Written in late July 1904

First published in 1923 in the Collected Works of N. Lenin (V. Ulyanov), vol. V

Printed from the manuscript

A private gathering recently took place of 19 members of the RSDLP (including delegates from the II Congress, members of committees and other party organizations, as well as revolutionaries not belonging to party organizations). This conference of like-minded comrades, standing on the point of view of the majority of the II Party Congress, discussed the question of our party crisis and the means of overcoming it, and resolved to address all Russian social-democrats with the following appeal.

Comrades! The party's grave crisis drags on endlessly. Discord grows, spawning ever new conflicts, impeding in every direction and in increasingly threatening proportions our positive work, severing ever more the connection between the party and its Central Organ, which has finally transformed itself into the organ of a circle—and mainly a foreign circle. The hunting out of disagreements, the digging up of old questions long since settled and relegated to the past, flirtation with consistent opportunists, incredible confusion in argumentation, shameless disregard for the Party Congress, its discussions and its decisions, mockery of party organization and discipline, of the majority creating the party and conducting work on the ground—these revolutionaries—malicious and carping, based on unsubstantiated data and unchecked reports from anonymous sources, snickering over the shortcomings of work in the committees of the revolutionary wing of the party—this is what we see in the new *Iskra*{2}, which has become a source of discord, this is what we have received from the editorial board rejected by the Congress, which exploited personal concessions for new cooptative intrigues, for the work of destroying the party.

And yet the historical moment Russia is experiencing requires of our party the mobilization of all its forces. Revolutionary ferment in the working class, ferment in other strata of the population—all growing, war and crisis, hunger and unemployment are undermining the foundations of autocracy ever more deeply, the shameful end of the shameful war is not so far off, and this end will inevitably tenfold increase revolutionary ferment, will place the working class face to face with its enemies, will demand the most decisive offensive measures from social-democracy. A cohesive party organization, a consistent revolutionary-Marxist direction, the introduction of internal party struggle into decent and worthy bounds, so that this struggle neither introduces disorganization nor impedes positive work—these urgent demands of all of Russia's working movement must be immediately realized, no matter what the cost, under threat of the complete loss of the good name of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers' Party and all the influence it has acquired.

We consider the first step toward achieving this goal to be the introduction of complete clarity, frankness, and directness in relations between the different groups, directions, and shades within our party. True, there are moments when the interests of the cause require silence about partial disagreements, but it would be the most tragic and unforgivable error to consider such a moment the one our party is experiencing. Personal concessions to the minority have not restrained discord, disputed questions have already been raised sharply, a direct challenge has been thrown to the entire party, and only weakness and ignorance can dream of returning to the irrevocable past, of the possibility of hiding something, of leaving something unsaid, of glossing something over, of concealing something. No, the policy of washing one's hands, the policy of passive abstention, the policy of laissez faire, laissez passer[1] has already proved its complete uselessness in our party struggle. Further evasiveness, cunning, and silence would not only be pointless and contemptible, but directly criminal. We are taking the initiative of direct exposition of our entire program of struggle within the party; we call upon representatives of all and every shade of Russian social-democrats, both those in the party and those intending, under certain conditions, to join it, to undertake such exposition. Only complete clarity and directness are capable of providing all conscious workers and all party members with material for a reasonable and firm resolution of disputed party questions.

We stand on the point of view of the majority of the II Party Congress. In the incorrectness of the minority's position at the Congress, in the endeavor to uphold this position independently of the will of the party, we see the fundamental cause of all subsequent errors and all discord. The incorrectness was twofold: first, the old *Iskra* editorial circle had no one to seek support from except the opportunistic wing of our Congress and our party. Second, this union with obvious opportunists (headed by and continuing to be headed by comrade Akimov) solidified into a party division only on such a question as elections to the centers. From the first incorrectness there logically inevitably followed all that principled confusion and all those opportunistic waverings we see in the reasoning of the new *Iskra*, insofar as these reasonings can be recognized as principled. From the second incorrectness followed the defense of the old editorial circle contrary to the will of the party, the defense and justification of circle-ism against party spirit, the introduction into our disputes of such methods as are wholly proper to bourgeois intrigues and circle squabbles, rather than to the struggle of party members who know how to respect both their party and themselves. From the first incorrectness there logically inevitably followed the fact that around the minority consolidated everything tending toward opportunism, everything inclined to drag the party backward and take revenge for the injuries inflicted on its enemies by revolutionary social-democracy, everything expressing the intelligentsia tendencies of our movement, everything inclined toward intelligentsia-anarchical negation of organization and discipline. From the second incorrectness followed the domination of the foreign circle over the majority of Russian workers and the rampant outbreak of specifically émigré scandals, which replace for the minority the means of persuasion.

