V. I.

Lenin

72

To:   THE MINING AND METALLURGICAL WORKERS’ UNION

Comrades, We have received your resolution [2] and ask you to reply to the following
questions. Please discuss them at a general meeting of all the members of the
Committee (or send them to all the members, if they are not together) as an
enquiry from the editorial board of the Party’s Central Organ.

1) Has the Committee heard a report from the representative of
the Majority at the Party Congress?

2) Does the Committee consider it normal to pass a re solution appraising the
activities and decisions of the Congress before the minutes have been
issued, and even before the Committee has enquired of the Central Committee
or members of the Majority about matters which are not clear to it?

3) How could these disagreements on organisational questions destroy
everything previously done by Iskra and the Organising Committee?
How did the destruction manifest itself? What exactly was
destroyed? We are not at all clear on this, and if you want to safeguard the
Central Organ from any kind of error, it is your duty to explain to us what
you regard as our error. Set the matter out in full detail and we shall
carefully discuss your opinion.

4) What exactly are the “ sharp disagreements on
organisational questions”? We do not know. (We asked Martov and the former
members of Iskra’s editorial board to expound these disagreements in the pages of the publications edited by us , but so far
our request has not been complied with. [1]

5) In what do you see the atmosphere of political intrigue and distrust? On the
part of whom? Be more explicit. (If we distrusted Martov we would
not have invited him to work in Iskra .)

6) If there really are “sharp disagreements on organisational questions” between us and the former editors, how can the two of us
co-opt the four of them? That surely would mean making their tendency
the dominant one? But the Congress pronounced in our favour ,
didn’t it? What you want, therefore, is that the decision of the Congress
should be revised on the basis of a private agreement.

7) Do you consider it normal that by threats of a split,
boycott, etc., people should want to make Party officials (editors of the
Central Organ, and the Central Committee) do something that these central bodies
do not consider useful in the interests of the Party?

8) Do you consider it normal and permissible that Party members who have been
left in a minority should abstain from work in the Central Organ, from
supporting the central Committee and obeying it, from helping the Party
financially, and so forth?