V. I.

Lenin

Comrades,you all know what a distressing crisis our Party has been passing
through these past eighteen months and more. Ever since the Second Party
Congress, owing to a series of deplorable circumstances, the central bodies of
our Party abroad—the Editorial Board of the Central Organ and the
Council—have come under the control of the adherents of the Party
Congress Minority. The dissatisfaction among our Party workers continued to grow
and developed into a concealed, intense struggle, which seriously hampered the
entire activity of Social-Democracy and impaired the prestige of the proletarian
party. Seeing the harm this secret split was causing, the Party committees began
to demand the convening of the Third Congress as the only party way out of the
crisis. The struggle for the Congress has been the vitalising breath of the
Party activities since the spring of 1904. The Party Council abroad opposed the
idea of the Congress in every way it could. The Central Committee sought to
meet the demands of the Minority in the matter of co-optation in the hope
thereby to restore peace within the Party. But this hope was dashed. Instead of
peace being restored, the struggle was intensified.

Theensuing great events in the development of the working-class movement and
the revolution in Russia, the events of January 9 and its after effects, created
a new situation which taxed the Party’s powers and energies still more. For the
overwhelming majority of the Party workers in Russia the Congress became a
pressing need. The resistance of the Council abroad resulted in the election by
a number of committees in Russia of a special Bureau for convening the Party
Congress. Under the circumstances the C.C.

deemed it its party duty to join the Bureau of Committees of the Majority for
the immediate convening of the Party Congress.

Theneed for the Congress, even from a narrow formal point of view, is borne out
by the following. The members of the Party learned from issue No. 89 of
Iskra that, apart from the central bodies, the Party
Council considered 33 organisations qualified. Consequently, even on this count
(disputed by a large number of Party workers, who set the number of Party
organisations at 31) 38 votes were required to make the convocation of the
Congress obligatory (33x2=66; 66+9=75; 75 : 2=37 1/2 ½).

Thethirteen committees that elected the Bureau of Committees of the Majority
have long since declared for the Congress. The 13 have been joined by the
committees of the Urals, Tula, Voronezh, Samara, the North-West, Smolensk,
Kharkov, and Kazan, i.e., by 8 committees. These 21 committees, together with
the four votes of the C.C. (two votes of the C.C. itself and two of its
delegates on the Council), give 42+4=46 votes.

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