LETTER TO THE MOSCOW COMMITTEE OF THE RSDLP

[January 31, 1905]
Under the influence of news from St. Petersburg, we tried to arrange a joint meeting with the Mensheviks, hoping that there would be no quibbling at such a moment. And what happened? The Mensheviks most brazenly violated all the conditions, knowing that the Bolsheviks would not cause a scandal. Now the Mensheviks are exploiting the events in every way for their own benefit. In the name of the Soviet 2 they are collecting money, which they are using to send Mensheviks to Russia, etc., advertising themselves in every way to European social democracy and playing on the conciliatory mood of the public, which cannot allow the Central Committee to differentiate between the minority and the majority at such an important moment.
Today issue No. 84 of *Iskra* was released.
There are such pearls there:
"But, let us say right now, what a lesson for those utopians of the 'conspiratorial' organization who considered it possible, in the name of habit of obedience, in the name of formal organizational 'discipline,' with the mechanical lever of 'agency' to move a million-strong army of the working class at their own discretion! Let them try to apply this naively Arakcheev measure to the grandiose movement that is unfolding before our eyes!" and other vulgar insinuations 3.
The reader's attention is strongly recommended to Martynov's 4 new brochure "Two Dictatorships."
In St. Petersburg, for the time of the events, a temporary agreement was concluded between the committee and the "group under the Central Committee." The committee showed the most intense activity: it issued a mass of leaflets, sent speakers, organized the collection of money and the distribution of benefits to strikers, under the leadership of the committee the strikers began to arm themselves, build barricades, etc., and here *Iskra* does not mention the St. Petersburg Committee in a word, but instead advertises in every way the "St. Petersburg Group under the Central Committee," stating that in St. Petersburg activity began to revive with the appearance of this group. This disorganizing group is also being advertised in foreign newspapers.
In Odessa, where the Bolsheviks allowed everyone who wanted to work, the Mensheviks, taking advantage of committee connections, conducted their disorganizing work and passed a resolution sharply condemning *Vpered*. From Odessa they write that there is a split there.
Now, judging by *Iskra*, the Mensheviks have targeted Nizhny and Moscow.
What is happening with you? Are there forces in the committee? Are there workers in the committee? How is the work going? Is there technology? Did the Central Committee propose to implement *Iskra's* plan in relation to the liberals?
 
5 How did the committee react to this plan? On whose point of view on this issue does it stand, Lenin's or *Iskra's*?

Please send all the leaflets that have been issued recently, and most importantly, report the details about January 12 and subsequent days 7. How does the committee feel about *Vpered*?
Notify immediately upon receipt of this letter.
Printed from the text written in the hand of N. K. Krupskaya. 1 In connection with the publication of the newspaper *Vpered* and the preparation of the III Party Congress, V. I. Lenin in early 1905 took energetic measures to expand the ties of the Bolshevik party centers with local organizations of the RSDLP in Russia. In January 1905, correspondence resumed with the Moscow Committee of the RSDLP, which had been interrupted in the fall of 1904 due to the failure of the MK.
*Vpered* — an illegal Bolshevik weekly newspaper; published in Geneva from December 22, 1904 (January 4, 1905) to May 5 (18), 1905.
2 This refers to the Party Soviet, the highest institution of the RSDLP, created in accordance with the Party Charter after the II Congress under the chairmanship of G. V. Plekhanov from an equal number of representatives of the Central Committee and the editorial board of the Central Organ. Due to the Mensheviks seizing the editorial office of *Iskra* (November 1903), the Party Soviet effectively became their tool in the fight against the Bolsheviks. It existed until the III Congress of the RSDLP (April 1905).
3 V. I. Lenin cites an excerpt from the leading article of the Menshevik *Iskra* No. 84 of January 18 (31), 1905, "The Beginning of the Revolution," written by F. I. Dan.
4 A. Martynov (A. S. Piker) is one of the leaders of the "economists," a prominent Menshevik.
5 This refers to the "Letter to Party Organizations," published by the editorial board of the Menshevik *Iskra* in November 1904. The letter contained a plan for the working party to support the constitutional movement of liberal zemstvo members. V. I. Lenin's pamphlet "The Zemstvo Campaign and the *Iskra* Plan" is devoted to criticism of this opportunist plan (see V. I. Lenin. Coll. Works, vol. 9, pp. 75–98). The Menshevik-conciliatory Central Committee of the RSDLP agreed with the plan of the editorial board of *Iskra*.

1905 — MAY 1917

6 In the intra-party struggle that unfolded after the II Congress of the RSDLP, the Moscow Committee, along with the majority of other local party organizations in Russia, took Leninist positions.
7 In protest against the bloody events of January 9, 1905 in St. Petersburg, at the call of the Bolsheviks, a strike of Moscow workers began on January 10. On January 14, the strike reached its highest level: about 52 thousand workers from 140 enterprises in Moscow went on strike.
In view of "wartime circumstances and the anxious mood of students and the public," the Moscow authorities banned the celebration of the anniversary of Moscow University, the 150th anniversary of which fell on January 12, 1905. Despite the ban, a mass meeting (up to 600 people) took place in the Hermitage restaurant, revolutionary speeches were made and money was collected for the benefit of the injured workers of St. Petersburg and Moscow strikers.
f. 2, op. 3, No. 806