Pages: 193-194

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Î6677
L*» G «PROLETARY», JULY 3 (JUNE 20), 1905 1.
A Third Step Back.
[Regarding the dissenting part of the party.] . . . The Central Committee immediately after the congress sent [a request] a letter both to the «League» and to those in charge of the party's technology and treasury, asking the former — to express their attitude towards the III congress, the latter — to transfer the party property to the Central Committee...
. . . A certain prototype of the Menshevik organization: a group of unaccountable and "independent," indispensable and irreplaceable, "party literary men." And with them—a commission preoccupied with... legal publishing!
It is difficult to speak seriously about this type of organization...
And what about the conference resolution? This resolution begins with a glaringly incorrect assertion that "a decisive victory of the revolution over Tsarism" can be marked either by the establishment of a provisional government, "or by the revolutionary initiative of one or another representative institution, deciding, under the direct revolutionary pressure of the people, to organize a national constituent assembly," [[all the absurdity of this assertion] We analyze the conference resolution on the provisional revolutionary government in detail elsewhere 1), here it is sufficient to point out: 1) the victory of the uprising is the complete overthrow of Tsarism; the convocation of a representative institution by the Tsar is a deal between the Tsar and the people; 2) a representative institution convened by the Tsar cannot even remotely compare with an institution convened
[*) In the pamphlet "Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution," which will be published in the very near future.]
* Coll. Works, Vol. VII, 367 - 374. Ed.
13 Lenin Miscellany XXVI
AMENDMENTS IN THE MANUSCRIPT OF THE ARTICLE "A THIRD STEP BACK"'.

by the provisional revolutionary government in terms of guarantees of freedom and correctness of elections; 3) even if convened]. . . [No "decision to organize"] Any (or decision) of any representative institution to organize a constituent assembly is as far, still, from a decisive victory, as word is from deed...
The conference resolution repeats [just] unquestionable provisions of Marxism about the bourgeois character of the democratic revolution, but gives them a narrow and [reasoning-lifeless] incorrect interpretation... This position is very good for parliamentary struggle, very good for action from below, but it is precisely insufficient [in the era] during the uprising...
. . . [On other resolutions of the conference] The political tendency of this erroneous tactical line is the rapprochement of the new-Iskrists with the Liberation movement...
...................2
1 The article was printed as a feuilleton in No. 6 of "Proletary".
2 On the reverse side of the last page of the manuscript, Lenin calculated both the number of printed letters and lines of the article: "750 x 26 = 19500:55 = 355". Lenin counts 750 letters per page here. Multiplying by 26 (the number of pages in the manuscript), he finds that the total number of characters in the article is 19,500. Since the average number of letters per line in the typesetting of the "Proletary" feuilletons is 55, then, dividing 19,500 by 55, he calculates the number of lines of printed text. The result is completely accurate. Without the title, 354 lines, and the title occupies 1 line.