V. I.

Lenin

What angers me most in the position taken up by the “Martovite” Iskra is its intrinsic dishonesty and falsehood , the attempt to evade the essence
of the matter, the attempt to falsify Party opinion and
judgement, to misrepresent concepts and facts. And I think that the obtuseness and indifference shown by some
comrades, their insensitiveness to this falsehood, can only be
due to their ignorance of the facts. Ignorance must be combated
by explanation, and I shall certainly keep to my intention of
explaining the whole matter in the greatest detail (if necessary, with all the documents) in a special
pamphlet, which I shall undertake as soon as the minutes of the
Party and League Congresses come out, that is to say, very soon. [1]

The chief distortion by which the Martovites try to deceive the Party (in their hysterical state very possibly,
and even probably, primarily deceiving themselves) is, firstly,
misrepresentation of the true sources and causes of the
divergence among the Iskra -ists, and, secondly, misrepresentation of the concepts of circle spirit and disruption, of
sectarianism and party spirit.

The first misrepresentation is that they represent as a difference of
“principle” the recriminations—for that is what they actually were—exchanged by the two sides after the
Congress, during the struggle between the central bodies and the
opposition. These recriminations consisted in the opposition calling
the majority autocrats, formalists, bureaucrats, etc., while the
majority called the opposition hysterical place-seekers , a
party of rejected Ministers or hysterical rowdies (vide the
Congress of the League). And now ane side of these mutual
“compliments” is being held up in the Central Organ as a difference of principle! Isn’t
that despicable?

In reality the cause of the divergence was the Martovites’ swing-over towards the Marsh. That swing-over was clearly to be
seen at the Congress in the matter of Paragraph I of the
Rules and in the grouping in the elections to the central
bodies. This difference, which in a measure certainly was one
of principle , is evaded and hushed up.

The second misrepresentation is that, when it is they who have
for three months been disrupting the whole
Party and all the work in the interests of a circle , in order to worm themselves into the central bodies (for no
one ever restricted genuine controversy or the free expression of opinion; on the contrary, the Martovites were
invited and urged to write), the Martovites now, after getting
into the editorial board by the back door, bring forward the
ludicrous accusation that the majority is disruptively formalistic, bureaucratic, etc., saying nothing about
their own boycott, their place-seeking, etc. Isn’t that
despicable? Either—or; either consign the whole “squabble” to oblivion , and in that case
don’t talk about it at all , do not countenance in the
Central Organ any recrudescence of the squabble—for this outcry about bureaucracy is
precisely a recrudescence of wretched place-seeking; or raise the question of the diver gence, and in that case
disclose everything .

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Notes:
[1]
This pamphlet was One Step Forward, Two Steps Back (pp. 203-425 of
this volume).