V. I. Lenin

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

THE SECOND STEP

A SEPARATE REPRINT FROM No. 13 OF “VPERYOD”

[April 5 or 6, 1905, Geneva]

In No. 11 of *Vperyod* we welcomed the first step taken by the Party Council, which had been left without a party. We asked ourselves: would the Council have enough intelligence and honesty to take a second step along the new path? We have just received news from Russia that the Central Committee has taken the second step. Here are the documents on this matter that can be published immediately.

1) [Letter] Appeal of the Central Committee to the Party, March 4, 1905.

**To the Party.**

Comrades! The revolution in Russia has begun! Its prologue has irrefutably proved that the urban proletariat is the principal and decisive force determining its outcome. However, the acceleration of the revolution’s outcome, the introduction of system into the revolutionary struggle of the popular masses, and, especially, the maximum utilisation of the results of the revolution in the interests of the proletariat, depend to a tremendous extent on the actual state of the forces and organisation of our Party. History imposes upon our Party a political and moral responsibility before the Russian proletariat, before our entire people, and, finally, before the proletariat of the whole world. In its present state, our Party is incapable of fulfilling its duties to the extent that is necessary and possible, given the forces potentially at the disposal of the R.S.D.L.P. Considering it at the present moment untimely and futile to ascertain, with documents in hand, to what extent individual prominent Party members, influential groups, and entire Party institutions were guided in their internal Party activity by profound political motives or by intellectualist froth—in short, leaving aside the question of who is to blame and to what extent for the profound disorganisation of the Party—the Central Committee, conscious of the full weight of the responsibility resting upon it, declares before the entire Party its firm decision to use all means in its power to ensure the necessary unity of the Party and to prevent a final split. A whole series of new questions is being raised before the Russian Social-Democracy almost daily by the development of the revolution. Many of these questions have only been barely outlined in our tactics, since these were elaborated mainly for “peaceful” times. A number of others find no answer at all in previous Party experience, since they have been raised by new, only recently appearing causes. Party literature, of course, comes to the aid, but its answers do not always satisfy local workers in terms of completeness, unity, and universally recognised authority. Quite recently, a considerable number of committees, which united after private conferences, adopted a policy of distrust towards the central institutions of the Party existing on the basis of the Party Rules adopted by the Second Party Congress, and carried this to the point of forming their own organ, their own centre, and are now working to convene their own congress. Finally, this summer the time fixed by the Party Rules for convening the Third Regular Congress arrives. Under such circumstances, the Central Committee sees the sole and last means of preventing a split in the convocation of an all-Party congress in the very near future.

Convinced that the fruitfulness of the congress’s work, both in terms of elaborating the most serious tasks confronting the Party in the present political moment and in terms of achieving a truly durable unity of the Party, will depend entirely on the comprehensive and full representation at the congress of all significant and influential trends, the Central Committee, on the basis of the Rules, has decided, in order to ensure fullness of representation, to make wide use of its right to invite comrades to the congress with a consultative vote. Bearing in mind that the dissension corroding the Party has in some places led to the direct secession of considerable groups from the committees, and in others to sharp antagonism between committees and peripheral organisations, the Central Committee proposes to send their representatives to the congress with the right of a consultative vote: 1) All groups that seceded from the committees before March 1 of this year; 2) all peripheral organisations of large industrial centres where there are no less than 20,000 workers in the area of the committee’s activity and where more than half of the members of the peripheral organisation express lack of confidence in the local committee on the question of electing a delegate to the congress.

Note. By members of the peripheral organisation, the Central Committee proposes in this case to consider only those comrades who, belonging to one of the sub-committee organisations, are engaged, under the guidance and control of the committee, in active revolutionary work expressed in propaganda, agitation, organisation, writing, printing, and distributing literature. Further, since according to the Rules the all-Party congress is convened by the Party Council, the Central Committee, while inviting the local Party committees to declare themselves in favour of convening the Third Congress as the sole means now of ensuring Party unity, will for its part, through its representatives on the Party Council, support its decision for the immediate convocation of the congress and will now take a number of practical preparatory measures. In addition, the Central Committee declares that it will do everything in its power to enlist in the work of carrying out the convocation of the congress the “Organisational Bureau” which arose for this purpose on the initiative of several committees, and whose preparatory work may serve to accelerate and facilitate the convocation of the congress.

Note. The details of enlisting the “Organisational Bureau” of the committees of the so-called “majority” in the preparation for the convocation of the congress must be worked out by mutual agreement. Seeing in the convocation of an immediate all-Party congress the last means of preventing a split and creating the tactical unity of the Party, which alone can give us the necessary strength to fulfil the great tasks confronting the Russian Social-Democracy, the Central Committee calls upon all Party members to the most energetic preparation for the immediate congress.

