(i.e. August 29, today, if this resolution is delivered during the meeting).
[August 29, 1905. Geneva.]
Today, August 29, 1905, at 8 p.m., copies of the letter from the Geneva group to the forwarding agency board and of the latter’s reply to the former were delivered to the foreign representative of the Central Committee.
Regarding these documents, the foreign representative of the Central Committee of the RSDLP clarifies to the Geneva group that it has shown a misunderstanding of party discipline and has violated the party charter. The forwarding agents are agents of the Central Committee. Any dissatisfaction with the agents of the Central Committee is subject to review first and foremost by the Central Committee itself. According to the charter, the Central Committee resolves all conflicts within the party, and even more so conflicts between party members of its different organizations and agents of the Central Committee. Therefore, inviting the agents of the Central Committee to a group meeting was, on the part of this group, a step that was, from the formal side, incorrect in general and tactless in particular.
If this invitation was not intended as a formal step, then it should not have been made in writing and officially.
“Personal conduct” of “officials” is either in reality only personal (outside of office, independent of office), and then its review by the group is squabbling. Or personal conduct relates to office, in which case any party member who is dissatisfied with this conduct and insists on a formal, official review of the dissatisfaction is obliged first and foremost to formally address the Central Committee. The Geneva group of the RSDLP, by allowing the "emergence" before the group of formally reviewed questions about dissatisfaction with the agents of the Central Committee before a formal communication about this to the Central Committee, has thereby again shown a misunderstanding of party discipline and the party charter.
The distinction I have just indicated between squabbling and criticism of an official – criticism obligatory for every party member, but in the form of open criticism directed straight to the central institutions or the congress, and not underground, private, and circle criticism – this distinction, it seems, is not clearly understood by the group.
Therefore, the foreign representative of the Central Committee considers it his duty to warn all the young comrades of the group. In the foreign "colonial" environment, there can always be people who can become ill with the disease of squabbling, gossip, and backbiting; people can always appear

LETTER TO P. N. LEPESHINSKY
293 who perform the function entrusted to them by the Central Committee or the congress very poorly, but who very easily gossip about the unsatisfactory performance of other functions by other party members. These people can often be listened to seriously by comrades out of inexperience, curiosity, or lack of character. In reality, however, one should not listen to such people, but immediately cut them off, not allowing them to raise formal questions about the “personal conduct of officials” until these questions have been formally submitted for consideration to the relevant party institutions and have been reviewed and resolved by them.
Foreign party members easily fall into the illness I have indicated, but all young and healthy-nerved comrades must strictly monitor themselves and others, for the only means of combating this disease consists in the immediate and most merciless cessation of any attempts at squabbling and backbiting at the very beginning of these attempts.
That is why the foreign representative of the Central Committee decrees:
— to ask the Geneva group to take back its letter of August 28 to the forwarding agency.
This would be the best and quickest way to stop a bad business, which, by the very force of the course of events, threatens to lead to the most unpleasant quarrels and ruptures.
The request that I am making on behalf of the Central Committee, the group, of course, is not obliged to fulfill. I allow myself to make this request because I am dealing with comrades with whom I have never had a single formal conflict.
II. If my request is rejected by the group, then point I of the resolution is dropped. Then I propose to the group:
1) to inform me whether it intends to submit to the above clarification of the party charter, i.e., to submit to the resolution made by me on behalf of the Central Committee (this resolution can be appealed (a) to the full meeting of the Central Committee and (b) to the congress, but until it is repealed by a higher institution, it is binding).
2) to inform me, on the basis of § 11 of the party charter, of all information about the personal composition of the group and about "all of its activities" (votes, etc.) in this unfortunate case.
Foreign Representative of the Central Committee of the RSDLP. N. Lenin.

Appendix.
Copy.
* Letter of P. N. Lepeshinsky to the Board of Expedition and its reply to the Geneva Group.
To the comrades working in the RSDLP Expedition.
In view of the fact that a number of questions have arisen before the Geneva group of the RSDLP that are directly related to certain facts of the personal conduct of comrades from the official staff of the party expedition, the group decided — in the interests of justice and in order to establish the truth — to invite this staff to its meeting, which is to take place on Tuesday, August 29, [1]905 (in the Olin dining room).
For the Secretary-Correspondent of the Group Olin
August 28 Geneva.
To the Secretary of the Geneva Group.*
In response to the group's letter of August 28, which proposes that members of the party expedition appear at the group's meeting on August 29, which aims to review "certain facts of the personal conduct of the expedition's official staff," the expedition board declares that it does not consider it necessary to appear at this meeting, since if the group has any grievances against the expedition, it can address them to the representative of the Central Committee, under whose direct jurisdiction the expedition is, and he will resolve the whole matter.
The Expedition Board.
293
* LETTER TO P. N. LEPESHINSKY REGARDING THE
RESOLUTION OF THE REPRESENTATIVE OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE.
[August 29, 1905. Geneva,]
At the request of Comrade Vasily Vasilyevich, I clarify the passage shown to him from my resolution (that people may appear who do their work poorly, but who readily gossip about the shortcomings of others). The assumption that I wanted to accuse someone here, etc., is unfounded. Every party worker has their own shortcomings and minuses in their work, but one must be careful not to cross the line in criticizing shortcomings or in analyzing them before the party centers, where they begin

* The text was written by L. N. Mandelstam-Krychinina. Ed.