V. I.

Lenin

September 11, 1904

Dear Comrade, You again repeat that the wish that I join the editorial hoard
of the Central Organ was expressed “by the Central
Committee”. And I for my part must repeat that this is, to
say the least, inaccurate. When you formally stated that the
Central Committee’s declaration had been adopted unanimously by
a meeting of all its members but one, I replied immediately
(August 18,1904) that this was not true. The declaration was
signed by three Central Committee members [5] out of the recent total of nine; and these three quite unlawfully
proclaimed Comrade Osipov no longer a member of the Central
Committee, whereas he informed me in writing that he still
considered himself a member. It was unlawful to declare that a
comrade had resigned without having discussed the matter with
him. Both the arguments with which you and your two colleagues
tried to justify this unlawful act are patently unsound. You
said that Comrade Osipov had formally announced his resignation
at the preceding regular meeting of the Central Committee. That
is not true, for at the end of May (that is, months after that
meeting, which took place in February or March) the Central
Commit tee still counted nine members, as is certified by the
agreement of May 26, 1904, signed by three members of the
Central Committee, and the letter appended to that agreement. [1]

You said that after that Central Committee meeting Comrade
Osipov had joined one of the local committees, which a member
of the Central Committee would have had no right to do.

Comrade Osipov had already written to me on this point, stating
that he had gone to take part in the local work in the district
in question on the instructions of those very members of the
Central Committee who now declare that he has re signed, and
that he had not worked as a formal member of the committee. Besides, even if it were a fact that a member of the
Central Committee had irregularly and in contravention of the
Rules joined a local committee, it does not at all follow that
to correct this irregularity he had necessarily to resign from
the Central Committee, and not from the local committee. Lastly,
you yourself had to admit in your letter to me that the meeting
of the three Central Committee members was informed that Comrade
Osipov’s resignation was a disputed matter. That this disputed
matter should have been decided by three Central Committee
members in the absence of Osipov, and without even hearing his
opinion, was a patent and outrageous piece of lawlessness. Of
course, the three Central Committee members could count on the
support of the Party Council, which is controlled by the
editors; of course, the three Central Committee members could
rely on their formal or tacit compact with the minority
adherents on the Council. But that does not make their action
lawful; on the contrary, it aggravates its unlawfulness by
elements of political bad faith. Similarly, it was unlawful for
the three Central Committee members to accept the resignation of
Comrade Travinsky, of which all members of the Central Committee
had not been informed prior to the meeting. To this day you have
not been able to tell me exactly when this resignation was
tendered, and to whom. You disposed of the matter with a reply
that sounded like a sneer: “Make inquiries of the collegium in Russia”—that is, the “collegium”
(that very same collegium of three!) from which you had just
come and with which I have no means of communicating except
through you!!

Hence, I challenge the lawfulness of the composition of the
Central Committee and of its last meeting (at which the
“declaration” was adopted). I should therefore be fully entitled to leave unanswered your proposal that I join the
editorial board of the Central Organ. But I regard this proposal
as coming not from the Central Committee but from three
members of the Party, and consider it my duty to give a reasoned reply, the more so since you say it is the wish of the
editors of the Central Organ, stated to you in writing, to have me on
the editorial board.

You suggest that my joining the editorial board of the Central
Organ “would secure almost complete peace in the Party,
which you are so anxious to have”. This “almost” of yours is highly significant! Yes, I am
anxious to have peace in the Party. I made an offer of peace in
printed form in December 1903, in my “Letter to the
Editors of Iskra (Why I Resigned from the Editorial

Board)”. [2]

I made another offer of peace, officially, in the
Party Council in January

1904. [3]

