February 3, 1905.

Esteemed Comrade! In your letter you touch upon the question of which of the factions of our party (RSDLP) bears responsibility for the split. You say that you have requested the opinion of German social-democrats and the International Bureau{89} on this matter. We consider ourselves obliged, in view of this, to set forth for you how the split occurred. We shall confine ourselves to presenting precisely established facts, setting aside, as far as possible, any evaluation of them.

Until the end of 1903, our party was a collection of unconnected local social-democratic organizations, called committees. The Central Committee and Central Organ, elected at the First Congress of the party (spring 1898), were absent. The police destroyed them and they were not renewed. Abroad, a split occurred between the "Union of Russian Social-Democrats" (organ – *Rabochee Delo*, from there "rabochedeltsyists") and Plekhanov. The newspaper *Iskra*, founded in 1900, took the side of the latter. Over three years, 1900–1903, *Iskra* acquired overwhelming influence over the Russian committees. *Iskra* defended the ideas of revolutionary social-democracy against "economism" (alias{46} – "rabochedelstvo" = the Russian variety of opportunism).

The absence of party unity weighed upon everyone.

At last, in August 1903, it was possible to convene the Second Congress of the party abroad. All Russian committees participated, the Bund (Bund = the independent organization of the Jewish proletariat), and both émigré factions, the "*Iskrist*" and the "*rabochedelstvo*".

All participants recognized the Congress as legitimate. The struggle at the Congress was waged between the Iskrists and the anti-Iskrists (rabochedeltsyists and the Bund); the so-called "swamp" occupied the middle ground. The Iskrists won. They carried through the party program (the *Iskra* draft was approved). *Iskra* was recognized as the Central Organ, its direction as the direction of the party. A series of tactical resolutions were in its spirit. The organizational statute (Lenin's draft) was adopted in the Iskrist version. Only in particulars did the anti-Iskrists, with the participation of a minority of Iskrists, worsen it. The grouping of votes at the Congress was as follows: 51 votes in total. Of these, 33 were Iskrist (24 – Iskrists of the present majority, 9 – Iskrists of the present minority), 10 – "swamp," and 8 – anti-Iskrists (3 rabochedeltsyists and 5 Bundists). Toward the end of the Congress, before the elections, seven delegates (2 rabochedeltsyists and 5 Bundists) left the Congress (*Bund* withdrew from the party).

Then the minority of Iskrists, supported, as a consequence of the errors they had made, by all the anti-Iskrists and the "swamp," found itself in a minority at the Congress (24 and 9 + 10 + 1, i.e., 24 and 20). In electing the central institutions, it was decided to elect 3 persons to the editorial board of the Central Organ and 3 to the Central Committee. Of the 6 persons in the old *Iskra* editorial board (Plekhanov, Axelrod, Zasulich, Starover, Lenin, Martov), Plekhanov, Lenin, and Martov were elected. To the Central Committee they wanted to elect two from the majority and one from the minority.

Martov refused to enter the editorial board without the three "excluded" (unelected) comrades, and the entire minority refused to participate in the Central Committee elections. No one has ever disputed, and to this day disputes, the legality of the elections. But the minority, after the Congress, refused to work under the leadership of the centers elected by the Congress.

This boycott lasted three months, from the end of August 1903 to the end of November 1903. *Iskra* (six issues, nos. 46–51) was edited by Plekhanov and Lenin together. The minority formed a secret organization within the party{90} (a fact now confirmed in print by the supporters of the minority themselves and denied by no one at present). The Russian committees, by an overwhelming majority (12 of the 14 committees that managed to voice their position), spoke out against this disorganizing boycott.

But Plekhanov, after the stormy Congress of the émigré "League" (= the émigré organization of the party), held at the very end of October 1903, decided to yield to the minority, announcing before the entire party in the article "What Not To Do" (no. 52 of *Iskra*, November 1903) that in order to avoid a split, one must sometimes yield even to those who err in inclining toward revisionism and act as anarchic individualists (the italicized expressions are Plekhanov's actual expressions in the article "What Not To Do"). Lenin left the editorial board, unwilling to act against the decisions of the Congress. Plekhanov then "coöpted" all four former editors. The Russian committees declared that they would wait to see what the direction of the new *Iskra* would be, wait to see whether the Mensheviks entered the editorial board for the sake of peace.

It turned out, as the Bolsheviks had predicted, that the direction of the old *Iskra* was not maintained and the new, Menshevik, editorial board did not bring peace to the party. The direction of *Iskra* had so turned toward the old, rejected by the Second Congress, rabochedelstvo, that Trotsky himself, a prominent member of the minority, who had published the programmatic brochure "Our Political Tasks," a brochure published under the editorship of the new *Iskra*, declared literally: "between the old and the new *Iskra* lies an abyss." We confine ourselves to this statement from our opponent in order not to enter into lengthy explanations of the principled instability of *Iskra*.