All doubts have now vanished. No wavering is possible for those who are members of the party not merely in words, for those who in deed wish to defend the vital interests of our working movement. Struggle has been declared, and is being waged throughout by the minority, and we accept the challenge; we declare an irreconcilable struggle, a struggle to the end. We struggle against circle-ism in general and against the old editorial circle in particular in the name of party spirit. We struggle in the name of the interests of the Russian working movement against foreign intrigues. We struggle in the name of the revolutionary-proletarian tendencies of our movement against intelligentsia-opportunistic ones. We struggle for a consistent direction of revolutionary social-democracy against wavering, zigzags, and returns to the long-defunct past. We struggle for a cohesive party organization of our working vanguard against intelligentsia irresponsibility, disorganization, and anarchy. We struggle for respect toward Party Congresses against spineless desertion, against words at odds with deeds, against mockery of treaties and jointly adopted decisions. We struggle for party publicity against the tactics of the new *Iskra* and the new Party Council{3} of gagging the majority and hiding their protocols under a bushel.

From our program of struggle follow naturally both its means and its immediate goals. The first means is the most comprehensive and broadest oral and written agitation. There would be no need to dwell on this point if the complete factional struggle of the minority had not bred among us in the party that (already rightly ridiculed by the Ekaterinoslav committee and many other organizations) notorious "conciliationism," which hides its head under its wing and preaches the cessation of struggle between the majority and minority. Only cowardice, exhaustion, or degeneration can explain the existence of such childish views, which are unworthy of any remotely adult party member. One can and should speak of the introduction of party struggle into party bounds, one can and should strive for this not only through exhortations, but the proposal to cease defending what was defended before the face of the entire party at the Congress and what is considered necessary in the vital interests of the party—such a proposal, if anyone dared make it publicly, would deserve only universal contempt.

The second and decisive means of struggle we consider to be the convening of a Party Congress. We fully support those committees that have put forward a demand for the immediate convening of the Third Party Congress{4}. We consider it our duty particularly to dwell on the hypocritical arguments with which the editorial board of the new *Iskra* and its open and secret accomplices argue against the Congress, carefully hiding this argumentation (difficult to reconcile with party duty) from public view (as the Foreign League{5} and the *Iskra* editorial board hide them, whose agitation has only partially been brought into the open and exposed by committees). The first argument: the Congress will lead to a split. The very fact that the minority advances such an argument shows the complete falsity of its position. For in speaking thus, the minority admits that the party is against it, that the foreign circle imposed itself on the party by force, that it maintains itself only thanks to Russia's remoteness and the difficulty of external conditions for the work of real revolutionaries. Whoever deals honestly with the party, whoever sincerely wishes to work together, does not fear but desires a Congress for the elimination of discord, for bringing the party and its official colleges into accord, for the elimination of unworthy ambiguity. To advance a split as a scarecrow means merely to demonstrate a guilty conscience in full view. Without the submission of the minority to the majority there cannot be a party worthy of the name workers' party, and if mutual (not one-sided) concessions are necessary, if compromises and agreements between parts of the party are sometimes required, then they are possible and permissible only at a Congress. No self-respecting revolutionary would wish to remain in a party held together only by artificial delays of the Party Congress.

The second argument: reconciliation without a Congress is still possible. On what this opinion is based is unknown. Its supporters act and proceed only behind the scenes. Is it not time to abandon this behind-the-scenes intrigue, which only tenfold increases mutual distrust, only sharpens hostility and obscures the situation? Is it not because no one has the resolve to step forward publicly with a plan for reconciliation that, given the present situation, such a plan is impossible—one that would not provoke at best laughter? Whoever understands peace to mean the cooption of persons favored by the minority into the Central Committee desires not peace but sharpened struggle by the majority; such a person does not understand that party struggle has irreversibly grown out of purely bourgeois-opportunistic intrigues. Whoever understands peace to mean the cessation of disputes and struggle returns to the psychology of the old circle: there will always be disputes and struggle in the party; they must only be introduced into party bounds, and this is only within the power of a Congress. In short, however you twist this slogan of peace without a Congress, however you turn this idea of reconciling the combatants without satisfying either side, you will see that this ingenious idea expresses only confusion and an absence of thought, only ignorance of what to wish for and what to strive for. If even a plan of such an influential (once influential) person as Plekhanov to extinguish the fire in its very beginning by means of maximum personal concessions suffered complete fiasco, can one speak seriously of such plans now?

