V. I.

Lenin

Inthe spring of this year, there took place in Switzerland a conference
of the members of the Union of Russian Social-Democrats Abroad which
resulted in a split. The minority, led by the Emancipation of Labour
group, which had found ed the Union Abroad and which until the autumn of
1898 had edited the Union publications, formed a separate organisation
under the name of the Russian Revolutionary Organisation
Sotsial-Demokrat . The majority, including the Editorial Board of
Rabocheye Dyelo , continues to call itself the Union. The congress
of Russian Social-Democrats in the spring of 1898, which formed the
Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party, recognised the Union as the
representative of our Party abroad. How must we regard the question of
representation now that the Union has split? We shall not go into detail
concerning the causes of the split; we shall observe merely that the
widespread and serious accusation that Plekhanov has seized the Union’s
printing-press is not true. In reality, the manager of the printing-press
had refused to turn it over entirely to only one part of the split
Union, and the two parties soon divided the printing establishment between
them. The most important thing, from our point of view, is the fact that
Rabocheye Dyelo was in the wrong in this controversy; it
erroneously denied the existence of an “economist” trend; it
advocated the wrong tactics of ignoring the extremism of this trend and of
refraining from combating it openly.

Forthis reason, while not denying the service which Rabocheye Dyelo
has rendered in publishing literature and organising its distribution, we refuse to recognise either section of the
split organisation as the representative of our Party abroad. This
question must remain open until our next Party congress. The official
representatives of Russian Social-Democracy abroad at the present time are
the Russian members of the permanent international Committee set up in
Paris by the International Socialist Congress in the autumn of this year. [1]
Russia has two representatives on this Committee:
G. V. Plekhanov and B. Krichevsky (one of the editors of Rabocheye Dyelo). Until the two groups of Russian Social-Democracy become
reconciled or come to an agreement, we intend to conduct all our business
pertaining to the representation of Russia with G. V. Plekhanov. Finally,
we must express our opinion on the question of whom we desire to see as
the Russian secretary of the permanent international Committee. At the
present time, when under the cloak of the “criticism of Marxism,”
attempts are being made to corrupt Social-Democracy by bourgeois ideology
and by a meek and mild policy towards an enemy armed to the teeth (the
bourgeois governments), it is especially necessary to have at this
responsible post a man able to stand against the tide and to speak with
influence against ideological wavering. For this reason, as well as for
those stated above, we cast our vote for G. V. Plekhanov.