V. I. Lenin

Source: ru:LS/v16;es:MT
Translated: machine translation (DeepSeek) from the Russian; AI-translated.

OUR TARTUFFES

January 20, 1903, Geneva

In the issue of *Iskra* (No. 83) which we have just received, there is a statement by the Mensheviks and the C.C. about "the complete cessation of their separate existence in the Party" and "the organisational isolation of the minority" [allegedly].

"The minority," they assure us, "ceases to regard itself as a separate side, and henceforth there can be no talk either of a boycott of the C.C. or of presenting it with ultimatum demands."

This statement is belated! The Party already knows from Lenin's pamphlet ("Statement and Documents on the Rupture of the Central Institutions with the Party") that the "ultimatum demands" for the co-optation of Popov, Fisher and Fomin have already been fulfilled, but only secretly, with deception of the Party. The ultimatum demand to wreck the Third Congress by means of similar deceptions has likewise already been fulfilled. The disorganisation of local work is successfully progressing and continuing, and the so-called C.C. has already confirmed in St. Petersburg (according to a report in *Iskra*) a "special organisation" or group "in view of the obvious impossibility for its numerous (?) members to work under the guidance of the local committee."

Thus, everything that the "majority" said and predicted, from Lenin's "Letter" ("Why I Resigned from the Editorial Board," January 1904) to Orlovsky's pamphlet "The Council Against the Party," has now been fully and unconditionally confirmed by events. The real object of the year-and-a-half-long struggle of 'disorganisation' was the co-optation of four into the C.O. and three into the C.C. For the sake of co-optation, the theory of the organisation-process and a handful of "principled" disagreements were invented. For the sake of this co-optation, our centres have now completely broken with the Party and are breaking with the local committees one by one. The correctness of our slogan—"the majority must cease all and every relation with the disorganisers" (*Vperyod*, No. 1, "Time to End It")—is fully confirmed.

The following passage from the *Iskra* statement is also extremely interesting: "The decision of the authorised representatives (of the minority) was proposed for discussion to all supporters of the minority working in the Kiev, Kharkov, Don, Kuban, St. Petersburg, Odessa committees, the Donets and Crimean unions, and other Party organisations." So, after almost a year and a half of a desperate campaign, with the help of the D.O., the Council, and (starting from May) the C.C., the foreign circle has won over only five Russian committees out of the twenty that were at the Second Congress! * Outside the committees, notable groups that have been deemed worthy of mention in *Iskra* have been created only in two cities, St. Petersburg and Odessa. The Kuban committee was obviously cooked up most recently for an extra couple of votes.

Consequently, *Iskra*, the organ of the minority, now confirms in January the correctness of the characterisation of the state of Party affairs given in September by another Menshevik. Specifically, an agent of the C.C., sympathetic to the minority and now co-opted into the C.C., wrote in September to C.C. member Glebov that "in Russia the minority is powerless," that it has only four committees behind it. This powerlessness of the foreign circle forced it to resort to a Bonapartist coup in the C.C. and to evade, by means of deception, the Third Congress.

*  
Note. Of the committees that were at the Congress, only one, the Kiev committee, went over from the majority to the minority, i.e., at the Congress both its delegates were Bolsheviks, but now the committee is predominantly Menshevik. Conversely, in the Nikolayev and Siberian committees, both delegates at the Congress were Mensheviks, but after the Congress these committees sided with the majority. At the Congress, the committees that were divided between the majority and the minority (one delegate on each side) were: Odessa, Don, Ufa, Moscow. Of these, only the Don committee is now Menshevik.  
[This note is crossed out in the manuscript. — Ed.]

LENIN MISCELLANY

1 The "Statement" was printed in the "From the Party" section of *Iskra* No. 83 of February 20 (7), 1905. This date precisely determines the time Lenin wrote this article.
2 See Works, Vol. VI, pp. 377-386.
3 On the co-optation of Popov (V. Rozanov), Fisher (R. Galberstadt) and Fomin (V. Krokhmal), see Len. Misc. XV, 269.
4 See Works, Vol. VI, p. 124.
5 "Time to End It" — an article by Lenin (see Works, Vol. VII, pp. 40-43).
6 From the Kiev organisation at the Congress there were two Bolsheviks: Krasikov (Ignat) and Nikitin (Stepanov); from the Nikolayev organisation with two votes was the Menshevik D. Kalafati (Makhov); from the Siberian Union — two Mensheviks, L. Trotsky and V. Mandelberg (Posadovsky); from the Odessa organisation — the Bolshevik R. S. Zemlyachka and the Menshevik Zborovsky (Kostich); from the Don organisation — the Bolshevik S. Gusev and the Menshevik Lokerman (Tsarev); from the Ufa organisation — the Bolshevik G. Mishenov (Muravyov) and the Menshevik V. Krokhmal (Fomin); from the Moscow organisation — the Bolshevik N. Bauman (Sorokin) and the Menshevik L. Tseitlin (Belov).

In the fund of the "new *Iskra*" received in the archives of the Lenin Institute, there is a letter to *Iskra* reporting the decision of the C.C. of the R.S.D.L.P. to remove Lenin from the C.C. At that time the C.C. consisted of 42 people: Lenin (living in Geneva), Krasin, Lyubimov, Dubrovinsky, Galperin, Karpov, Noskov, Kvyatkovsky, Silvin, Krokhmal, Rozanov and Alexandrova (the last three being Mensheviks).