The third argument: it is possible to counterfeit a Congress. The Petersburg Committee has already answered this argument, calling it an insinuation{6}. And this declaration of a local committee was a slap in the face deserved by those who threw accusations from around the corner without a shadow of facts, though the minority has in its hands both the higher Council and the printed organ of the party, so that the minority holds in its hands not only the instrument of public exposure of abuses suspected by it, but also the instrument of administrative correction and influence. Everyone understands that the minority would long ago have cried out about facts if they existed, and that the Council's recent resolution, proving the absence of facts in the past, guarantees their impossibility in the future{7}. The use of this argument by *Iskra* shows once again how vulgar abuse has replaced genuine polemic for it, and compels us to ask all party members: do we actually have a party? do we wish, following the example of the Socialist-Revolutionaries, to be content with a façade and a sign, or are we obliged to tear off every pretense?

The fourth argument: disagreements are not yet clarified. The best answer to this argument is given by the new *Iskra*, familiarity with which shows the party that disagreements are being fabricated rather than clarified, that confusion grows boundlessly. Only a Congress with open and complete exposition of wishes by all comrades is capable of introducing clarity into incredibly tangled questions and a tangled situation.

The fifth argument: the Congress will distract forces and means from positive work. And this argument too sounds like gloomy mockery: one cannot even imagine mentally a greater distraction of forces and means than that caused by discord.

No, all arguments against the Congress testify either to hypocrisy or to ignorance of the matter and cowardly doubt in the party's strength.

Our party is again gravely ill, but it has the strength to rise again and become worthy of the Russian proletariat. As measures for treating this illness we consider the following three transformations, which we will carry out by all loyal means.

First—the transfer of the editorship of the Central Organ into the hands of supporters of the majority of the II Party Congress.

Second—the actual subordination of the foreign local organization (the League) to the all-Russian central organization (the Central Committee).

Third—the guarantee by constitutional means of party methods of conducting party struggle.

Concerning these three fundamental points of our program, there remains little to say after what has been expounded above. That the old *Iskra* editorial board has now demonstrated its uselessness in practice, we consider irrefutable. Not Iskra-ism has outlived itself, as comrade Martov discovered after his defeat in the elections, but the old *Iskra* editorial board has outlived itself. Now it would be mere hypocrisy not to say this directly after the challenges the circle has thrown to the entire party. Concerning the abnormal position of the foreign organization, which has transformed itself into a second (if not a third) center and completely ignores the party's Central Committee, there is little to elaborate on. Finally, the legal position of the minority (any minority whatever) in our party is compelled to be reconsidered by the entire experience of the post-Congress struggle. This experience teaches us, in our conviction, of the necessity to secure in the party statute the rights of every minority, so as to divert the permanent and ineliminable sources of discontent, irritation, and struggle from the usual bourgeois currents of scandal and intrigue into as yet unaccustomed channels of formalized and dignified struggle for one's convictions. Among such unconditional guarantees we reckon the granting to the minority of one (or more) literary group with the right of representation at Congresses and with complete "freedom of speech." It is necessary to give the broadest possible guarantees concerning the publication of party literature devoted to criticism of the activity of the party's central institutions. It is necessary to give committees the right to receive (in the general party transport) precisely those party publications they wish. It is necessary to suspend, pending the IV Congress, the right of the Central Committee to influence, otherwise than by advice, the personal composition of committees. We do not elaborate our proposals in detail here, for we are writing not a statute draft, but only a general program of struggle. We consider it very important that those measures concerning the publication of literature of the discontented, which the Central Committee proposed to the minority of the II Congress, be secured by statute, that discontent be expressed in a decent manner, that the silly mirage of a state of siege (created by the heroes of cooption) be finally dispersed, so that inevitable internal party struggle not impede positive work.

We are obliged to teach our minority to struggle for the personal composition of centers only at Congresses and not to hinder our work with intrigues after Congresses; we are obliged to achieve this under threat of our party's ruin. Finally, in the general program we will only briefly mention desirable partial changes to the statute, such as: the transformation of the Council from an arbitrating body into one elected by the Congress, the alteration of paragraph 1 of the statute in the spirit of the II Congress majority, with the inclusion in the number of party organizations of all workers' organizations and all those groups of Russian social-democrats that led a separate existence in the circle period and who would wish to enter the party, and so forth and so on.

Coming forward with this program of our internal party struggle, we invite all party organizations and representatives of all shades within it to express themselves on the question of their program, so as to make possible the gradual, serious, cautious, and rational preparation for the Congress.

"We do not have a party," the participants in our editorial palace coup reasoned to themselves, speculating on Russia's remoteness and the frequent turnover of workers there and on their own indispensability. "A party is being born for us!"—we say, seeing the committees awakening to active intervention, seeing the growth of political consciousness in advanced workers. A party is being born for us, we are multiplying our young forces, capable both of invigorating and replacing the aging literary colleges; we have and are increasingly acquiring revolutionaries who value the direction of the old *Iskra* that nurtured them more than any editorial circle. A party is being born for us, and no stratagems or delays, no senile-embittered abuse from the new *Iskra* will hold back the decisive and final judgment of this party.

From these new forces of our party we draw our confidence in victory.