V. I.

Lenin

Rabochaya Mysl , the organ of the St. Petersburg Committee (League of

Struggle [1] ), in its issue No. 12, published an article replying to a note in the first
issue of Iskra on the split in the Union of Russian
Social-Democrats Abroad. Unfortunately, the reply assiduously
evades the very essence of the controversy; such methods of
discussion will never make the case clear. We have maintained and continue
to maintain that a split has taken place in the Union of Russian
Social-Democrats Abroad, that the Union broke up into two
sections after the withdrawal from the conference in 1900 of a substantial
minority, including the Emancipation of Labour group, [2] which had established the Union and formerly edited all its
publications. Now that the split has occurred, neither of the two sections
can occupy the place formerly occupied by the old Union as a whole. The
St. Petersburg Committee does not attempt to refute this opinion
when (for some unknown reason) it speaks only of Plekhanov and not of the
Sotsial-Demokrat organisation and when it lets its readers know
only indirectly that the St. Petersburg League of Struggle apparently
denies the fact of the split and continues to regard one of the
sections of the late Union Abroad as the whole Union.

To what end engage in a polemic if there is no desire to examine the
essence of the opponent’s opinion and frankly to express one’s own?

To continue. We have maintained and hold to our view that the principal
cause (not pretext, but cause) of the split was a difference of opinion on
principles, namely, a difference between revolutionary and opportunist
Social Democracy. For this reason alone, what has happened in the Union of Russian Social-Democrats Abroad cannot be regarded as
anything but a split in the old Union Abroad. The question
arises—how does the St. Petersburg Committee regard the matter? Will
it dare to deny the existence of profound differences in principle
between the two sections of the late Union Abroad? We do not know, because
the St. Petersburg Committee contrived to write a “reply”
which does not contain a single word about the main question. We
again ask the St. Petersburg comrades—and not only the
St. Petersburg comrades—does not a polemic that evades the heart of
the matter threaten to degenerate into an unpleasant wrangle? Is it, in
fact, worth while engaging in a polemic if there is no desire to examine
the essentials of the question and to express one’s opinion definitely and
without reservations, or if it is regarded as premature to do so?

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Notes:
[1]
The committee here referred to is the St. Petersburg Committee of the League
of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class, which functioned in
the period following the arrest of Lenin and the majority of the League
leaders in December 1895; the leadership of the League fell into the
hands of the “young” Social-Democrats, who supported the
’Economist” position.

The League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class ,
founded by Lenin in the autumn of 1895, united all the Marxist workers’
study circles in St. Petersburg. It was headed by a Central Group
(S. I. Radchenko, A. A. Vaneyev, A. A. Yakubova, N. K. Krupskaya,
G. M. Krzhizhanovsky, V. V. Starkov, and others) under Lenin’s direction.

The League of Struggle headed by Lenin led the revolutionary working-class
movement, linking the workers’ struggle in support of economic demands
with the political struggle against tsarism. It was the first organisation
in Russia to combine socialism with the working-class movement
and to go over from the propaganda of Marxism among a restricted range of
advanced workers to political agitation among the working-class masses on
an extended scale. The League issued leaflets and pamphlets for the
workers and directed their strike struggles. It was the embryo of the
revolutionary working-class Marxist Party. The influence of the League was
felt far beyond St. Petersburg, and similar Leagues of Struggle, pat
terned upon it, were formed in other cities.

[2]
The Emancipation of Labour group was the first Russian Marxist
group. It was founded in Geneva by G. V. Plekhanov in 1883; the group
included P. B. Axelrod, L. G. Deutsch, V. I. Zasulich, and V. N. Ignatov.

The group did much to spread Marxism in Russia. It translated such Marxist
works as the Manifesto of the Communist Party by Marx and Engels;
Wage-Labour and Capital by Marx; Socialism :

Utopian and Scientific by Engels; it published them abroad and organised their
distribution in Russia. Plekhanov and his group dealt a serious blow at
Narodism. In 1883 Plekhanov drafted a programme for the Russian
Social-Democrats and in 1885 drew up another. The two drafts were
published by the Emancipation of Labour group and marked an important step
towards the establish ment of a Social-Democratic Party in
Russia. Plekhanov’s Social ism and the Political Struggle (1883),
Our Differences (1885), and The Development of the Monist View of History (1895) played an important role in disseminating
Marxist views. The group, how ever, made some serious mistakes; it clung
to remnants of Narodnik views, overestimated the role of the liberal
bourgeoisie, while underestimating the revolutionary capacity of the
peasantry. These errors were the first projections of the future Menshevik
views held by Plekhanov and other members of the group. The group had no
practical ties with the working-class movement. Lenin pointed out that the
Emancipation of Labour group “only theoretically founded the
Social-Democracy and took the first step in the direction of the
working-class movement” (see present edition, Vol. 20, “The
Ideological Struggle in the Working-Class Movement”). At the Second
Congress of the R.S.D.L.P., in August 1903, the Emancipation of Labour
group announced its dissolution.