V. I.

Lenin

(With Reference to the Forthcoming Publication of the Organ of the Party Majority)

Dear Comrades, Today, at a meeting of a close circle of Bolsheviks abroad, a
final decision was taken on a question that in principle has
long been decided: the publication of a Party periodical that
will uphold and develop the principles of the majority against
the organisational and tactical discord brought into the Party
by the minority, and will serve the needs of the positive work
of the organisations in Russia, against whom such a bitter fight
is now being carried on by minority agents practically all over
the country—a fight that terribly disorganises the Party
at this vital historical juncture, and one that is carried on
throughout by the most shameless splitting methods and tactics,
amid hypocritical deploring of the split by the so-called
Central Organ of the Party. We have done everything in our power
to steer the struggle into a Party channel; ever since January
we have been fighting for a congress, as the only worthy Party
way to end this impossible situation. By now it is perfectly
clear that the activities of the Central Committee following its
desertion to the minority consist almost entirely in desperately
resisting a congress, and that the Council is resorting to the
most outrageous and unpardonable tricks to put off convening
it. The Council is directly sabotaging a congress; whoever has
still to be convinced of that after its latest decisions,
printed in the supplement to Nos. 73-74 of Iskra , will see it from Orlovsky’s pamphlet The Council Against the Party , [2]
which we published the other day. It is perfectly clear now that unless they unite and resist our
so-called central institutions, the majority will not be able to uphold their position, to uphold
the party spirit in its struggle against the circle spirit. Union of the Bolsheviks in Russia has long been put
forward by them as an urgent need. Recall the tremendous
sympathetic response to the programmatic resolution of the
twenty

two [1]

(programmatic for our struggle within the Party); recall the proclamation of the nineteen, issued in printed form
by the Moscow Committee (October 1904); lastly, nearly all Party
committees are aware that a number of private conferences of
majority committees have lately been held, and in part are still
being

held, [3] and that the most vigorous and definite efforts are being made to solidly unite the majority
committees for resistance to the overweening Bonapartists on
the Council, Central Organ, and Central Committee.

