V. I.

Lenin

Report on the Unity Congress of the R.S.D.L.P.

A Letter to the St. Petersburg Workers

Comrades, you elected me your delegate to the Unity Congress of the
R.S.D.L.P. As I am unable to come to St. Petersburg at present, permit me
to send my report in writing and, in passing, to express a few ideas on
the Congress.

Before proceeding with the subject, I must make an important reservation. It is
quite impossible for me to remember in detail everything that happened at the
Congress, at which there were one hundred and twenty or more delegates, and
which held about thirty sessions. Being a member of the Bureau of the Congress,
and one of the chairmen, and a member of several committees in addition, I was
unable to take notes during the sessions. One cannot entirely trust one s memory
without notes. Besides, being absent from the hall while engaged in work in
committees, or for casual or personal reasons, I did not witness a number of
episodes at the Congress, nor did I hear all the speeches. The experience of
previous congresses (the Second and the Third), which were attended by fewer
delegates, has convinced me that, even if one pays the closest attention to the
proceedings, one cannot draw an exact picture of the congress from memory. When
the minutes of the Second and Third Congresses appeared, I read them as if they
were new books, although I my self was present at those congresses; for these
books really provided me with much new material and compelled me to re vise a
number of inexact or incomplete personal impressions. Therefore I earnestly
request you to bear in mind that this letter is only a rough outline of a
report, subject, at all events, to correction on the basis of the minutes of the
Congress.

I

The Composition of the Congress

I will start with the general composition of the Congress. As you know,
delegates with the right to vote were elected on the basis of one per 300 Party
members. There were in all about 110 such delegates—at the beginning of
the Congress, I think, slightly less (not all had arrived); at the close there
were as many as 113. Delegates with a consultative voice were the 5 editors of
the Central Organ (3 from the “Minority” and 2 from the
“Majority”, for you had given me a full mandate) and five, if I am
not mistaken, members of the Joint Central Committee. Then also, there were
delegates with consultative voice from organisations who had not been granted
full mandates, and several persons who had been especially invited to the
Congress (two members of the “Agrarian Committee”, Plekhanov and
Axelrod, Comrade Akimov, and several others). There were also several
consultative delegates from large organisations having over 900 members (from
St. Petersburg, Moscow, the Southern regional organisation, and
others). Lastly, there were consultative delegates representing the national
Social-Democratic parties: three each from the Polish Social-Democratic Party,
the Lettish Social-Democratic and the Jewish organisation (the Bund), and one
from the Ukrainian Social-Democratic Labour Party (it appears that this is the
name that the Revolutionary Ukrainian Party [1] adopted at its last
conference). Thus there were 30 delegates, or a little more, with a
consultative voice. The total number present was therefore not 120, but over 140.

Taken according to their “trend” in relation to the tactical
platforms, or their factional position, if you will, the delegates with the
right to vote were divided approximately as follows: 62 Mensheviks and 46
Bolsheviks. At all events, these are the figures that impressed themselves most
on my mind during the numerous “factional” votes that took place at
the Congress. Some of the delegates, of course, were indefinite, or wavered on
certain questions; these were what in parliamentary language are called the
“Centre”, or the “Marsh”. This “Centre” was very feeble at the Congress, although a number of comrades whom I have grouped with the Mensheviks according to the voting, claimed to be
“conciliators”, or the “Centre”. Of all the more or less
important votes that were taken at the Congress, I remember only one (that on
the question of the Bund’s affiliation to the Party) in which these
“Menshevik conciliators” did not vote on factional lines. With this
vote, in which, as far as I remember, the definitely factional Mensheviks were
beaten by a majority of 59, I will deal in detail later on.

