V. I.

Lenin

A Tactical Platform for the Unity Congress of the R.S.D.L.P.

Draft Resolutions for the Unity Congress of the R.S.D.L.P.

The eleven resolutions herewith submitted to the reader have been drawn up by a
group consisting of the former editors of, and contributors to,
Proletary , and of several Party members engaged in practical work,
who all share the same views. These are not finished resolutions, but rough
drafts, the object of which is to give as complete an idea as possible of
the sum-total of views on tactics held by a certain section of the Party,
and to facilitate the systematic dis cussion that is now being started in
all our Party circles and organisations on the invitation of the Joint
Central Committee.

The resolutions on tactics fit in with the Congress agenda [2] that was
proposed in the leaflet of the Joint Central Commit tee. But members of the
Party are by no means obliged to confine themselves to this agenda. With a view
to making a complete exposition of all opinions on tactics, we felt bound to add
two questions that do not appear in the agenda proposed by the Joint Central
Committee, namely, “The present stage of the democratic revolution”
and “The class tasks of the proletariat in the present stage of the
democratic revolution”. Unless these questions are cleared up, the more
specific questions of tactics cannot be discussed. We there fore propose that
the Congress should include in its agenda the following general question:
“The present stage of the democratic revolution and the class tasks of the
proletariat”.

As for the agrarian programme, and the attitude to be adopted towards the
peasant movement, a special pamphlet is needed. [1]

Moreover, the Joint Central Committee has ap pointed a special
committee to draw up a report on this question [3] for the Congress.

In publishing these rough drafts, we invite all Party members to
discuss, amend and supplement them. Written re ports and drafts may be sent
through our Party organisations to the St. Petersburg Committee of the
R.S.D.L.P. to be delivered to the group which drew up the resolutions.

The Present Stage of the Democratic Revolution

Whereas:

(1) with the wholesale destruction of productive forces and the unprecedented
impoverishment of the people, the economic and financial crisis that Russia
is experiencing, far from subsiding, is spreading and becoming more acute,
causing frightful unemployment in the towns and famine in the countryside; (2) although the big capitalist and landlord class, frightened by the
independent revolutionary activity of the people who are menacing its
privileges and predatory interests, is turning sharply away from opposition
towards a deal with the autocracy, with the object of suppressing the
revolution, the demands for real political liberty and social and economic
reforms are gaining ground and becoming stronger among new strata of the
petty bourgeoisie and the peasantry; (3) the present reactionary government, striving in effect to preserve the old
autocracy, trampling upon all the liberties it has proclaimed, granting
only a consultative voice to the upper strata of the propertied classes,
offering a gross travesty of popular representation, subjecting the whole
country to a regime of military repression, savage brutalities and mass
executions, and intensifying police and administrative tyranny to an
unprecedented degree, is thereby causing unrest and discontent among broad
sections of the bourgeoisie, arousing the resentment and indignation of the
masses of the proletariat and peasantry, and paving the way for a new, wider
and more acute political crisis; (4) the course of events at the end, of 19O5—mass strikes in the towns,
unrest in the countryside and the armed uprising in December, produced by
the desire to defend the liberties obtained by the people and taken away
from them by the government, and the subsequent ruthless military
suppression of the emancipation movement—has revealed the, futility of constitutional illusions, and has opened the eyes of the broad masses of the
people to the harmfulness of such illusions in a period when the struggle for
freedom has reached the intensity of open civil war; We are of the opinion, and propose that the Congress should agree:

(1) that the democratic revolution in Russia, far from subsiding, is on
the eve of a new upswing, and that the present period of comparative lull must
be regarded, not as the defeat of the forces of revolution, but as a period of
accumulation of revolutionary energy, assimilation of the political experience
of preceding stages, enlistment of new strata of the people in the movement and,
consequently, of preparation for a new and mightier revolutionary onslaught; (2) that the main form of the emancipation movement at the present time is not
legal struggle on a quasi-constitutional basis, but the direct
revolutionary movement of broad masses of the people, breaking the police
and semi-feudal laws, making revolutionary law, and destroying by force the
instruments for the oppression of the people; (3) that the interests of the proletariat, as the foremost class in modern
society, demand that a relentless struggle be waged against the
constitutional illusions which the liberal-monarchist bourgeoisie
(including the Constitutional-Democratic Party) is spreading in order to
cover up its narrow class interests and which, in a period of civil war,
produce the most corrupting effect upon the political consciousness of the
people.

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Notes:
[1]
See pp. 165-95 of this volume.— Ed .

[2]
The reference is to the leaflet “To the Party”, issued by the
Joint C. C. R.S.D.L.P. in February 1906. It dealt with questions relating to the
convocation of the Fourth (Unity) Congress.

[3]
In view of differences over the agrarian question, which
became particularly marked on the eve of the Fourth (Unity) Congress of the
R.S.D.L.P., the Joint Central Committee appointed a special committee including
Lenin to present the issue to the Congress. The committee reduced all the
different views on the agrarian question that had found expression among the
Social-Democrats to four basic types of draft and submitted them to the
Congress. Most of the committee members adopted the point of view of Lenin,
whose draft was therefore submitted to the Congress as that of the committee
majority. The draft was approved together with the tactical platform in March
1906, at the Bolshevik meetings preceding the Congress.