V. I. Lenin

Source: ru:LS/v5;es:MT
Translated: machine translation (DeepSeek) from the Russian; AI-translated.

2.
1895 AND 1905.
(A SMALL PARALLEL.)
[January 1905]

Actually*)
G
Two themes: 1) a parallel of the growth of work; 2) the present organisational tasks.
They must be divided into two short articles.
|{ 1
1. Compare the scope, scale and forms of Social-Democratic work then and now.
2. Scope: then only circles. The very first beginnings of mass agitation. Very ponderous, teacherish propaganda. The Social-Democrats were making their way among the Narodovoltsi, Narodopravtsi, etc.
3. Now. A Party. Ordinary mass agitation. Political, open, street action. A revolutionary epoch.
4. Forms. 10-16 persons (committee). 20-30 workers’ circles. 100-150 connections maximum. “Readings.”
Self-education was the main point.
5. Now. The organisation has grown into many “storeys”.
St. Petersburg and Odessa committee — districts — organisers’ meetings (central circles) — groups, and then a “centre” and bureaus. About five new storeys.
6. The “Letter to a Comrade” 2) was written then, when the new storeys were being set up and the “Economists” were retarding their growth. Now

(A SMALL PARALLEL.)
the ideas advocated in the “Letter to a Comrade” have actually been put into practice.
7. New tasks: α) The abundance of storeys has trained a new stratum of Party workers, Party members. To give their participation a definite form. (1) Information — resolutions — questionnaires — direct connection with the Central Organ. (2) The elective principle? (3) Nomination or choice 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 “vertical” methods of influence, so to speak. 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 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 here le lendemain de la révolution 3), namely: to “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 be necessary (always?). “Supplement”, not “replace”...

*) Actually — eigentlich.
2) Vladimir Ilyin has in mind his “Letter to a Comrade on Our Organisational Tasks”, written in September 1902 (Works, Vol. V, pp. 179-192).
3) Le lendemain de la révolution — the day after the revolution.