Thus, 62 and 46. The Congress was a Menshevik congress. The Mensheviks had a
solid and safe majority, which enabled them to come to terms with one another
beforehand and thus predetermine the decisions of the Congress. Strictly
speaking, these private arrangements at factional meetings are quite natural
when there is a definite and compact majority; and when several delegates,
particularly those from the so-called Centre, complained about this, I said in
conversation with the delegates that it was “the Centre complaining about
its own weakness”. Attempts were made at the Congress to raise the
question of these factional meetings, but it was dropped, for it turned out that
the factions had become closely welded just the same, and it became possible to
allow outsiders to attend the factional meetings, to allow them to become
“open” meetings. Towards the close of the Congress, for example, the
question of the composition of the Central Committee was virtually decided, as
will be seen later on, not by the voting in open Congress, but simply by an
“agree ment” between the factions. I will not pass any opinion on
this; and I think it is useless bewailing it, because it is absolutely
inevitable so long as the old factional divisions exist.

As regards divisions within the factions, I will note that they were marked only
on the agrarian question (a section of the Mensheviks were opposed to
municipalisation, while the Bolsheviks were divided into
“Rozhkovists”—that is, those who advocated the division of the
land—and the advocates of confiscation, with nationalisation in the event
of a republic being established); and on the question of the affiliation of the
Bund. Further, a striking thing was the complete absence among the Mensheviks of
the trend that was so clearly revealed in Nachalo , and which in the
Party we are accustomed to connect with the names of Comrades Parvus and
Trotsky. True, it is quite possible that there were some “Parvusites” and “Trotskyites” among the
Mensheviks— I was told that there were about eight of them—but, owing to the removal from the agenda of the question of
the provisional revolutionary government, they had no opportunity of
making a show. It is probable, however, that in view of the general turn
that the Mensheviks made at the Congress towards Plekhanov, with whose
Dnevnik they had disagreed before the Congress, the “Parvusites” also took a step to the right. I remember only one
episode in which, perhaps, the “Parvusites” among the
Mensheviks made them all slightly change their attitude. It was an incident
over the question of armed uprising. Plekhanov, the chairman of the
committee, had altered the original Menshevik resolution, and instead of
“wrest power” (this part of the resolution concerned the aims of
the movement) inserted “wrest rights by force” (or “capture rights”—I don’t quite remember which). The
opportunism of this alteration was so glaring that the most heated protests were raised against
it in open Congress.We attacked the alteration with redoubled vigour. The
ranks of the Mensheviks wavered. I do not know exactly whether any
factional meetings had been held, or what took place at them if
they were; nor can
I vouch for the truth of the statement made to me that ten Mensheviks who
were inclined towards “Parvusism” had emphatically declared
their disagreement with the alteration. The fact is that, after the debates
in open Congress, Plekhanov himself withdrew the alteration and did not
allow it to be put to a vote; did this on the pretext (a skilful piece of
diplomacy, perhaps, but it raised a smile) that it was not worth arguing
about questions of “style”.

Lastly, to finish with the composition of the Congress, I will say something
about the Credentials Committee (the committee which scrutinised the credentials
of the delegates). There were two such committees, for the first one elected by
the Congress resigned in a body. [2]

This was a most extraordinary affair, and had never occurred at previous congresses. At all
events, it was evidence of some thing extremely abnormal in the work of
scrutinising the credentials. I remember that the chairman of the first
committee was a conciliator, who at first had the confidence of our faction,
too. But since he proved unable to weld his committee together, and since he and
the whole committee were compelled to resign, it shows that this conciliator was unable to
conciliate. The details of the fight at the Congress over the reports of the
Credentials Committee have escaped my attention most of all. The fight was often
a very heated one, Bolshevik credentials were annulled, passions rose, and
things reached their climax with the resignation of the first committee; but I
was not in the hall at that time. I remember yet another, evidently fairly big,
incident over this work of determining the composition of the Congress. It was a
protest sent by a number of workers in Tiflis (about 200, I think) against the
mandate of the Tiflis delegation, which consisted almost entirely of Mensheviks
and was extra ordinarily large, with as many as eleven members, I think. The
protest was read at the Congress and should therefore appear in the
minutes. [3]

The record of the proceedings of the Credentials Committees should also appear
in the minutes, that is, if the committees have performed their
functions at all carefully, and have drawn up proper reports on the scrutiny of
the credentials and of all the elections for the Congress. Whether they have
done this, and whether the reports will appear in the minutes, I cannot say. If
not, it will prove beyond doubt that the committees have not performed their
functions with the necessary care and attention. If the reports do appear in the
minutes, then I may have to correct a great deal of what I have said above, for
on a question like this, which is not one of principle, but a purely concrete
and practical question, it is particularly easy to make mistakes in forming
general impressions, and it is particularly important care fully to study the
records.

