From this moment the congress conducts all voting in accordance with § 7 of the regulations, separating decisive votes from consultative ones.

Submitted 14 (27) April

16. Draft Resolution on the Attitude of the RSDLP to Armed Uprising{53}

Taking into consideration:

1) that the proletariat, being by its very position the most advanced and consistent revolutionary class, is thereby called upon to play the role of vanguard and leader in the general democratic revolutionary movement in Russia;

2) that only the fulfilment of this role during the revolution will secure for the proletariat the most advantageous position for the further struggle for socialism against the propertied classes of the nascent bourgeois-democratic Russia;

3) that the proletariat can fulfil this role only if it is organised under the banner of Social-Democracy into an independent political force and acts in strikes and demonstrations with the greatest possible unity, – the Third Congress of the RSDLP resolves that the task of organising the forces of the proletariat for direct struggle against the autocracy by means of mass political strikes and armed uprising, and the creation for this purpose of an information and directing apparatus, is one of the main tasks of the party at the present revolutionary moment, and therefore the congress instructs both the CC and the local committees and unions to proceed with the preparation of a mass political strike, as well as with the organisation of special groups for the acquisition and distribution of arms, the elaboration of a plan for armed uprising, and the direct direction thereof. The fulfilment of this task can and must proceed not only without any detriment to the general work of awakening the class self-consciousness of the proletariat, but, on the contrary, contributing to its depth and success.