles, even the present war, are to them of no significance; they consider them simply quarrels between the capitalist groups of the various countries, while the soldiers forming the armies of the various belligerents are simply--so the Bolsheviki believe--dupes. From the same point of view, if these dupes, the working classes of all nations, were really "class-conscious," realizing their true interests, they would understand that nationalism and patriotism are only tricks of the ruling classes to keep them separated, so that they may be all the more easily controlled. Theoretically all Socialists of the Marxian school believe this. But when the present war broke out, such Socialists as Kerensky and Tchernov and a great many more in this country, England and France were convinced that the situation was exceptional and that, though the Allied countries were, not, from their point of view, thoroughly democratic, in that the industries are controlled by private persons for private profit, they did, nevertheless, relatively speaking, represent democracy as against such rank autocracy as the German and Austrian Governments. The Bolsheviki, true to their name, would grant no such concessions. All governments, in their eyes, were against the people, the difference between them being only a question of degree so slight as not to matter materially. The real fight, according to their opinion, is between the great masses of the workers on the one hand and the exploiting traders and other capitalists on the other. Therefore they called on the masses of all countries to unite in a great world-wide brotherhood and overthrow all the governments. The intellect, the chief exponent, of the Russian Bolsheviki was and is Vladimir Illitch Ulyanov or, as he is more generally known, Nikolai Lenine. He was born in Simbirsk, central Russia, forty-eight years ago, being a scion of the minor landed nobility. His father was an official in the Department of Public Instruction and Lenine received his early education in his native city. After graduating from the local gymnasium he went to Petrograd where he continued his studies in the university, specializing in economics. The early and the picturesque phase of the Nihilist movement was past then, but its seed was sprouting and very many students were radicals and revolutionists, Lenine among them.