V. I.

Lenin

Open Letter to Comrade Plekhanov, Chairman of the Council of the R.S.D.L.P. [2]

Dear Comrade, On April 4 (17), the Central Committee notified the Party Council that it had
appointed Comrades Johansen [3] and Valerian [4] to represent it on the Council and requested
that a meeting of the Council as constituted in conformity with the Party Rules
be called in the immediate future.

Havingreceived no reply to this request, we took the liberty of approaching
you a second time, and on April 22 (9) we received an answer in which you
refused to call a meeting of the Council as long as we “go on acting as
violators of the Party Rules and usurpers of the Council’s functions”.

Thesituation arising from your refusal to call an official meeting of the
Council prevents us from presenting a number of communications to the Party
Council; and since, in our opinion, it is impossible to withhold them any
longer, we are obliged to address ourselves to you before the whole Party
membership with a written recital of the main statements that we intended to
submit to the next meeting of the Council.

1. The Central Committee informs the Party Council that up to April 4 (17) the
following qualified Party organisations went on record for the Third Party
Congress: the St. Petersburg, Moscow, Northern League, Nizhni-Novgorod,
Tver, Tula, Riga, Siberian League, Voronezh, Saratov, Odessa, Caucasian
League (8 votes), Nikolayev, Ural, Orel-Bryansk, Kursk, Smolensk, Polesye,
North-Western, Kharkov, and Samara committees—a total of 21
organisations, entitled to 48 votes. The C.C. also declared itself in favour of calling the Congress and
decided to send a delegate, as well as its representatives on the Party
Council, to the Congress.

Fromthe Astrakhan, Kazan, Kuban, and Don committees, from the League of the
Mining and Metal District, from the Ekaterinoslav Committee, from the Crimean
League, from the League, from the Editorial Board of the Central Organ, and from
the three members of the Council residing abroad either no resolutions were
received or the resolutions received declared the convening of the Congress to
be undesirable.

Finally,the Kiev Committee, although it had adopted a resolution against the
Congress on March 25, subsequently elected a delegate to the Congress and sent
him abroad.

Thus,out of the

75 votes [1] that would represent the whole Party at the
Congress, 52 (not counting the Kiev Commit tee) were in favour of convening the
Third Party Congress.

Underthese circumstances the C.C. deems it necessary to insist, through its
representatives on the Party Council, that the Council immediately fulfil its
formal obligation, in accordance with Clause 2 of the Party Rules, to convene
the Congress when this is demanded by Party organisations commanding aggregately
half the total voting strength of the Congress.

Since,according to the information of the C.C., many more votes have now been
cast for the Congress than are required by the Rules (52 out of 75), the Council
must immediately and unconditionally give notice of the convening of the
Congress, without stipulating any prior conditions or demands not provided for
in the Party Rules.

2. The Central Committee is profoundly convinced that, even granting the fullest
sincerity of all Council members, a question of such extraordinary importance
as the convening of the Party Congress, at a time such as the Party and all
Russia are now living through, cannot be decided on purely formal
grounds. Our Party Rules are not explicit enough for that. Thus, they give no
answer to the question of the time limit within which the Party Council is
obliged to convene the Congress after the required number of votes in
favour has been cast. Respecting this and other questions, the central bodies of the Party are obliged to resort to an
interpretation of the Rules and act not only in keeping with the
formally expressed will of the Party, which, as is evident from Clause 1, has
declared in favour of the Congress, but in conformity with the actual state of
affairs in the Party as well as in Russia generally.

