V. I.

Lenin

We are informed that the International Bureau has received
the reply of the organised Marxists to the Bureau’s offer to intervene, in
the affairs of Russian
Social-Democracy. [1] We publish below the more important parts of this
reply.

*     * *
Following receipt of the “Supplement” to No. 11 of The Periodical Bulletin of the International Bureau , the representative body of
Russia’s organised Marxists feels bound to express profound gratitude to
the International Bureau and its Executive Committee for their assistance
to the working-class movement and for their efforts to strength en and
consolidate it by ensuring its unity.

The present situation among Russian Marxists is as follows.

The general state of affairs in 1907–08 led to an extremely grave
ideological crisis among Marxists and the break up of their
organisations. Both in 1908 and in 1910, organised Marxists formally
recognised the existence of a special theory advocated by the
liquidators , who repudiated and sought to liquidate the old Party,
and were out to form a new and legal party. This trend was emphatically and
irrevocably condemned by a formal decision. However, the liquidators
refused to accept these decisions and continued their splitting and
disruptive activities against the “entire body”.

In
January 1912, [2] the entire Marxist body was opposed to the
liquidators, who were declared to be outside its ranks.

Since then, the overwhelming majority of class-conscious workers in
Russia have rallied in support of the decisions adopted in January 1912 and
of the guiding body that was elected at the time. This fact, of which all
workers in Russia are aware, can and must be corroborated by objective
facts, in view of the incredible number of unsupported and grossly untrue
statements circulated by the liquidators and by the scattered groups
abroad.

1.
The electoral law of Russia places the workers in a separate worker
curia. Of the members of the Duma elected by this curia, the Bolsheviks
constituted 47 per cent in the Second Duma (1907), 50 per cent in the Third
Duma (1907–12), and 67 per cent in the Fourth Duma (1912–14).

The elections to the Fourth Duma were held in September 1912, and the
majority that was gained (two–thirds) proved organised Marxism’s complete
victory over liquidationism.

2.
In April 1912, the Marxist daily newspaper Pravda began to
appear. In opposition to it, the liquidators started, also in
St. Petersburg, a rival organ, Luch , which pursued splitting
tactics. In the course of two years, from January 1, 1912 to January 1,
1914, the liquidators’ newspaper, together with all their supporters in the
shape of the numerous groups abroad and the Bund, received the
backing—according to that newspaper’s own reports—of 750
workers’ groups, whereas during the same period Pravda , which
fights for the Marxist line, rallied around itself 2,801 workers’
groups.

3.
Early in 1914, elections were held in St. Petersburg of representatives of
the workers’ sick insurance societies on the All-Russia Insurance Board and
the Metropolitan Insurance Board. To the first body the workers elected
five members and ten deputy-members; to the second, they elected two
members and four deputy-members. In both cases, the lists of candidates put forward by Pravda sup porters were elected in their entirety . In the last elections the ballot figures announced by the
chairman were:
Pravda supporters— 37 ; liquidators— 7 ; Narodniks— 4 ;
abstentions— 5 .

We shall confine ourselves to those very brief figures. They show that
real unity among Marxists in Russia is making steady headway and that the unity of the majority of the class-conscious
workers on the basis of the decisions of January 1912 has already been
achieved.

The document then goes on to describe the disruptive activities of the
various groups abroad and the liquidators, who are persistently trying to
thwart the will of the majority of Russian workers.

Besides partyists and liquidators, there are now no less than
five separate Russian Social-Democratic groups operating
abroad, besides the national groups. For two whole years, 1912 and 1913,
there has not been a shadow of any objective evidence that these groups
abroad are in touch with the working-class movement in Russia. In
August 1912 the liquidators formed what is called the “August bloc”,
which included, among others, Trotsky, the “Bund”, and the Lettish
Social-Democrats. That this “bloc”—which really served as a screen for
the liquidators—was a fiction, was pointed out long ago. Now this
“bloc” has fallen completely apart. The Congress of the Lettish
Social-Democrats, which was held in February 1914, decided to withdraw its
representatives from the bloc because the latter had not dissociated itself
from the liquidators. Trotsky, too, in February 1914, founded his own
group’s journal, in which he backed his outcries for unity by
breaking away from the August bloc!

The “Organising Committee”, which now represents the “August bloc”,
is a pure fiction, and it is obviously impossible to enter into any
relations with that fiction. Since the liquidators talk about “unity” and
“equality”, it should be said that it is the prime duty of advocates of
unity to refrain from throwing into disarray the ranks of the united
overwhelming majority of the workers, and emphatically to repudiate the
liquidators, who are out to destroy the entire Marxist body. Talk about
“unity” coming from the liquidators is no less a mockery of the actual
unity of the majority of the workers in Russia than similar talk about
unity by the “Allemane-Cambier party” in France, or by the “P.P.S.” in
Germany.

The authors then go on urgently to request the Executive Committee of
the International Socialist Bureau to bend every effort to hasten the
“interchange of opinion among all the Social-Democratic groups on controversial issues” (resolution of the
December 1913 session of the International Bureau), in order to expose to
an impartial body, to the Inter national, the utterly fictitious nature of
the “August bloc” and of the liquidators’ “Organising Committee”, and
also to expose all their disruptive activities against the united majority
of the Social-Democratic workers of Russia.

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Notes:
[1]
This article is an abridged version of the reply of the Party’s Central
Committee, which agreed to attend the Conference called by the
International Socialist Bureau. This reply is the “official report” of
the C. C. to the Executive of the I. S. B., of the dispatch of which Lenin
informed C. Huysmans, the Secretary of the I. S. B., in his letter dated
January 18–19 (January 31–February 1), 1914. (See pp. 74–81 of this
volume.)

[2]
The reference is to the Sixth (Prague) All-Russia Conference of the
R.S.D.L.P. held in January 1912. (See Note 90.)