Peace was not accepted on the terms I offered then on behalf of the majority. I may
remark that, contrary to the present fashion of mouthing
hypocritical phrases about “peace”, when by peace is meant complete sur render to the minority, complete ignoring of
the majority, and complete oblivion of the Congress, I said
quite definitely in the Council what I understood by peace in
the Party. With my then fellow delegate from the Central
Committee on the Council, I plainly stated that by peace I meant
purging the ideological struggle of all contention over post and
place, of all squabbling and underhand methods of fighting. Let
the minority have the Central Organ and the majority the Central
Committee, I proposed then, let us call on everyone to stop all
boycotts and all squabbling over posts and co optation and argue
out our differences and the causes of our divergence at the
Congress in a comradely manner; let us train the Party to
discuss its internal disagreements in an honest and dignified
way. My appeal was ridiculed by Plekhanov and Martov. I am not
surprised that they took the disgraceful decision to withhold
publication of the Council minutes (in spite of the insistence
of the minority of the Council, namely, the two representatives
of the Central Committee), or that the three Central Committee
members have now (clandestinely) endorsed that decision. People
who would arrange a hypocritical peace, taking advantage of the
accidents unavoidable in the lives of Russian revolutionaries
and ousting from the Central Committee those who think differently from themselves, [4] are bound to want to conceal from
the Party membership a timely attempt to achieve an honest
peace. Fortunately, I have reason to believe that this miserable trick
to deceive the Party will not succeed and that the Council minutes
will see the light after all.

When the editors who had usurped control of the Council
scornfully rejected my offer of peace, I declared then and there
that I considered a congress the only honest way out. The
tactics of the minority (including Plekhanov)—to keep control of the editorial board of the Central Organ and the
Council and claim to represent on these central bodies the
interests of the Party as a whole while in fact trying to
secure, without a congress, a remodelling of the Central
Committee in the interests of the minority—such tactics I
cannot regard as honest fighting. I have never entered, and do
not deem it possible to enter, into any bargains with people who
follow such tactics. Besides, since January the complexion of
the new Iskra has become quite clear; it is a central organ of tittle-tattle and squabbling, of muddled thinking and
of flirting with the opportunists, of settling personal scores
and searching out points of difference. That the new
Iskra is the organ of a circle, the organ of a new “trend”, is now clear to everyone, even to the
editors themselves, who initially set themselves up as champions
of “continuity” and now systematically drag the old
Iskra through the mire. And so, in what sense can one now speak of peace? If by peace is meant purging the ideological
struggle of squabbles over co-optation, I am still quite
ready to agree to peace and to renew the proposal I made in the
Council. But if by peace is meant cessation of the ideological
struggle, conciliation with the line, or rather with the
complexion of the new Iskra , for it has no such thing as a line, then such a “peace   can only be pro posed by
unprincipled or hypocritical people, or by people for whom the
organs of the Party are so much newsprint (Druckerschwt’jrze , printer’s ink, as one of the
“conciliators” called the writings of the new
Iskra). If the editors of the new Iskra , whose position of “principle”
has amounted almost entirely to personal attacks on me, to a hue
and cry against what they have dubbed “Leninism”, and to a searching out of differences with me, now express the
wish to have me on the editorial board, they are only admitting
thereby that they do not take their own writings seriously, that
they invented the whole controversy just “for the sake of
co-optation” and are prepared to throw all their new “principles” overboard once co-optation has been
secured. As for me, I reject as unworthy the very suggestion
that the majority could give up a Party struggle for its
position, for the consistent line, against the circle spirit. In
common with all principled supporters of the majority, whose
numbers in Russia are growing, I consider it my inalienable
right and duty to carry on this struggle. And it should, in my
view, be carried on openly, for nine-tenths of the history of
the conflict is already public knowledge and any further
attempts to conceal it from the eyes of the world would only be
a petty and senseless prolonging of the crisis.

You write that “numerous committees, too, undoubtedly wish” to see me join the present Iskra editorial
board. I note with regret that here too you are uttering a
deliberate untruth. In the present circumstances of the
struggle, not one committee has up to now expressed any such
wish. It has only been expressed by the editorial circle of the
Central Organ and by three members of the Central Committee, who
consider it the acme of political wisdom to join the minority
in abusing the majority and the majority in abusing the
minority. I make bold to believe that my duty is to heed, not
the will of any group of politicians, but the will of the entire
Party, which has also laid down the method of giving formal
expression to that will, viz., the congress. I make bold to
believe that a leader who adopts a certain line at the congress
and leads a section of the Party along that line forfeits every
claim to respect or even to having his words taken seriously if
he then deserts to the side of his opponents.

Your reference to “numerous committees” is very instructive and significant, in spite of its ... divergence from
the truth. It points to a shred of Party conscience, to some little recognition of the fact that official institutions appointed by
the Party must take cognisance of the Party’s will when they
undertake to revise the composition and line of the central
bodies. If this recognition were not obscured in you by the
confused position you have adopted, you would have no difficulty
in seeing that there is no other way of really ascertaining the
real wishes of really numerous committees than by convening a
congress. But while your reference to “numerous committees” betrays a shred of Party conscience, it also
points very clearly to an uneasy conscience. You fear a congress
like the plague because you realise that your policy of
adventures glaringly conflicts with the will of the Party.