TheC.C. considers it its duty to inform the Party Council that the Party crisis
in Russia has grown to such dimensions that Party work has been brought to an
almost complete standstill. The situation in the committees has reached the
height of confusion. There is hardly a single question of tactics or
organisation that does not provoke the most violent dissension locally between
the groups, more often than not because the disputants belong to different camps
in the Party rather than on essential matters. Neither the Party Council, nor
the Central Organ, nor the C.C. has sufficient prestige with the majority of the
Party workers; dual organisations are springing up everywhere, hampering each
other’s work and discrediting the Party in the eyes of the proletariat. To
comrades active chiefly as publicists, whose work can go on uninterrupted even
in an atmosphere of mistrust on the part of a large portion of the Party
membership, the present unbearable, blind-alley situation in which general Party
matters stand is perhaps not so apparent as to the Party workers of the
practical centre, who come daily up against increasing difficulties in their
work in Russia. The time has come when the growth of the internal contradictions in our Party life begins to tax the narrow and, as we can all see now, far
from perfect framework of the Rules which the Second Party Congress has given
us. New forms are needed, or at least a modification of the old; and this can
only be done by the sole lawgiver of the Social-Democratic Party—the
Party Congress, since it and it alone has the right to establish rules
binding on all , rules that cannot be imposed by any conference, or any
local agreement. Realising the importance of resolving the Party crisis by means
of an immediate congress, the majority of the committees in Russia have taken
all the necessary steps for the convening of the Congress as soon as possible,
including the election and the sending of delegates; this applies not only to
the committees of the Majority, which had previously declared for the Congress, but also to the greater part of the Minority committees, of
the groups and the periphery organisations. The Party has declared for
the Congress and has expended considerable means and efforts in
preparation for it. The central bodies of the Party have no formal right
to postpone notice of the Congress now that the obligation to convene it
is incontestable, and they are morally bound to do their utmost to ensure
that the Party’s expenditure of energy shall not have been wasted. To keep
scores of delegates, our most active comrades, abroad indefinitely, when
they are so badly needed in Russia, or still worse, to have them go back
to Russia from a congress not held because the comrades of the Central
Organ refused to forego the letter of the Party Rules for the spirit, for
the higher interest of preserving Party unity, would be an unpardonable
waste of Party forces and would mean that the leaders of the Party fell
short of the tasks which Party life has put before them. When forms have
outlived themselves, when a growing and developing Party feels cramped in
these forms, we cannot remedy things by harping for the hundredth time on
the sanctity of the letter of the law. That is no way out of the crisis;
the only possible solution is to call the Party Congress.

3.On the strength of Clause 6 of the Party Rules which empowers it to organise
and conduct all activities of general Party importance, the C.C. insists upon
its right, inalienable and not subject to restriction, to take all the
preparatory measures and to perform all the practical work involved in the
organisation of Party congresses. The C.C., as the only practical centre of
the Party, considers all attempts of other Party bodies to interfere in this
work a breach of the Party Rules, and it protests against them as an
encroachment upon its rights. As for the rights granted to the Party Council
in Clause 2 of the Rules with regard to the convocation of Party congresses,
the C.C. interprets them to mean that the Council shall give notice of such
convocation and control the work actually done by the C.C.

Inview of the foregoing, the C.C. admits that its agreement with the Bureau of
Committees of the Majority to call the Third Party Congress contravenes the
Party Rules only insofar as it expresses (see Point I of the agreement) the intention of convening the Congress even without prior official notice by the
Party Council.

