Date: 1905
Source: ru:PSS/v9
Source: CW vol 9

Isparka and the so-called Council continue their tactic of delays, excuses, and evasion of the congress. Plekhanov tries to take a formal standpoint, repeating with an obstinacy worthy of a better cause that the congress is convened by the Council and that therefore any congress not convened by the Council is illegal. This argument is so one-sided and naively self-serving that one would like to "give the hare a piece of bear's ear" – to give Plekhanov a medal for his strict observance of the party statute and party law! We would most respectfully ask our most respectable supporter of dialectical, i.e., all-sided, consideration: Is the Council for the party or the party for the Council? Is the Council accountable to the party and subject to its control, or is the party accountable to the Council? Does discipline in relation to a lower body not get overruled by discipline in relation to a higher body?? Will our unswerving guardian of legality not recall his own arguments on this point at the second party congress?

According to our statutes, the Council is obliged to convene a congress if there are half the votes in favor. What is the party to do if the Council evades its duty? The statutes of the German Social-Democratic Party give a direct answer to this question, namely: in such a case, the congress is convened not by the highest party leadership but by a special, independent of the leadership, auditing commission. In our statutes, no answer is given to this question. Does this mean, we ask our friends from the new Isparka, that the question is insoluble? Does it mean that when the Council evades its party duties, the party must disband and be replaced by the Council? The party for the Council, is that right?

We venture to think that it is not, that the party is obliged to see to it that its officials carry out the statutes, that "to see to it" means not only to criticize in words but to correct in deeds. He who does not know how to demand and secure from his trustees the fulfillment of their obligations to the trustors is not worthy of the title of a politically free citizen. He who does not know how to demand and secure from his trustees the fulfillment of their party obligations to the trustors is not worthy of the title of a party member. The Council is the trustee of the committees. The committees are obliged to secure from this trustee the fulfillment of his duty to the trustors. The committees can do this only by electing their own bureau to convene the congress. And that is what the committees have done. That is what they were bound to do if they recognize their most elementary party duties.

Will the respected Comrade Plekhanov try to refute the correctness of this assertion? Will he name us any Social-Democratic party in the world whose members would refuse to act as our committees have acted when a party institution has evaded convening a congress? We challenge Comrade Plekhanov: try!

Now let us turn to the second, factual, question: has our Council really evaded its party duty to convene a congress? This is not only a formal question, for besides the duty under the statutes, there is the duty…[82]

Written after February 24 (March 9), 1905

First published in 1930 in Lenin Miscellany XV

Printed from the manuscript