V. I.

Lenin

Second Congress of the R.S.D.L.P.

July 17 (30)-August 10 (23), 1903

5. Drafts of Minor Resolutions

The Economic Struggle

The Congress deems it absolutely essential in all cases to support and
develop in every way the economic struggle of the workers and their trade
unions (principally the all-Russian unions) and from the very outset to
ensure that the economic struggle and the trade-union movement in Russia
have a Social-Democratic character.

May Day

The Congress approves the celebration of the First of May, which has
already become a tradition, and draws the attention of all Party
organisations to the necessity of selecting the time and ways most
suitable under existing conditions for celebrating this international
holiday of the proletariat’s struggle for freedom.

International Congress

The Congress appoints Comrade Plekhanov to represent the Russian
Social-Democratic Labour Party in the Secretariat of the Socialist
International (in amendment of the Paris decision to appoint Plekhanov and
Krichevsky joint representatives).

The Congress instructs the editorial board of the Central Organ and the Central
Committee to arrange, by agreement between them (or by decision of the Party
Council), for the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party to be represented at
the International Socialist Congress in Amsterdam in 1904.

Terrorism

The Congress decisively rejects terrorism, i.e., the system of individual
political assassinations, as being a method of political struggle which is
most inexpedient at the present time, diverting the best forces from the
urgent and imperatively necessary work of organisation and agitation,
destroying contact between the revolutionaries and the masses of the
revolutionary classes of the population, and spreading both among the
revolutionaries themselves and the population in general utterly destorted
ideas of the aims and methods of struggle against the autocracy.

Propaganda

The Congress calls the attention of all Party members to the importance of
improving the theoretical knowledge of our propagandists and of forming
groups of travelling lecturers so as to co-ordinate propaganda throughout
the country.

Distribution of Forces

The Congress recommends to all comrades returning to Russia from abroad or
from exile to their place of activity, especially if they do not have
well-established contacts with any committee, that they should endeavour
to give timely notice to the Central Committee or its agents so, as to
enable the Central Committee properly and promptly to distribute
revolutionary forces throughout Russia.

| Written in June-July 1903 | Published according to the manuscript |
| --- | --- |
| First published in 1927 in Lenin Miscellany VI | |

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