Written in February 1905.

First published in 1926 in Lenin’s Collected Works, Volume V.

Printed from the manuscript.

1. Draft Agenda for the Congress

Regulations.

Verification of Credentials.

Final Constitution (with invitations extended to delegates holding advisory votes).

2.1. The Party Crisis.

4.3.2. The Organizational Question.

3. Reports from the Delegates.

3.4. The Question of Attitude Toward the Uprising.

5. The Combat Agreement for the Uprising.

6. The Question of Relations with the Liberals.

7. Work Among the Peasantry.

8. Work in the Military.

9. Improving Propaganda and Agitation Work.

10. Election of Officers and Organs.

2. List of Resolutions

Resolutions:

1. Resolution on the Disruptive Activities of the Minority.

2. Resolution on Plekhanov’s “Reconciliationist” Position[83].

3. Resolution on the Principled Stance of the Novoiskrovtsy.

4. Resolution on the Relationship Between Workers and Intellectuals Within Organizations.

5. Open Resolution on the Uprising.

6. “Secret” Resolution on the Uprising.

7. Open Resolution on the Combat Agreement for the Uprising.

8. “Secret” Resolution on the Combat Agreement for the Uprising.

9. Resolution on the Repeal of the Old Believer’s Resolution.

10. Resolution on the Zemstvo Plan of the New “Iskra.”

11. Resolution on “Work Among the Peasantry.”

12. Resolution on Supporting the Peasant Movement.

13. Resolution on Work in the Military.

14. Resolution on Propaganda and Agitation Work.

3. General Plan of Congress Resolutions

Resolutions:

1.

a) The Real Object of the Minority: The Composition of the Central Committees.

b) Non-Compliance with the Resolutions of the Congress.

c) The Split Leading to the League: The Formation of a Secret Organization.

d) The Dishonor of This Act—and of All the Disruption It Entailed.

e) The Shameful Justification of Disruption Through Theories of Organization as Process, Organization as Tendency, or Through Hypocritical Cries About Bureaucratism, Formalism, and the Like.

f) The Enormous Harm Caused by Their Disruption of Positive Work in Russia.

g) The Necessity of Completely Removing the Disruptors from Party Life.

h) The Task Assigned to the Central Committees: To Publish a Pamphlet Briefly Explaining the Causes and History of the Split, and to Inform the International Social-Democratic Movement.

2.

a) The Need to Take a Stand on the So-Called Reconciliationist Current.

b) The Only Honest, Unhypocritical Representative of This Current Was Plekhanov, When He Wrote No. 52 of “Iskra.”

c) The Congress Recognizes the Correctness of Plekhanov’s Position at the Second Party Congress and the League, as well as the Sincerity of His Desire for Peace Through Co-optation.

d) Unfortunately, Plekhanov Could Not Uphold His Position of Compromise Toward the Revisionists and Individualist Anarchists. All Attempts at Principled Justification on His Part Were Clearly Erroneous; They Could Only Sow Confusion in Minds and Foster Cunning in Internal Party Relations.

e) Today, the So-Called Reconciliationists Are Nothing More Than Hypocritical Mensheviks. Beyond Plekhanov’s Program—Which They Have Now Also Rejected (Personal Concessions, Yet Fundamental Disputes With the Revisionists and Anarchist Individualists)—They Possess No Independent Program of Reconciliation.

3.

a) The Congress Recognizes the Fundamental Differences Between Our Position and That of the Novoiskrovtsy.

b) As Early as the Second Congress, the Novoiskrovtsy Had Demonstrated Complete Principlistic Instability: At the Beginning, They Fought Entirely Against the Opportunist Wing; By the End, They Had Clearly Turned Toward It—Though Against Their Own Will and Consciousness.

c) After the Second Congress, the Opportunist Character of Their Approach Became Even More Pronounced: In Organization—The Justification of Systematic, Small-Scale Betrayals. The Blunting of Such a Weapon of the Proletarian Class Struggle as Organization. The Distortion of Marxism Into a Doctrine That Justifies and Exalts Disruption and Intellectual Anarchism.

d) In Matters of General Political Orientation, “Iskra” Should Have Acknowledged the “Gulf Between the New ‘Iskra’ and the Old ‘Iskra.’” A Shift Toward Tailism.

e) In Tactics, This Manifested Itself in Their Approach to the Liberals—In the Zemstvo Campaign.

f) “…” In Their Approach to the Uprising—Attempts to Drag It Backward and Confuse It.

g) “…” In Their Approach to Armed Struggle.

h) “…” In Their Approach to Corrupting Underdeveloped Workers Through the Slogan of “Workers’ Self-Activity,” and the Like.

i) Overall, the Novoiskrovtsy Represented the Opportunist Wing of the Party—A Heterogeneous Collection of Principled Elements Within Their Camp.

