Taking into consideration:

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

2) that only the fulfillment 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 a nascent bourgeois-democratic Russia;

3) that the proletariat can fulfill this role only if it is organized 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 organizing 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 apparatus for information and leadership, is one of the main tasks of the party at the present revolutionary moment. The congress therefore instructs both the Central Committee and the local committees and unions to set about preparing a mass political strike, and also to organize special groups for the acquisition and distribution of arms, the elaboration of a plan of armed uprising, and the direct leadership of the same. The fulfillment 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, by promoting its depth and success.

Submitted April 14 (27)