We hope that these efforts (or rather steps) will be made
generally known in the very near future, when the results will
allow of a definite statement of what has already been achieved. It need hardly be said that the majority would have
been quite unable to conduct their self-defence without a
publishing house of their own. As you may already know from our
Party literature, the new Central Committee simply ejected our
pamphlets (and even the covers of pamphlets already set up)
from the Party printing office, thus turning the latter into the
printing office of a circle, and refused the direct request of
the majority members abroad and of committees in
Russia—the Riga Committee, for instance—to have majority literature delivered to Russia. It became quite evident
that falsification of Party opinion was a systematic tactic of
the new Central Committee. We found ourselves faced unavoidably
with the necessity of expanding our publishing activities and
setting up our own transport arrangements. The committees that
had broken off comradely relations with the editorial board of
the Central Organ (see Dan’s admission in his account of the
Geneva meeting of September 2, 1904 [4] —an interesting pamphlet) could not and cannot do without a
periodical organ. A party without an organ, an organ without a
party! This tragic formulation put forward by the majority as far back as August inexorably decreed the one solution—the
starting of our own organ. The young literary forces that have
been coming abroad to uphold the vital cause of the majority of
the comrades in Russia need a field for their energies. A number
of Party writers in Russia likewise call insistently for an
organ. In starting this organ, which will probably be called
Vperyod , we are acting in full agreement with the mass
of the Bolsheviks in Russia, and in full harmony with our
conduct in the Party struggle. We are resorting to this weapon
after a whole year spent in trying every, absolutely every way
that is simpler, more economical for the Party, more perfectly
in accordance with the interests of the working-class movement. We are by no means abandoning the struggle for a
congress; on the contrary, we want to extend, co-ordinate, and
support this struggle, want to help the committees to decide the
new question now facing them—that of arranging a congress
with— out the Council and Central Committee, and against
the wishes of the Council and Central Committee—a question
that requires the fullest and most serious discussion. We openly
champion views and aims that have long since been stated, in a
number of pamphlets, before the whole Party. We are fighting and
will continue to fight for the consistent revolutionary line,
against discord and wabbling in matters of both organisation and
tactics (see the monstrously muddled letter of the new
Iskra to the Party organisations, printed for Party members only and concealed from the eyes of the world [5] ). The announcement about the new organ will
probably appear in a week or so, and the first issue somewhere
between January 1 and 10, New Style. The editorial board will
include all the majority writers that have so far come to the
fore (Ryadovoy, Galyorka, Lenin, Orlovsky, who contributed
regularly to Iskra from its 46th to 51st issue, when it
was conducted by Lenin and Plekhanov, and also very valuable
younger forces). The body practically directing and organising
the complex business of distribution, agencies, etc., etc.,
will be formed (has already been formed in part) [6] through
direct assignment of definite functions to definite comrades by a number of Russian committees (the Odessa,
Ekaterinoslav, and Nikolayev committees, the four Caucasian
committees, and several northern ones, more particulars of which you will receive
shortly). We now appeal to all comrades to give us all the
support they can. We shall conduct the organ on the under
standing that it is the organ of the movement in Russia, not of
any 6migr6 circle. This requires, first and foremost, the most
vigorous “literary” support, or rather literary participation, from Russia. I have put the word
“literary” in italics and inverted commas in order to draw attention from the first to its special sense and
caution against a misconception that is very common and highly
detrimental to the work. It is a misconception that writers and
only writers (in the professional sense of the term) can success
fully contribute to a publication; on the contrary, it will be
vital and alive only if for five leading and regularly contributing writers there are five hundred or five thousand
contributors who are not writers. One of the shortcomings of the
old Iskra , one which I always tried to rid it of (and which has grown to monstrous proportions in the new
Iskra ) was that too little was done for it from
Russia. We always used to print everything, practically without
exception, that we received from Russia. A really live organ
should print only a tenth of what it receives, using the rest as
material for the information and guidance of the journalists. We must have as many Party workers as possible
correspond with us, correspond in the ordinary, not the
journalistic sense of the term.

Isolation from Russia, the engulfing atmosphere of the accursed
6migr6 slough, weighs so heavily on one here that living contact
with Russia is our only salvation. Let all re member that who
want in fact, and not just in word, to consider (and to
make ) our organ the organ of the entire “majority”, the organ of the mass of Russian
comrades. Let everyone who regards this organ as his own and who
is conscious of the duties of a Social-Democratic Party member
abandon once and for all the bourgeois habit of thinking and
acting as is customary towards legally published papers—the habit of feeling: it is their business
to write and ours to read. All Social-Democrats must work for
the Social-Democratic paper. We ask everyone to contribute, and
especially the workers. Give the workers the widest opportunity
to write for our paper, to write about positively everything, to write as much as they possibly can about their daily lives,
interests, and work—without such material a
Social-Democratic organ will not be worth a brass farthing and
will not deserve the name. In addition, please send us private letters , not intended as contributions to the paper, i.e.,
not for publication, but by way of comradely intercourse with
the editors and to keep them informed, and not only about facts
and incidents, but about the prevailing sentiment and the
everyday, “uninteresting”, humdrum, routine side of the movement. People who have not lived abroad cannot imagine
how much we need such letters (there is absolutely nothing
secret about them either, and to write such an uncoded letter
once or twice a week is really something the busiest person can
do). So write to us about the discussions at the workers’ study
circles, the nature of these discussions, the subjects of study,
and the things the workers ask about; about the state of
propaganda and agitational work, and about contacts among the
general public, in the army, and among the youth; above all
write about any dissatisfaction the workers feel with us
Social-Democrats, about the things that trouble them, about
their suggestions, criticisms, etc. Matters relating to the
practical organisation of the work are particularly interesting
now, and there is no way of acquainting the editors with them
except by a lively correspondence not of a journalistic nature,
but simply of a comradely kind. Of course, not everyone has the
ability or inclination to write, but ... don’t say “I can’t”, say “I don’t want to”; given the
desire, one or two comrades who could write can be found in any
circle, any group, even the smallest, even the most minor (the
minor groups are often especially interesting, for they
sometimes do the most important, though inconspicuous, part of
the work). We here have from the start placed the secretarial
work on a broad footing, draw ing on the experience of the old
Iskra; and you for your part should know that anybody , absolutely anybody who sets about it with
patience and determination can without much difficulty make sure
that all his letters, or nine-tenths of them, reach their
destination. I say this on the basis of the three years’
experience of the old Iskra , which had many such an informal correspondent (often unacquainted with any of the
editors) who wrote with the utmost regularity.

