V. I. Lenin

Ideological Decay and Disunity Among Russian Social-Democrats {3}

Thefight against otzovism and liquidationism, which has
naturally occupied the first place among the tasks of the really Marxist
and Social-Democratic elements of our Party, should not, however, hide from
us the more profound evil which has in essence given use to both otzovism,
and liquidationism and which, according to all the evidence, will give rise
to a number of further new tactical absurdities. This evil is the
ideological decay and disunity which has wholly taken possession of
liberalism and is finding its way into, our Party from all sides.

Thefollowing is one of the numerous illustrations of this disunity. A
comrade who had long worked in the Party, an old Iskrist and old Bolshevik,
was prevented by imprisonment and exile from taking part in the movement
for a very long time, almost from the beginning of 1906. He recently
returned to work, became acquainted with otzovism ultimatumism, and
rejected it with dissatisfaction and indignation as a scandalous corruption
of revolutionary Social-Democratic, tactics. Having learned of the state of
work in Odessa and St. Petersburg, this comrade came, inter alia ,
to the following conclusion or “provisional result” from his
observations:

“...It seems to me that the hardest time has passed and it remains to
liquidate the remnants of the period of break-up and disintegration.” But
there are not a few of these remnants.

“Inall the St. Petersburg work,” we read in the same letter, “one
feels the absence of a single guiding centre, indiscipline, lack of order,
the absence of connection between the separate parts, the absence of unity
and plan in the work.

Each one works on his own account. Otzovist tendencies are strong in the
illegal organisation, they infect even anti otzovists”... (obviously, this
refers to those Bolsheviks who, despite Proletary’s repeated and
emphatic insistence, have not broken with the otzovists, do not wage a
relentless war against them, make attempts at conciliation, uselessly
delaying the inevitable denouement without obtaining in fact any
renunciation of their stupid tactics by the otzovist ultimatumists).... “On this basis there is developing a characteristic
phenomenon which has been quite independently shown in Odessa as well,
viz., revolutionary inaction. Wherever the spirit of otzovism prevails, it
is strikingly evident that the illegal organisations are doing nothing. One
or two propagandist circles, a struggle against legal opportunities—that
is the total activity. It is mostly of a disorganising nature, as you can
see from the extensive data I sent you from Odessa” ... (used in the article:... {1}

).

“As regards legal possibilities, their utilisation lacks a consistent
Social-Democratic line. In the darkness of the reaction, the opportunists
in the Social-Democratic movement have raised their heads and ‘brazen it
out’, knowing that it is not dangerous now to go against the fundamental
principles of Social-Democracy. One encounters here such a thoroughgoing
revision of revolutionary Social-Democracy, of its programme and tactics,
that in comparison with it

Bernstein’s {4} revisionism seems child’s play. The R.S.D.L.P. does not
understand Marx, it has made an incorrect analysis of the tendencies of
Russian economic development; there was never any feudal system in Russia,
there was a feudalistic-trading system; there were not and are not any
contradictions between the interests of the bourgeoisie and those of the
landed nobility, nor is there an alliance between them, for these two
classes invented by Russian Social-Democracy constitute a single bourgeois
class (this is a distinctive feature of Russia) and the autocracy is the
organisation of this class. The weakness of the Russian bourgeoisie, on
which was based (??—the interrogation marks are those of the author) the
slogan of the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry’ is imaginary, and this slogan was and remains utopian. It should be discarded, together
with the democratic republic, for the Russian train has gone on to the
German

lines.”... {5}

Itis clear that we have here an instantaneous photograph of one of the
rivulets of that broad torrent of ideological confusion which gives rise to
otzovism and liquidationism, sometimes fantastically mixing up and even
blending together the premises of extreme Right and extreme “Left”
idiotism. The first half of these premises (the absence of contradiction
between the bourgeoisie and feudalistic land ownership, etc.) is so
illogical and absurd that it is difficult even to take it seriously. It is
not worth cry... {2}

.

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Notes:
{1}
In the manuscript a place is left blank here for the title of the
article.— Ed .

{2}
The manuscript here breaks off.— Ed .

{3}
This document is the beginning of an article written by Lenin in Paris
at the end of November (beginning of December) 1909. The last portion of
the article has not been preserved. The article was intended for
Proletary No. 50, but was not published in it.

{4}
Eduard Bernstein —leader of the extreme opportunist wing of
German Social-Democracy and the Second International, a theoretician of
revisionism and reformism.

{5}
The Letter of an “Old Iskrist and Old Bolshevik ” quoted by
Lenin was published over the signature “Tr” in the newspaper
Proletary No. 50 of November 28 (December “), 1909 (“Letters
from St. Petersburg. Letter III”).