March 4, 1905. The Central Committee of the R.S.D.L.P.

2) Letter of the Central Committee to the Bureau of the Majority Committees, March 6, 1905.

On March 4 the Central Committee decided to appeal to the Party committees with a call to prepare for the Third Party Congress and for its part decided to take measures to convene the congress as soon as possible.

Since the success of the all-Party congress and the speediest realisation of its convocation depend on the harmonious work of as many comrades and organisations as possible who now declare themselves in favour of the congress, the Central Committee addresses the Organisational Bureau of the committees of the so-called “majority” with a proposal for mutual agreement in this matter and joint work with the aim of the speediest convocation of the congress and the achievement of the fullest representation of the entire Party at it.

March 6, 1905. The Central Committee of the R.S.D.L.P.

3) Appeal to the Party in the name of the Central Committee and the Bureau of the Majority Committees jointly, March 12, 1905.

**To the Party.**

The Central Committee and the B.M.C., having taken upon themselves the initiative for convening the Third Party Congress, declare to all Party organisations that, proceeding from the urgent necessity of the immediate convocation of the Third Party Congress for the establishment of a common Party tactics and organisational unity of the Party, they have come to an agreement regarding the joint organisation of the congress on the following bases:

1) The congress is convened on the basis of the programmes set forth in the declarations of the Central Committee and the B.M.C., from which the following order of the day results:
a) Constitution of the congress,
b) Questions of Party tactics,
c) Questions of Party organisation:
1) Organisation of the centres,
2) Organisation of the committees,
3) Mutual relations between the various Party institutions and their parts.
d) Reports,
e) Elections.

2) All Party organisations entitled to participate in it with a decisive vote according to the Rules of the Second Congress (i.e., the 4 Caucasian committees, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Tver, Tula, Nizhni-Novgorod, Northern, Kiev, Odessa, Yekaterinoslav, Kharkov, Don, Voronezh, Nikolayev, Saratov, Samara, North-Western, Polesye, Astrakhan, the League; the Unions: Donets, Crimean, Urals and Siberian¹) are invited to the congress, and all others with the right of a consultative vote.

3) The organisational work for convening the Third Party Congress, carried out up to now by the B.M.C., is sanctioned.

4) Further work for convening the congress is carried out jointly by the B.M.C. and the Central Committee, which form the Organisational Committee.

5) The resolution of the Party Council published in No. 89 of *Iskra* against the convocation of the Third Party Congress is not recognised by the Central Committee and the B.M.C. as a ground for suspending the work of organising the Congress.

March 12, 1905.

The agreement between the Central Committee and the B.M.C. of the same date, March 12, 1905, is not yet subject to publication.²

* * *

Thus, we can celebrate a complete moral victory! Russia has gained the upper hand over the émigrés. Party spirit has triumphed over circle spirit. At the last moment, the Central Committee saw that the congress being convened by the Bureau of the Majority Committees was indeed a Party congress, and it joined it. At the last moment, the Central Committee found in itself enough civic courage to resolutely and directly rise against the émigré Council. According to the Rules of our Party, the congress is convened by the Council, not by the Central Committee. Consequently, legally speaking, any declarations and agreements of the Central Committee on this question have no force. But when the Council violated the Rules and evaded reporting to the congress, the committees not only could, but even should have taken the initiative for the congress, and the Central Committee, by recognising the Bureau elected by the committees, thereby refused to follow the unfortunate example of the Party Council, which had been left without a party.

We cannot now express an opinion on the concrete questions of the agreement between the Central Committee and the B.M.C. All these questions, as well as the question of the order of the day of the congress, its composition, etc., can, of course, be decided only by the congress itself. We shall therefore confine ourselves merely to wishing the congress success and to calling upon all comrades: to set to work immediately and in the most energetic manner on the all-round preparation of the congress. In conclusion, we have only to repeat what we said in No. 11 of *Vperyod*: “We have now come right up to a possible direct and unambiguous way out of the crisis.”

¹ Regarding the committees of Riga, Smolensk, Kursk, Orel-Bryansk, Kazan, Kremenchug, Yelisavetgrad and Kuban, see point 3 of the agreement between the Central Committee and the B.M.C.
² The first point of the agreement was published in Lenin’s article “The Council Exposed” in No. 15 of *Vperyod* of April 20 (7), 1905, and immediately after this the agreement was printed in full in No. 95 of *Iskra* of April 13 (March 31), 1905. The agreement was signed on behalf of the B.M.C. by S. Gusev, and on behalf of the Central Committee by L. Krasin.