4. Having received word that eighteen qualified Party organisations, apart from
the C.C. itself, had passed resolutions in favour of convening the Third
Congress, the C.C., on March 12, decided to bring this to the attention of
the Council, to whom it sent the following statement: “The Central
Committee notifies the Party Council that to date (March 12) eighteen
qualified Party committees (besides the C.C.), or more than half the total
voting strength at the Third Congress under the Party Rules, have declared in
favour of convening the Third Party Congress. Similar resolutions from
several other committees are expected in the very near future. Under the
circumstances the C.C. deems it necessary to convene the Congress immediately
and asks the Party Council to give due notice of its convocation by adopting
a corresponding resolution. All documents in the possession of the
C.C. relating to this question will be submitted to the Party Council in the
near future.” Besides this, the C.C., as early as March 10, instructed its
agent, Comrade Vadim, [5] to go abroad immediately in order to
report the situation to the Party Council, to which he had been accredited
by the C.C. Owing to an unfortunate coincidence, Comrade Vadim was arrested
before he reached the frontier. As for the document cited above, in which the
C.C. records the receipt of resolutions that oblige the Council to give
immediate notice of the Congress, we find that, according to private
information received on April 4 (17) from Comrade Deutsch by the members of
the C.C., Comrades Johansen and Valerian, it was not received at
all. Afterwards Comrade Deutsch corrected this information, stating that the
document had been received at Locarno, but only after the Council’s meeting
of April 7. Since we, the representatives of the C.C., were barred from the
session of the Council, we are not in a position to determine why there was
such a delay in delivering the C.C.’s statement to the Council
members. However, even if it was received after the meeting of the three
Council members at Locarno, the document, which established a clear case for
the convocation of the Congress, was of such importance that the comrades
from the Central Organ and the fifth member of the Council should have met immediately and taken the decision prescribed by the Party Rules, or,
at least, in view of the failure of the C.C. representative to arrive
because of his arrest before reaching the frontier, they should have held
up publication of the resolution of April 7.

5. The C.C. questions the validity of the decisions which the Party Council has
adopted since February 1005, because after the return of Comrades
B. and Vtorov [6]

from abroad at the end of January, the C.C. did not accredit anyone to the Party Council. Long before the present conflict
between the C.C. and the Council members abroad, specifically, on February
14, 1904, a plenary meeting of the C.C. adopted a decision construing Clause
4 of the Party Rules relating to the representation of the C.C. on the
Council to mean that the members of the C.C. who are delegated to the Council
must be accredited by the C.C. as a body, and that even members of the
C.C. who for one reason or another are abroad have no right to attend
meetings of the Council unless a resolution to that effect has been adopted
by a plenary meeting of the C.C.

Thisexplanatory decision of the C.C. has served as the basis for representation
of the C.C. abroad. Since February 1904 all representatives of the C.C. without
exception have sat in the Party Council only after having previously been
endorsed by a plenary meeting of the C.C. Comrades Glebov and Lenin,
Comrade Glebov in the course of his second stay abroad, Comrade B., who was the
C.C. representative on the Council until his departure for Russia, Comrade
Vtorov, who went abroad in January with authority to negotiate certain questions
with the Editorial Board of the Central Organ and to attend the meetings of the
Council, all received their credentials, not from any member of the C.C. or from
his predecessor on the Party Council, but from a plenary meeting of the t.C. The
reason that prompted the C.C. to reach the mentioned decision of February
14, 1904, and to adhere to it so rigidly in its entire subsequent practice was
that such a method of organising the representation of the C.C. on the Council
was the only way to prevent comrades who are not in close enough touch with the
C.C. and not familiar in detail with its policy on all questions of Party life
from speaking at the Party Council in the name of the

C.C. We go further: the provision that only a plenary meeting of the C.C. could appoint the two Council members was the sole means whereby the
centre working in Russia could have anything like parity of influence in the
Party Council with the comrades from the Central Organ, who preponderate in the
Council not only numerically, but also in point of authority, which some of them
have won through long years of honourable service in the front ranks of
Social-Democracy, both Russian and international. With all due respect to these
comrades on the Council, the C.C. would, however, fail in its duty to the entire
Party if it permitted, even for a short time, a change in the composition of the
Party Council whereby all questions would be decided by a body consisting
exclusively of comrades, who, worthy and respected though they be, cannot by
dint of circumstances be in direct con tact with the real practical work carried
on in Russia. Since our request for a meeting of the Council was denied, we
could not determine on what grounds Comrade Deutsch, whom Comrade Vtorov had
appointed C.C. representative pro tem. on the “Technical
Committee” abroad, considered himself entitled to speak at the Party
Council in the name of the C.C., with whose activities in Russia he never had
any contact. The C.C. declares Comrade Deutsch’s action to be invalid, since it
was not authorised by the C.C.; even assuming that Comrade Vtorov (at that time
only an agent of the C.C.) or any member of the C.C. had asked Comrade Deutsch
to represent it on the Party Council, this will not cure the illegality of
Comrade Deutsch’s position, since such authorisation can be granted only by a
plenary meeting of the C.C., which was not done in the case of Comrade
Deutsch. On the grounds aforesaid, the C.C. considers all decisions of the Party
Council subsequent to the departure from abroad of Comrades B. and Vtorov to
have been taken wholly without the participation of the C.C. and demands a
reconsideration of all questions at a new meeting to which the rightful
representatives of the C.C. shall be invited.