My general views as to the hypocrisy of your peace-making are
fully borne out by a number of additional facts. The three
Central Committee members now admire the “high standard” of the Central Organ, while in March these very same three members of the Central Committee drew up a
statement expressing regret that certain Party writers (the
majority of the present editorial board of the Central Organ)
should have lapsed into opportunism. While talking about
“peace”, these three Central Committee members dissolve the Southern Bureau (an agent body of the Central
Committee) because majority adherents have been working on it
and have had the audacity to agitate for a congress. While
talking about reconciling the two contending sides, the three
Central Committee members arrange a conference with representatives of one side, ignoring the other. What
demoralisation is brought into the Party by these private, hole-and-corner
transactions, which affect the whole Party’s vital interests and
which are so carefully kept from its knowledge, when there is
absolutely no necessity for secrecy precautions! How much mutual
distrust and suspicion is brought into the Party’s whole life by
these tricks behind the back of the Party! Only today I received
a letter from a comrade in Russia describing the rumours that
are circulating in connection with these transactions: it is
said in Party circles that three sections have developed among
the minority; one insists on the co-optation of Dan and Trotsky
to the Central Committee, and will not hear of anything else;
the second agrees to a conference; the third contents itself
with the Central Committee’s declaration, and this section
includes the Yuzhny Rabochy-ists (who quite rightly interpret t
he starting of a popular organ as nothing but a masked re
establishment of Yuzhny Rabochy , which the Congress closed down). I do not know what truth there is in this Party
gossip. But that the minority consists of heterogeneous groups,
that Comrade Brouckbre, for example, probably takes no part at
all in the minority’s “ultimatums” or the co-optation squabble generally, and that the Yuzhny Rabochy group represents quite a distinct shade—these
are all generally known facts, with which everyone who has
studied our Party Congress is familiar. Can you really not see
how degrading is all this huckstering of various groups behind
the back of the Party? Is it surprising that the hypocrisy of
the three Central Committee members is earning them the utter
distrust of the majority, which stands aloof from all this
trickery? Is it surprising that a “peace” inaugurated by dismissing people who agitate for a congress
should be regarded as a prelude to the systematic faking of
Party opinion? Is it surprising that the majority should suspect
a deal between the Central Committee and the Central Organ (and,
consequently, the Council) to force minority adherents upon the
committees, to withhold publication of majority resolutions (the
St. Petersburg and Ekaterinoslav resolutions have been withheld
for months already ), etc., etc.?

I hope you will now understand why, with the present situation in the
Party, there can be no thought of my joining the editorial board of
the Central Organ.

Your statement that I “abstained” from voting on the co optation of three new members to the Central Committee is not true. I emphatically protest against considering
“the elections as valid”. This is another piece of lawlessness. It is the duty of all three
Central Committee members to consider my protest, and only
after that can they raise the question of co-optation. According to the Rules, co-optation must be
unanimous; my consent has not been given. Consequently, without
the matter being taken to the Council there can be no talk of
the co-optation being valid. The decision of the Council (if you
unlawfully take the co optation issue there before a scrutiny of
the composition of the Central Committee has been made by all its members) must be sent
to me together with the Council minutes.

I cannot share your regret at our not having met. After your tricks
with regard to Comrade Osipov and your attitude to your pledged word
(agreement of May 26, 1904), I do not wish to have anything to do with
you except in a purely official way, and only in writing.

Central Committee member N. Lenin

---
Notes:
[1]
See pp. 426-29 of this volume.— Ed .

[2]
See pp. 119-25 of this volume.— Ed.

[3]
See pp. 147-49 of this volume.— Ed.

[4]
This applies in the first place to Comrade Osipov, and secondly to
me too, of course, for to propose that I join the editorial board of
the Central Organ amounts to proposing that I resign from the
Central Committee.
— Lenin

[5]
The “July Declaration” (see Note 139) was signed by the concilia
tors Krasin, Noskov, and Galperin, referred to on p. 467 as the Central
Committee “collegium in Russia”.