V. I.

Lenin

How the Congress was Constituted [1]

In supplementation of the resolution adopted at the beginning of the Congress,
the Central Committee deems it necessary, on the basis of subsequent
information, to add the following. The Congress set the total number of votes in
our Party at 71, namely: 62 from the 31 qualified organisations and 9 from the
central bodies. The Congress did not recognise the Kremenchug, Kazan, and Kuban
committees as qualified Party organisations. The following committees had voting
delegates at the Congress: St. Petersburg, Moscow, Tver (at the conclusion of
the Congress), Riga, Northern, Tula, Nizhni-Novgorod, Ural, Samara, Saratov,
the Caucasian League (8 votes, the equivalent of four commit tees), Voronezh,
Nikolayev, Odessa, Polesye, North-Western, Kursk, and Orel-Bryansk. Altogether
21 organisations with 42 votes. In addition there were the C.C. delegates and
the representatives of the C.C. on the Council commanding four votes. All in
all, 46 votes out of 71. Present with consultative voice were: the delegates
from the Archangel Committee, the League of the Urals (a second delegate, who
arrived towards the end of the Congress), the Kazan Committee, the Odessa
Committee, the Ekaterinoslav, Kharkov, and Minsk groups, the Editorial Board of
Vperyod , and the Committee of the Organisation Abroad. The delegate of
the Kremenchug Committee had expressed a desire to take part in the Congress
proceedings, but he arrived too late. Furthermore, the delegates to the Third
Congress received a document during the proceedings from which it appears that,
owing to the efforts of the Organising Committee to convene the all-Party
Congress, representatives of the following organisations had arrived abroad:
the St. Petersburg group of the C.C., the Odessa group of the C.C., the Nikolayev Committee, the
Kharkov Committee, the Kiev Committee, the Ekaterinoslav Committee, the Kuban
Commit tee, the Don Committee, the Donets League, the Siberian League, the
periphery of the Moscow Committee, the Sormovo periphery, the Smolensk
Committee, the Crimean League, and the Ukrainian Social-Democratic League. The
document is a letter to “The comrades assembled in Congress at the
invitation of the Organising Committee”, signed by the representatives of
all the above-mentioned organisations. From this it will be seen that the
Organising Committee actually succeeded in making possible an all-Party
congress in the full sense of the word.

Altogether the Congress held 26 sessions. The following questions of tactics
were on the agenda: (1) the armed uprising; (2) the attitude towards the
government’s policy on the eve of and during the revolution; (3) the position on
the peasant movement. Then questions of organisation: (4) the relations between
the workers and the intellectuals within the Party organisations; (5) the Party
Rules. Further, the questions dealing with our relationship towards
other parties and organisations, namely: (6) the relationship to the
breakaway section of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party, (7) to the non-Russian
Social-Democratic parties, (8) to the “Socialists-Revolutionaries”,
and (9) to the liberals. Further, (10) improvement of propaganda and
agitation; (11) report of the C.C.; (12) reports of delegates from the
local committees; (13) elections; (14) standing order for publication of the
proceedings and decisions of the Congress, and for the assumption of office by
newly elected functionaries.

The publication of the proceedings of the Congress has been entrusted to a
committee specially elected by the Congress. This committee has already
commenced its work.

C.C., R.S.D.L.P.

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Notes:
[1]
This item was published as an editorial note to the resolution of the Third Congress “On the Constitution of the
Congress” in Proletary , No. 1, May 27 (14), 1905.