6. The C.C. denies the right of the Party Council to pass judgement on any of
the centres and to demand from them absolute submission to all its
decisions. According to the Rules, the function of the Council is to
co-ordinate and unify the activities of the C.C. and of the Editorial Board of the Central
Organ. However, in the event of a conflict between one of the centres
and the Council, obviously only a special Party congress can settle the
dispute. The word of the Party Council cannot be final in case of a
disagreement between itself and one of the centres, since then the
Council would simultaneously be both judge and a party to the dispute. However, as a result of the refusal to call a meeting of the Party
Council with the participation of C.C. representatives, the C.C. is not
only condemned by the three members of the Council (editors of the Central
Organ) but even penalised by being deprived of its inalienable right,
guaranteed by the Party Rules, to be represented in the Party Council.

Stillother measures are being taken to force the C.C. to submit under all
circumstances to the decisions of the three members of the Council (editors of
the Central Organ). Thus, in reply to the C.C.’s legitimate demand to its own
agent abroad, Comrade Deutsch, that all its technical and financial affairs be
handed over to Comrade Valerian, the member of the C.C. entrusted by it with
assuming charge of them, Comrade Deutsch, refused, giving as his reason the
conflict between the C.C. and the Council.

Thus,while the C.C. in Point I of its agreement with the Bureau of Committees
of the Majority expressed its willingness to convene the Congress even in the
event of a refusal on the part of the Council and thus came into conflict with
the Rules, the three Council members in their turn broke the Rules twice by
depriving the C.C. of its right to participate in the Council and to manage and
control its own technical and financial undertakings abroad (a breach of Clauses
2 and 6 of the Party Rules).

Inplacing before the Party this conflict (for which the Party Rules provide no
solution) between the Party Council (represented only by two members from the
Central Organ and the fifth member of the Council), on the one side, and the
C.C. on the other, the C.C., in view of the refusal of Comrade Plekhanov,
Chairman of the Party Council, to call a meeting of that body, declares that by
this action, which is a flagrant breach of the Rules, the Chairman of the

Council makes it impossible for the Council to function and, in effect, wilfully
annuls the Party Council.

Absolutesubmission of the C.C. to the Party Council, on which you, comrade,
insist, as the sine qua non for calling a meeting of the Council,
actually amounts to postponing the Congress indefinitely and flouting the
clearly expressed will of the Party.

Placingits loyalty to the Party above loyalty to three foreign-resident members
of the Council, the C.C. submits the entire conflict to the
judgement of the Party itself.

April23 (10), 1905

Central Committee of the R.S.D.L.P.

---
Notes:
[1]
See the list of qualified organisations published in Iskra,
No. 89.— Lenin

[2]
Open Letter to Comrade Plekhanov, Chairman of the Council of the R.S.D.L.P. , was published at first as a leaflet and
reprinted in Vperyod. The message to the Party Council was forwarded to
Plekhanov on April 4 (17), 1905. On the following day the Organising Committee
(consisting of members of the Bureau of Committees of the Majority and
representatives of the Central Committee) met and decided to give the Council
seven days in which to reply and after that to open the Party Congress. The
Third Congress of the R.S.D.L.P. started exactly within seven days—on
April 12 (25).

[3]
Johansen—L. B. Krasin.

[4]
Valerian—A. I. Lyubimov.

[5]
Vadim—D. S. Postolovsky.

[6]
B. or Bem—M. A. Silvin,
representative of the Central Committee on the Party Council at the beginning of
1905; Vioro v—the
Menshevik V. N. Krokhmal.