1

Indeed, the report on the Central Committee's activities dealt more with technique than with the politics of the Central Committee. Since 1900, I have been following the activities of the party's central apparatus and must acknowledge gigantic progress. If it does not satisfy us, well then, complete satisfaction will arrive only with the dictatorship of the proletariat, and even then hardly! Bear in mind that "cooptation" still does harm! The Central Committee says little about its politics, because it could say nothing good about them. Its principal error is the struggle against convening the congress. Had the congress been convened a year earlier, it would have been more conciliatory than now. I myself stand for recantation, but I am against it unconditionally in one case—when it is done out of agitation for the congress, but I do not wish to dwell on this: there is more joy over one sinner who repents{90} than over ninety-nine righteous men. As for the reproaches directed at me, I will say only that a writer without a party cannot accomplish anything.

2

I am accused of contradiction concerning the trial. If the congress had been general—the question of the trial would have been raised even earlier, but now all the preceding events have clearly shown what the matter was. The Central Committee cannot give an account because it has become entangled. The way out for the Central Committee was found in the same thing it was before—in the congress, which convened later than it should have. When there is a "defendant who has confessed"—judicial investigation becomes unnecessary.