Incidentally, to finish with all the formalities and to proceed with the more
interesting questions of principle, I will say something about the minutes. I am
afraid that in this respect, too, the Congress will prove to be less
satisfactory than the Second and Third Congresses. At both the
previous congresses the minutes were adopted in their entirety by the Congress. At the Unity Congress
the secretaries, for the first time, proved to be so inefficient, there was
such a hurry to finish the Congress (in spite of the fact that a number of
extremely important questions had been with drawn from the agenda), that not all the minutes were passed by the Congress. The Minutes Committee (consisting of two Mensheviks and
two Bolsheviks) was given unprecedentedly wide and indefinite powers: to
adopt the unfinished minutes. In the event of disagreement, it is to
appeal to the Congress delegates who are in St. Petersburg. All this is
very deplorable. I am afraid that we shall not get as good minutes as we
have of the Second and Third Congresses. True, we had two stenographers,
and some of the speeches are reported almost verbatim, and not in the form
of condensed reports, as was the case in the past; but a complete
verbatim report of the debates at the Congress cannot be expected, for
this was more than the two stenographers could cope with, as they informed
the Congress more than once. As chairman, I strongly insisted that the
secretaries should at least make good condensed reports of the speeches,
even if very brief. Let the verbatim reports of some of the speeches, I
said, be a sort of supplement deluxe to the minutes; but it was
essential to have the basis—not some of the speeches, but all the
speeches without exception, at least in the form of condensed
reports. [4]

---
Notes:
[1]
Revolutionary Ukrainian Party (R.U.P.)—a petty-bourgeois, nationalist organisation founded early in 1900. In December
1905, it renamed itself the

Ukrainian Social-Democratic Labour Party (U.S.D.L.P.), and decided to join the R.S.D.L.P., provided it was recognised as
“the sole representative of the Ukrainian proletariat”, within the
R.S.D.L.P. The Fourth (Unity) Congress of the R.S.D.L.P. rejected the proposal
which the U.S.D.L.P. spokesman had made for the immediate discussion of the
terms of a merger, and referred the matter to the Central Committee for
decision. No agreement was reached on a merger. Subsequently the
U.S.D.L.P. found itself in the camp of the bourgeois-nationalist
counter-revolution.

[2]
The Credentials Committee elected at the first session of the Congress was composed of two Bolsheviks, two Mensheviks and one
so-called “neutral”, who was in fact a conciliator (he headed the
Committee). The Congress approved the terms of reference of the Committee and
passed Lenin’s draft resolution, which made it a duty of the Committee to submit
written reports to the Congress. The work of the Committee and the discussion of
its reports at the plenary sessions of the Congress took place in an atmosphere
of intense struggle between the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. Relations became
particularly strained at the sixth session of the Congress over the Committee
proposal to cancel the credentials of Artamonov (F. A. Sergeyev, or Artyom), a
Bolshevik delegate from the Kharkov organisation. The Bolsheviks on the
Committee declared that they were leaving the Committee, and then the Congress
elected a new Committee made up of Mensheviks and conciliators.

[3]
The protest of the Tiflis workers against the powers of the Menshevik delegation , signed by 200 persons, was read at the
twentieth session of the Congress. It said that in drawing up the lists of Party
members the Tiflis Mensheviks had ignored the Rules of the R.S.D.L.P., and had
included chance people in the list. The Mensheviks had “discovered” over 3,000 Party members in Tiflis. The
worker Social-Democrats of Tiflis maintained in their protest that the
city could not be represented at the Congress by as many as 11
delegates.

[4]
The minutes of the Fourth (Unity) Congress of the R.S.D.L.P.,
published in 1007, had serious shortcomings—they did not contain
records of a number of reports and speeches made at the Congress,
specifically by Lenin.