What Is To Be Done?

BURNING QUESTIONS of our MOVEMENT

•

Correction to What Is To Be Done?

The Initiators’ Group of whom I speak in the pamphlet What Is To Be Done? p. 141, [1]
have asked me to make the following correction to my description of the part they played in the attempt to
reconcile the Social-Democratic organisations abroad: “Of the
three members of this group, only one left the Union Abroad at the
end of 1900; the others left in 1901, only after becoming
convinced that it was impossible to obtain the Union’s consent to
a conference with the Iskra organisation abroad and the
revolutionary Sotsial-Demokrat organisation, which the
Initiators’ Group had proposed. The Administrative Committee of
the Union Abroad at first rejected this proposal, contending that
the persons comprising the Initiators’ Group were ‘not competent’
to act as mediators, and it expressed the desire to enter into
direct contact with the Iskra organisation abroad. Soon
thereafter, however, the Administrative Committee of the Union
Abroad informed the Initiators’ Group that following the
appearance of the first number of Iskra containing the report of the split in the Union, it had altered its decision and
no longer desired to maintain relations with Iskra . After
this, how can one explain the statement made by a member of the
Administrative Committee of the Union Abroad that the latter’s
rejection of a conference was called forth entirely by its dissatisfaction with the composition of the Initiators’ Group?
It is true that it is equally difficult to explain why the

Administrative Committee of the Union Abroad agreed to a
conference in June of last year, still remained in force and
Iskra’s ‘negative’ attitude to the Union Abroad was still
more strongly expressed in the first issue of Zarya , and
in No. 4 of Iskra , both of which appeared prior to the
June Conference.”

N. Lenin

| Iskra , No. 19, April 1, 1902 | Published according to the Iskra text |

---
Notes:
[1]
See present volume, p. 521–22.— Ed .

| << Index of What
Is To Be Done? |