4.

a) The Insincere Nature of the Cries About an “Intellectual Party.” These Cries Were Exploited by the Liberals—and the Novoiskrovtsy Themselves Later Renounced Them.

b) The Demagogic Character of Their Preaching Among the Workers—The “Electoral Principle,” Its Necessity Under Free Political Conditions, Yet Its Impossibility on a Broad Scale in Russia.

c) Empty Words About “Workers’ Self-Activity,” Which Only Masked Tailism—Promising the Impossible in Organizational Terms, Using Cheap Means to Incite Opposition to “Bureaucratism,” “Formalism,” and the Like, While Delivering Nothing Substantive; Ignoring the Revolutionary Self-Activity of the Workers and Trampling Around Near the Bottom and the Rear.

d) We Must Warn the Workers. Conscious Workers Must Know and Remember the Similar Tactics Employed by the Workers’ Movement; They Must Know and Remember the Position of the Old “Iskra”—The Importance of Raising Up Conscious Social-Democratic Workers, Working-Class Revolutionaries, Our Bebelians, the Importance of Organizing Every District, Every Factory, and the Like.

e) Only in the Full Consciousness of the Advanced Workers, in the Complete Blurring of the Boundaries Between Social-Democrats, Intellectuals, and Workers, Lies the Guarantee of a Social-Democratic Class Party of the Proletariat.

5[84]

a) The Necessity of Immediate Preparation for the Uprising.

b) The Creation of Organizations—and of Combat-Oriented Organizations.

+ 7. c) The Expansion of Organizations in General: To Organize the Revolution.

d) Terror Must Be Integrated, in Practice, With the Mass Movement.

e) The aims of the uprising: a temporary revolutionary government, arming the people, convening a constituent assembly, and establishing revolutionary peasant committees.

f) The task of social democracy when wielding power: to fully implement the entire democratic program; to independently organize and mobilize the working class; to strive to foster the revolutionary self‑activity of the proletariat and rural poor; to steadfastly uphold the class program and class perspective while critically scrutinizing the illusions of revolutionary democracy.

9.

a) The Old Believer’s resolution is fundamentally flawed: the true focus lies not in declarations, but in struggle—and in the unity of that struggle.

b) The pronouncements and slogans of the liberals and liberal democrats do not inspire confidence (Struve).

c) Their interpretation of the resolution as pertaining to the democratic intelligentsia is arbitrary and misguided. To seek an alliance with force—yet the intelligentsia is not itself a force—is a source of confusion for the Old Believer.

d) Agreements should be forged not on the basis of declarations, but on the condition of participation in the uprising—not with liberal democracy, but with revolutionary democracy.

10.

a) An agreement with the zemstvos violates even the terms of the Old Believer’s resolution.

b) It is both inappropriate and untimely to speak of “not fearing” the liberals. One cannot justify this stance by citing the danger of anarchism.

c) The slogans about a “higher form of demonstration” carry a reactionary undertone.

d) Impressionism—this is the opportunism of the new Iskra.

e) There is a misuse of language when it comes to “class self‑activity” and the systematic, class‑based development of the proletariat.

f) We must publish their first letter as a lesson for the Party’s younger members.

13.

a) The crucial importance of work among soldiers:

b) Leaflets.

c) Military organization—what are its components? A specialized military organization may prove useful, depending on the circumstances[85].

d) [86].

14.

a) In laying the foundation, we must adopt the program…

b) Mobile outreach teams.

c) Lectures and agitational speeches.

In the fundamental resolution opposing the New Iskra faction, the following points are particularly significant:

(a) To deny or downplay the idea of a strong, conscious organization of the proletariat and its vanguard—the Social Democratic Workers’ Party—leads to the transformation of the workers’ movement into the tail end of bourgeois democracy.

(b) Moreover, such an approach results in the demagogic underestimation of the role of conscious social democratic intervention in the spontaneous movements of the proletariat, as well as in the theoretical debasement of Marxism in its interpretation—a tendency that drags revolutionary initiative and the advanced tasks of social democracy backward.

Furthermore, the notion of separating and opposing technical leadership from political leadership of the revolution— and[87]

4. Draft Resolutions of the Congress

1. Resolution on the Disruptive Conduct of the Mensheviks or New Iskra Members

The Congress deems it necessary to establish, beyond any doubt, the incontrovertible facts concerning the conduct of the Mensheviks or New Iskra members after the Second Party Congress. Without even attempting to dispute the legitimacy of that Congress’s resolutions and elections, they brazenly tore up the Congress’s decisions. Immediately following the Congress, they boycotted the central bodies it had established and secretly formed a separate organization within the Party itself. This organization pursued the goal of forcibly imposing six candidates—candidates rejected by the Congress—onto the editorial board of the Central Organ and onto the Party’s Central Committee. In their struggle for this goal, which ran counter to the will and interests of the Party, the Mensheviks disrupted the Party’s constructive work everywhere, sowing secret divisions at every turn, undermining comradeship among social democrats, turning the Party’s Central Organ into a forum for gossip and petty squabbles, indulging in vulgar and abusive remarks against the committees that had elected the central bodies and demanded accountability from them, reducing the Party Council to a tool of factional vengeance—and stopping at nothing short of outright falsification of the Party’s own vote, which had called for a Third Congress.

The Congress condemns this disruptive behavior in the strongest possible terms and warns all conscious social democrats against the infamous theory of “organization as process,” which sought to justify disruption and, in an unprecedented manner, denigrated the very foundations of revolutionary Marxism.

