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

A. The Preparations For The Congress

There is a saying that everyone is entitled to curse his judges
for twenty-four hours. Our Party Congress, like any congress of
any party, was also the judge of certain persons, who laid claim
to the position of leaders but who met with discomfiture. Today
these representatives of the “minority” are, with a naïveté verging on the pathetic, “cursing their
judges” and doing their best to discredit the Congress, to
belittle its importance and authority. This striving has been
expressed most vividly, perhaps, in an article in
Iskra , No. 57, by “Practical

Worker”, [4] who feels out raged at the idea of the Congress being a sovereign
“divinity”. This is so characteristic a trait of the new
Iskra that it cannot be passed over in silence. The editors, the majority of whom were rejected by the
Congress, continue, on the one hand, to call themselves a
“Party” editorial board, while, on the other, they accept with
open arms people who declare that the Congress was not divine. Charming, is it not? To be sure, gentlemen, the Congress
was not divine; but what must we think of people who begin to
“blackguard” the Congress after they have met with defeat at it?

For indeed, let us recall the main facts in the history of the
preparations for the Congress.

Iskra declared at the very outset, in its announcement of publication in 1900, that before we could unite, lines of
demarcation must be drawn. Iskra endeavoured to make the Conference of

1902 [5] a private meeting and not a Party

Congress. [1]
Iskra acted with extreme caution in the summer and autumn of 1902 when it re-established
the Organising

Committee elected at that conference. At last the work of demarcation was finished—as we all
acknowledged. The Organising Committee was constituted at the
very end of 1902. Iskra welcomed its firm establishment, and in an editorial article in its 32nd
issue declared that the convocation of a Party Congress was a
most urgent and pressing necessity. [2]

Thus, the last thing we can be accused of is having been hasty in convening the Second
Congress. We were, in fact, guided by the maxim: measure your
cloth seven times before you cut it; and we had every moral
right to expect that after the cloth had been cut our comrades
would not start complaining and measuring it all over again.

The Organising Committee drew up very precise (formalistic and
bureaucratic, those would say who are now using these words to
cover up their political spinelessness) Regulations for the
Second Congress, got them passed by all the committees, and
finally endorsed them, stipulating among other things, in Point
18, that “all decisions of the Congress and all the elections it
carries out are decisions of the Party and binding on all Party
organisations. They cannot be challenged by anyone on any
pretext whatever and can be rescinded or amended only by the
next Party

Congress”. [3]

How innocent in themselves, are they not, are these words, accepted at the time
without a murmur, as something axiomatic; yet how strange they
sound today—like a verdict against the “minority”! Why was
this point included? Merely as a formality? Of course not. This
provision seemed necessary, and was indeed necessary, because
the Party consisted of a number of isolated and independent
groups, which might refuse to recognise the Congress. This
provision in fact expressed the free will of all the revolutionaries (which is now being talked about so much, and so
irrelevantly, the term “free” being euphemistically applied to
what really deserves the epithet “capricious”). It was equivalent to a word of honour mutually pledged by all
the Russian Social-Democrats. It was intended to guarantee that
all the tremendous effort, danger and expense entailed by the
Congress should not be in vain, that the Congress should not be
turned into a farce. It in advance qualified any refusal to
recognise the decisions and elections at the Congress as a
breach of faith .

Who is it, then, that the new Iskra is scoffing at when
it makes the new discovery that the Congress was not divine and
its decisions are not sacrosanct? Does that discovery imply “new
views on organisation”, or only new attempts to cover up old
tracks?

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Notes:
[1]
See Minutes of the Second Congress, p. 20. — Lenin

[2]
See present edition, Vol. 6, p. 309.— Ed .

[3]
See Minutes of the Second Congress, pp. 22–23 and 380. — Lenin

[4]
“ Practical Worker ”—pseudonym of the Menshevik M. S. Makadzyub, also
referred to as Panin.

[5]
The conference of 1902 —a conference of representatives of R.S.D.L.P. committees held on March 23-28
(April 5-10), 1902, in Belostok. The Economists and Bundists
intended to proclaim this conference a Party Congress; a report
drawn up by Lenin and presented by the Iskra delegate proved that the gathering lacked proper preparation and
authority to constitute itself such. The conference set up an
Organising Committee to convene the Second Party Congress, but
nearly all its members were arrested soon after. A new
Organising Committee to convene the Second Congress was formed
in November 1902 at a conference in Pskov. Lenin’s views on the
Belostok conference are set forth in his “Report of the Iskra
Editorial Board to the Meeting (Conference) of
R.S.D.L.P. Committees”.