V. I. Lenin

The Vperyod Group {1}

A Conspectus

After a series of lectures to the comrades of the
Vperyod group and after a final conversation with them on Party
tasks and the position of the Vperyod group in the Party, I find
it necessary to set out in written form my attitude to the questions in
dispute in order to avoid misunderstandings and misinterpretations.

I consider that the platform of the Vperyod group is permeated
through and through by views which are incompatible with Party decisions
(the resolutions of the December Conference in 1908) and are contrary to
those decisions.

The Vperyod platform takes a wrong view of the present period,
for this view leaves out of account the economic and political changes in
Russia which are finding expression in the autocracy’s new step along the
path to conversion into a bourgeois monarchy. Hence in actual fact
otzovist tactical conclusions follow from the view adopted by the
Vperyod platform.

Consequently, the Vperyod platform is wholly permeated by
views that deny the absolute necessity of the Social-Democratic Party’s
participation in the Third Duma and the absolute necessity of building a
new type of illegal Party organisation surrounded by a network of legal
organisations and necessarily utilising every legal opportunity.

By putting forward in its platform the task of elaborating a so-called
“proletarian philosophy”, “proletarian culture”, etc., the
Vperyod group in fact comes to the defence of the group of
literati who are putting forward anti-Marxist views in this field.

By declaring otzovism “a legitimate shade of opinion”, the platform
of the Vperyod group shields and defends otzovism, which is doing
great harm to the Party.

In view of all this, the personal declarations of the majority of
comrades of the Vperyod group that they will carry on a sincere
correspondence with the Central Organ, that they will fight against the
otzovists in a principled and comradely way, that they will co-operate
sincerely in utilising legal opportunities, that they will combat all
attempts to disrupt the legal workers’ organisations and
enterprises—these declarations do not inspire confidence and make one
fear that the Vperyod group will wage a struggle against the Party
line in local work and in the work of preparing for a conference.

My attitude to, the local functionaries of the Vperyod group
will depend on their activities in Russia and how they put their
declarations into effect.

Lenin

---
Notes:
{1}
The Vperyod group—an anti-Party group of otzovists, ultimatumists, god-builders and empirio-monists (adherents of the
reactionary idealist philosophy of Mach and Avenarius), organised in
December 1909 on the initiative of A. Bogdanov and G. Alexinsky. Its press
organ bore his name. In 1912 the Vperyodists, together with the Menshevik
liquidators, united against the Bolsheviks in a general anti-Party bloc
(the August bloc) organised by Trotsky.

Since it did not have the support of the workers, the group virtually
broke up as early as in 1913. Its final and formal disintegration occurred
in 1917 after the February Revolution.