The police have long been quite unequal to the task of intercepting all foreign correspondence (they only seize a
letter occasionally, if the writer has been unusually careless);
and the great bulk of the old Iskra’s material always used to arrive in the most usual way, in ordinary letters
sent to our addresses. A special word of warning against the
practice of concentrating correspondence only in the hands of
the committee and the secretaries. Nothing could be more harmful
than such a monopoly. Essential as unity is in actions and
decisions, in the matter of general information, of correspondence, it is quite wrong. It very often happens that
the most interesting letters are from comparative “outsiders” (people more remote from the
committees), who perceive more freshly much that old experienced workers overlook because they are too used to
it. Give every opportunity to the younger people to write to
us—to the youth, to Party workers, to “centralists”, to organisers, and to ordinary
rank-and-filers at impromptu meetings and mass rallies.

Only given such a wide correspondence can we, by our joint efforts,
make our paper a real organ of the working- class movement in Russia. We earnestly request, to have this letter read to every
kind of meeting, study circle, subgroup, etc., etc.—as widely as
possible—and to be informed how the workers receive this
appeal. As to the idea of publishing a separate workers’
(“popular”) organ and a general—guiding—intellectual organ, we are very sceptical about it; we should like to see the
Social-Democratic newspaper the organ of the whole movement, to see
the workers’ paper and the Social-Democratic paper fused in one. This
can be achieved only if we have the most active support of the working
class.

With comradely greetings,

N. Lenin

---
Notes:
[1]
See pp. 454–61 of this volume.— Ed .

[2]
The
Council Against the Party , by Orlovsky (V. V. Vorovsky), was issued
in Geneva in November 1904 by the Bolshevik Bonch Bruyevich and Lenin
Publishing House of Social-Democratic Party Literature.

[3]
Three conferences of Bolshevik local committees were held in Sep
tember-December 1904: 1) the Southern (Odessa, Ekaterinoslav, and Nikolayev
committees); 2) the Caucasian (Baku, Batum, Tiflis, and Imeretian-Mingrelian
committees); and 3) the Northern (St. Petersburg, Moscow, Tver, Riga,
Northern, and Nizhni-Novgorod committees).

At Lenin’s suggestion, the conferences elected a Bureau of Major ity
Committees for preparing and convening the Third Party Con gress, consisting
of Gusev, Zemlyachka, Lyadov, Litvinov, and others. The Bureau, of which
Lenin became a member, was formally constituted in December 1904.

[4]
The meeting in Geneva on August 20 (September 2), 1904, was called by the
Mensheviks by way of providing support for the “July
Declaration” of the Central Committee. Both Mensheviks and Bolsheviks
were invited. The Bolsheviks refused, however, to take part, and their
representative withdrew after announcing that the meeting was not competent
to pass resolutions in the name of both minority and majority. The
Mensheviks were obliged to admit at this meeting that the Party committees
in Russia opposed the con ciliation policy of the Central Committee and that
the great major ity of them had broken off all relations with the Menshevik
Iskra .

[5]
Lenin is referring to the letter to the Party organisations issued by the Menshevik
Iskra in November 1904, a criticism of which will be found in
The Zemstvo Campaign and “Iskra’s” Plan (pp. 497-518 of
this volume).

[6]
Lenin is referring to the Bureau of Majority Committees.