V. I. Lenin

Source: ru:PSS/v9; en:CW/CW41;es:MT
Translated: machine translation (DeepSeek) from the Russian; AI-translated.

1895 AND 1905

(A Little Parallel)

There are eigentlich[119] two themes here:

1) a parallel of the growth of work; 2) the present-day organisational tasks. They must be divided into two short articles.

1. To compare the scope, dimensions and forms of Social-Democratic work then and now.

2. Scope: then only study circles. The very first beginnings of mass agitation. Very heavy, professorial propaganda. The Social-Democrats were making their way among the Narodovoltsi, the Narodopravtsi, etc.

3. Now. A Party. Ordinary mass agitation. Open political, street action. A revolutionary epoch.

4. Forms. 10–16 persons (committee). 20–30 workers’ study circles. 100–150 connections maximum. “Readings”. Self-education—the main thing.

5. Now. The organisation has grown into many “storeys”. St. Petersburg and Odessa [committee—districts—organisers’ meetings (central study circles)—groups, and then a “centre” and a bureau. About half a dozen new storeys.]

6. “A Letter to a Comrade” was written when the new storeys were being set up and the “Economists” were retarding their growth. Now the ideas upheld in the “Letter to a Comrade” have actually been put into practice.

7. New tasks: γ) The abundance of storeys has trained a new stratum of Party workers, Party members. To give form to their participation. (1) Information—resolutions—questionnaires—direct contact with the Central Organ. (2) The elective principle? (3) Nomination or election of candidates for co-optation?

8. The second, perhaps even more important, task: to supplement the work of building new horizontal storeys with the work of new, so to speak, “vertical” methods of influence. That is, the growth of the movement makes it necessary and possible to supplement this current work by storeys with an appeal from the upper storeys to the masses in the new forms of mass meetings. “Flying meetings” and “mass meetings”, as a natural product of work in many “storeys”, themselves lead to that higher form which predominates abroad and will triumph with us le lendemain de la révolution[120], namely, “mass meetings” as the principal means of political influence on the proletariat and of its Social-Democratic education.

9. Of course, the “storeys” are no less necessary for this. They will (always?) be necessary. “To supplement”, not “to replace”…