On the other hand, the "secret organization of the minority" did not dissolve but continued to boycott the Central Committee. This secret split of the party into an open and a secret organization unbearably impeded work. An enormous majority of the Russian committees that had voiced their position on the crisis decisively condemned both the direction of the new *Iskra* and the disorganizing behavior of the minority. From all sides came the demand for the immediate convening of a Third Congress to exit this unbearable situation.

According to our party statute, a declaration from organizations possessing together half the total number of votes is required to convene an emergency congress (regular congresses are convened every two years, "as far as possible"). Half had already been constituted. But then the Central Committee betrayed the majority, taking advantage of the arrest of several of its members belonging to the majority. Under the pretext of "reconciliation," the remaining members of the Central Committee, after the arrests, made a deal with the secret organization of the minority and declared that this organization was dissolving, but secretly from the party and contrary to written statements of the Central Committee, three Mensheviks were coöpted into the Central Committee. This coöption took place in November or December 1904. Thus the minority struggled from August 1903 to November 1904, tearing the entire party apart, over the coöption of three to the Central Organ and three to the Central Committee.

The central institutions falsified in this way responded to the demand for a congress with abuse or silence.

Then the patience of the Russian committees snapped entirely. They began to convene their own separate conferences. Three conferences have taken place so far: 1) of four Caucasian committees; 2) of three southern ones (Odessa, Nikolaev, and Ekaterinoslav); and 3) of six northern ones (Petersburg, Moscow, Tver, Riga, "North," i.e., Yaroslavl, Kostroma, and Vladimir, and finally Nizhny Novgorod). All these conferences spoke out for the "majority," decided to support the literary group of the majority (the group of Lenin, Ryadovoy, Orlovskiy, Galerka, Voinov, and others) and elected their own bureau; to this "bureau," the third, i.e., northern, conference entrusted the task of transforming itself into an Organizational Committee and convening the congress of Russian committees, i.e., the Third Congress of the party, apart from the émigré centers that had broken away from the party.

Such was the state of affairs as of January 1, 1905 (New Style). The Bureau of Committees of the Majority began its work (owing to our police conditions, the convening of a congress will, of course, be drawn out over several months: the Second Congress was announced in December 1902 but was convened in August 1903). The literary group of the majority founded the organ of the majority, the newspaper *Vperyod*, which began coming out weekly from January 4 (New Style), 1905. Now (February 3, 1905) four issues have already appeared. The direction of the newspaper *Vperyod* is the direction of the old *Iskra*. In the name of the old *Iskra*, *Vperyod* fights decisively with the new *Iskra*.

In fact, therefore, there have emerged two Russian Social-Democratic Workers' Parties. One with the organ *Iskra*, "officially" called the Central Organ of the party, with a Central Committee, with four Russian committees out of twenty (the remaining committees in Russia, apart from the twenty that were at the Second Congress, arose afterward and the question of the legality of their recognition is a disputed question). The other party with the organ *Vperyod*, with the "Bureau of Russian Committees of the Majority," with 14 committees in Russia (the thirteen named above plus Voronezh, and probably also plus Saratov, Ural, Tula, and Siberia{47}).

On the side of the "neo-Iskrists" stand all the opponents of the old *Iskra*, all the rabochedeltsyists, and a large part of the quasi-party intelligentsia. On the side of the "Vperyodists" stand all those principially convinced of the old *Iskra* and a large part of the conscious advanced workers and practical activists of the party in Russia. Plekhanov, who at the Second Congress of the party (August 1903) and at the Congress of the League (October 1903) was a Bolshevik and who since November 1903 has desperately fought the "majority," declared publicly on September 2, 1904 (this opinion was printed) that the forces of both sides are approximately equal.

We Bolsheviks assert that on our side stands the majority of genuine Russian party activists. We consider the main cause of the split and the main obstacle to reunification to be the disorganizing behavior of the minority, which refused to submit to the decisions of the Second Congress and preferred a split to the convening of a Third Congress.

At present the Mensheviks are producing splits of local organizations everywhere in Russia. For example, in Petersburg they prevented the committee from organizing a demonstration on November 28 (see *Vperyod* no. 1{48}). Now they have broken off in Petersburg into a separate group, called the "group at the Central Committee," opposing the local committee of the party. They have recently founded a similar local group ("at the Central Committee") for fighting the party committee in Odessa. The Menshevik central institutions of the party have been forced, owing to the falseness of their position, to disorganize local party work, for these central institutions refused to submit to the decision of the committees that elected them.

The principled disagreements between *Vperyod* and the new *Iskra* are essentially the same as those that existed between the old *Iskra* and *Rabochee Delo*. We consider these disagreements important, but, on the condition that it be possible to fully maintain our views, the views of the old *Iskra*, we would not consider these disagreements in themselves an obstacle to working together in a single party.

Published in 1905 as a separate sheet by the Bern group in support of the RSDLP

Printed from the manuscript