The Congress recognizes that the supporters of the Party majority, having drafted resolutions against the disruptors and calling for a Third Congress, had exhausted all means of honest, comradely struggle against fellow Party members. Now that the Party’s established centers have finally shirked their responsibility to the Party, the Congress is compelled to declare them outside the Party. The Congress affirms that for those who remain committed to Party principles, there is no alternative but to work separately and independently of the disruptors. Accordingly, the Congress resolves that supporters of the minority or of the New Iskra may not be admitted into any organization within our Party.

The Congress instructs the Party’s Central Committee to issue a concise pamphlet explaining this resolution, so as to inform social democrats throughout Russia and across the international arena.

2. Resolution on Plekhanov’s Conduct During the Party Crisis

The Congress acknowledges the correctness of Plekhanov’s position on programmatic, tactical, and organizational matters—as he had advanced it at the Second Party Congress and at the Congress of the Foreign League. The Congress recognizes that, following the League Congress, Plekhanov, in the interest of party unity and in order to heal the schism already perpetrated by the Mensheviks, adopted a policy of concessions toward those whom he had rightly characterized before the entire Party (in No. 52 of Iskra, November 7, 1903) as revisionists and anarchistic individualists. The Congress expresses deep regret that Plekhanov failed to remain steadfast in this position; that he began to pursue, by the most unscrupulous means and against the will of the Party, the satisfaction of all the Menshevik demands; that, in an effort to vindicate the Mensheviks, he descended to the point of defending their fundamentally erroneous principled stance—and even of fabricating unprecedented disagreements with the Party majority.

The Congress resolutely condemns this policy of duplicitous maneuvering toward fellow Party members, for no matter how humanitarian the motives that may inspire such conduct toward individual persons, it cannot fail to exert a demoralizing influence upon the Party.

3. Resolution on the Principled Position of the Neo-Iskristes

The Congress deems it absolutely necessary to combat the principled stance of the Mensheviks—or of the Neo-Iskristes—who have deviated from revolutionary social democracy in the direction of opportunism. As early as the Second Party Congress, this tendency became evident—not only in isolated theoretical pronouncements, but also in the very composition of the minority, which comprised opponents of the old Iskra and the least firmly grounded in principled terms. After the Second Congress, the Mensheviks’ turn toward labor‑centered opportunism became so clear that they themselves acknowledged the gulf separating the old Iskra from the new Iskra. Indeed, on a whole host of issues, the new Iskra advanced slogans and theories that were unequivocally wrong and served to obscure the class consciousness of the proletariat. Among these was the theory of organization as process, which reduced Marxism to a mere justification for disorganization and intellectual anarchism. Likewise, the new Iskra reverted to erroneous views on the Party’s relationship to the class—views that belittled the Party’s role as the vanguard, the leader, and the organizer of the working class. Equally misguided and reactionary were the disputes the new Iskra raised with the old Iskra over relations with the liberals, over plans for the zemstvo campaign—over the preparation for insurrection and the notorious utopianism of its conception and execution—over the tasks of arming the masses, of providing them with technical and organizational leadership during the revolution—over the impossibility and undesirability of a revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the petty bourgeoisie in the era of the overthrow of autocracy, and so forth. All these views not only drag the Party backward in theoretical terms, but also directly impede its practical progress—especially harmful and ruinous for the Party of the revolutionary proletariat at this moment of revolution in Russia. Accordingly, the Congress instructs all Party members to expose the fallacy of such views in their propaganda and agitation.

4. Resolution on the Relations Between Workers and Intellectuals in the Social Democratic Party

The Congress resolutely condemns the policy of sowing distrust and hostility between workers and intellectuals within social democratic organizations—a policy pursued by the Neo-Iskristes. The Congress reminds conscious workers how, several years ago, they themselves had experienced similar tactics of struggle from the labor‑centered wing of the Party and had rejected those tactics. The empty phrases about workers’ self‑activity and about the principle of election, which the Neo-Iskristes toss out, are never accompanied by any real improvement in the work of our organizations; instead, they are used demagogically to promise the impossible. Under free political conditions, our Party can—and will—be built entirely on the principle of electoral representation. But under autocratic rule, this is simply unattainable for the vast majority of the thousands of workers who seek to join the Party.

The Congress once again recalls the task facing the conscious supporters of the Social Democratic Workers’ Party: to strengthen, by every possible means, the Party’s ties with the mass of the working class; to continually raise broader strata of proletarians and semi‑proletarians to full social democratic consciousness; to foster their revolutionary and social democratic self‑activity; and to ensure that the working masses themselves select as many workers as possible—workers capable of fully leading the movement and all Party organizations.

On behalf of the Party, the Congress reiterates the advice of the revolutionary social democrats: to establish as many worker organizations as possible that are affiliated with our Party; to strive for the goal that worker organizations—which either do not wish to join the Party or lack the capacity to do so—should at least remain closely aligned with the Party; and to work toward ensuring that as many conscious social democratic workers as possible become members of Party committees.