One Step Forward, Two Steps Back (THE CRISIS IN OUR PARTY)

B. Significance of the Various Groupings at the Congress

Thus, the Congress was called after the most careful preparation
and on the basis of the fullest representation. The general
recognition that its composition was correct and its decisions
absolutely binding found expression also in the statement of the chairman (Minutes, p. 54) after the Congress
had been constituted.

What was the principal task of the Congress? To create a real
party on the basis of the principles and organisational ideas
that had been advanced and elaborated by Iskra . That this was the direction in which the Congress had to work was
predetermined by the three years’ activities of Iskra and by the recognition of the latter by the majority of the
committees. Iskra ’s programme and trend were to become
the programme and trend of the Party; Iskra ’s organisational plans were to be embodied in the Rules of
Organisation of the Party. But it goes without saying that this
could not be achieved without a struggle: since the Congress was
so highly representative, the participants included organisations which had vigorously fought Iskra (the
Bund and Rabocheye Dyelo ) and organisations which, while verbally recognising Iskra as the leading organ,
actually pursued plans of their own and were unstable in matters
of principle (the Yuzhny Rabochy group and delegates from some of the committees who were closely associated with
it). Under these circumstances, the Congress could not but
become an arena of struggle for the victory of the " Iskra " trend . That it did become such an
arena will at once be apparent to all who peruse its minutes
with any degree of attention. Our task now is to trace in detail
the principal groupings revealed at the Congress on various
issues and to reconstruct, on the basis of the precise data of
the minutes, the political complexion of each of the main
groups. What precisely were these groups, trends and shades
which, at the Congress, were to unite under the guidance of
Iskra into a single party?—that is what we must show by analysing the debates and the voting. The elucidation of
this is of cardinal importance both for a study of what our
Social Democrats really are and for an understanding of the
causes of the divergence among them. That is why, in my speech
at the League Congress and in my letter to the editors of the
new Iskra , I gave prime place to an analysis of the various groupings. My opponents of the “minority” (headed by
Martov) utterly failed to grasp the substance of the question. At the League Congress they confined themselves to
corrections of detail, trying to “vindicate” themselves from the
charge of having swung towards opportunism, but not even
attempting to counter my picture of the groupings at the
Congress by drawing any different one . Now Martov tries
in Iskra (No. 56) to represent every attempt clearly to
delimit the various political groups at the Congress as mere
“circle politics”. Strong language, Comrade Martov! But the
strong language of the new Iskra has this peculiar quality: one has only to reproduce all the stages of our
divergence, from the Congress onwards, for all this strong
language to turn completely and primarily against the present editorial board. Take a look at yourselves, you
so-called Party editors who talk about circle politics!

Martov now finds the facts of our struggle at the Congress so
unpleasant that he tries to slur over them altogether. “An
Iskra -ist,” he says, "is one who, at the Party Congress
and prior to it, expressed his complete solidarity with
Iskra , advocated its programme and its views on organisation and supported its organisational policy. There were
over forty such Iskra -ists at the Congress—that was the number of votes cast for Iskra ’s programme and
for the resolution adopting Iskra as the Central Organ of the Party." Open the Congress Minutes, and you will find that
the programme was adopted by the votes of all (p. 233) except
Akimov, who abstained. Thus, Comrade Martov wants to assure us
that the Bundists, and Brouckere, and Martynov demonstrated their “complete solidarity” with
Iskra and advocated its views on organisation!
This is ridiculous. The fact that after the Congress all who took part became equal members of the Party
(and not even all, for the Bundists had withdrawn) is here
jumbled with the question of the grouping that evoked the
struggle at the Congress. Instead of a study of the elements that went to make up the “majority” and the
“minority” after the Congress, we get the official phrase,
“recognised the programme”!

Take the voting on the adoption of Iskra as the Central
Organ. You will see that it was Martynov—whom Comrade
Martov, with a courage worthy of a better cause, now credits
with having advocated Iskra ’s organisational views and
organisational policy—who insisted on separating the two
parts of the resolution: the bare adoption of Iskra as the Central Organ, and the recognition of its services. When the
first part of the resolution (recognising the services of
Iskra , expressing solidarity with it) was put to the vote, only thirty five votes were cast in
favour; there were two votes against (Akimov and Brouckère)
and eleven abstentions (Martynov, the five Bundists and the five
votes of the editorial board: the two votes each of Martov and
myself and Plekhanov’s one). Consequently, the anti- Iskra group (five Bundists and three Rabocheye Dyelo -ists) is quite apparent in this instance also, one
most advantageous to Martov’s present views and chosen by
himself. Take the voting on the second part of the resolution—adopting Iskra as the Central Organ
without any statement of motives or expression of solidarity
(Minutes, p. 147): forty-four votes in favour , which the Martov of today classes as Iskra -ist. The total
number of votes to be cast was fifty-one; subtracting the five
votes of the editors, who abstained, we get forty-six; two voted
against (Akimov and Brouckère); consequently, the remaining forty-four include all five Bundists . And so,
the Bundists at the Congress “expressed complete solidarity with
Iskra ”—this is how official history is written by the official Iskra ! Running ahead somewhat, we will
explain to the reader the real reasons for this official truth:
the present editorial board of Iskra could and would have been a real Party editorial board (and not a quasi-Party
one, as it is today) if the Bundists and the “Rabocheye Dyelo”-ists had not withdrawn from the Congress ; that is
why these trusty guardians of the present, so-called

Party editorial board had to be proclaimed Iskra -ists. But I
shall speak of this in greater detail later.

The next question is: if the Congress was a struggle between the
Iskra -ist and the anti- Iskra -ist elements, were there no intermediate, unstable elements who vacillated
between the two? Anyone at all familiar with our Party and with
the picture generally presented by congresses of every kind will
be inclined a priori to answer the question in the affirmative. Comrade Martov is now very reluctant to recall
these unstable elements, so he represents the Yuzhny Rabochy group and the delegates who gravitated towards it
as typical Iskra -ists, and our differences with them as
paltry and unimportant. Fortunately, we now have before us the
complete text of the minutes and are able to answer the
question—a question of fact, of course—on the basis of documentary evidence. What we said above about the general
grouping at the Congress does not, of course, claim to answer
the question, but only to present it correctly.

Without an analysis of the political groupings, without having a
picture of the Congress as a struggle between definite shades,
the divergence between us cannot be understood at all. Martov’s
attempt to gloss over the different shades by ranking even the
Bundists with the Iskra -ists is simply an evasion of the question. Even a priori , on the basis of the
history of the Russian Social-Democratic movement before the
Congress, three main groups are to be noted (for subsequent
verification and detailed study): the Iskra -ists, the anti- Iskra -ists, and the unstable, vacillating,
wavering elements.