## 1. On Recallism and Ultimatism

The slogan of boycott of the Bulygin and First State Duma, put forward by the revolutionary wing of our party, played at that time a major revolutionary role and drew after it all the most active and most revolutionary strata of the working class.

The direct revolutionary struggle of the broad masses was then replaced by a heavy period of counter-revolution; for social democracy it became necessary to apply its revolutionary tactics to this new political situation, and, in connection with this, one of the most vitally important tasks became – the utilization of the open Duma tribune for the purposes of aiding social-democratic agitation and organization.

Meanwhile, a section of workers who had participated in the direct revolutionary struggle could not, in the face of this rapid turn of events, immediately transition to the application of revolutionary social-democratic tactics in the new conditions of counter-revolution and stopped at the simple repetition of slogans that had been revolutionary during the epoch of open civil war, but which, by their bare repetition now, could delay the process of the consolidation of the proletariat under the new conditions of struggle.

On the other hand, on the soil of this heavy upheaval, in an atmosphere of decline in revolutionary struggle, apathy and bewilderment even among a section of workers, in a period of the smashing of workers' organizations and their insufficient power to resist disintegrating influences, – there arose among a section of the working class indifference to political struggle in general and particularly strong indifference to the Duma work of social democracy.

Among these strata of the proletariat, under such conditions, the so-called recallism and ultimatism could find temporary success.

The work of the Third Duma, openly mocking the needs of workers, strengthens recallist sentiment among those strata of workers, who are unable, by virtue of their insufficient social-democratic education, to understand the fact that this very activity of the Third Duma gives social democrats the possibility of revolutionarily utilizing this representation of the exploiting classes for the purpose of clarifying to broad strata of the people the true character of autocracy and all counter-revolutionary forces, as well as the necessity of revolutionary struggle.

Recallist sentiment among this section of workers was additionally fed by the extremely serious errors that were committed by the social-democratic Duma fraction, particularly in the first year of its activity.

Recognizing that this recallist sentiment has negative significance in the matter of socialist and revolutionary education of the working class, – the Bolshevik fraction considers it necessary:

a) with respect to these strata of workers – lengthy work of social-democratic education and organization, systematic and persistent elucidation of all the political barrenness of recallism and ultimatism, the actual significance of social-democratic parliamentarism and the role of the Duma tribune for social democracy in the period of counter-revolution;

b) with respect to the Duma social-democratic fraction and Duma work in general – the establishment of close connection between the Duma fraction and the advanced workers, comprehensive aid to it and organized control and pressure on it from the entire party, among other things through open elucidation of its errors, the actual implementation of the party's leadership over the activity of the fraction as a party organ, and generally the implementation by Bolsheviks of the decisions of the recent all-party conference on this matter, for only the strengthening of the attention of workers' circles to the activity of the Duma social-democratic fraction and their organized participation in the Duma activity of social democracy can in fact straighten out the tactics of our Duma fraction;

c) with respect to the right wing of the party, which is drawing the Duma fraction onto an anti-party path and thereby tearing it away from the workers' vanguard, – systematic, uncompromising struggle and exposure of this tactic destructive to the party.

In the course of the bourgeois-democratic revolution, a number of elements attached themselves to our party, attracted not by its purely proletarian program, but predominantly by its bright and energetic struggle for democracy and having adopted the revolutionary-democratic slogans of the proletarian party apart from their connection with the entire struggle of the socialist proletariat as a whole.

Such elements, insufficiently imbued with the proletarian point of view, also appeared in the ranks of our Bolshevik fraction. On the soil of this epoch of troubles, these elements display ever more clearly their insufficient social-democratic steadfastness and, coming into ever sharper contradiction with the foundations of revolutionary social-democratic tactics, have created, over the past year, a tendency attempting to formulate a theory of recallism and ultimatism, but in fact only elevating to a principle and exacerbating false conceptions of social-democratic parliamentarism and Duma social-democratic work.

These attempts to create from recallist sentiment an entire system of recallist politics lead to a theory which in essence expresses the ideology of political indifference, on the one hand, and anarchical wanderings – on the other. Despite all its revolutionary phraseology, the theory of recallism and ultimatism is, in fact, to a significant degree, the other side of constitutional illusions, connected with hopes that the State Duma itself can satisfy one or another pressing demand of the people, and in essence substitutes the proletarian ideology with petty-bourgeois tendencies.

No less harmful to the cause of social-democratic work than open recallism is the so-called ultimatism (i.e., that tendency which in principle refuses to utilize the Third Duma tribune or attempts through practical considerations to justify its deviation from the fulfillment of this obligation and, striving for the recall of the Duma social-democratic fraction, replaces lengthy work of education and straightening out of the Duma fraction with the presentation of an immediate ultimatum to it). Politically, ultimatism at present differs in nothing from recallism and only introduces still greater confusion and discord through the hidden character of its recallism. Attempts by ultimatism to establish its connection with the boycottism practiced by our fraction at a certain moment of the revolution only distort the actual meaning and character of the completely correct boycott of the Bulygin and First State Duma applied by the vast majority of our party. By their attempt to derive from individual applications of boycott of representative institutions at one or another moment of the revolution a line of boycott as the distinguishing feature of Bolshevik tactics, including in the period of counter-revolution, ultimatism and recallism show that these tendencies are in essence the other side of Menshevism, which preaches indiscriminate participation in all representative institutions, independently of the given stage of development of the revolution, independently of the absence or presence of revolutionary upsurge.

All the attempts made up to now by recallism and ultimatism to justify their theory in principle inevitably lead them to the negation of the foundations of revolutionary Marxism. The tactics they outline inevitably lead to a complete break with the tactics of the left wing of international social democracy as applied to contemporary Russian conditions, leading to anarchical deviations.

Recallist-ultimatist agitation has already begun to cause undoubted harm to the workers' movement and social-democratic work. If it continues further, it can become a threat to party unity, for this agitation has already led to such monstrous phenomena as the unification of recallists and Socialist Revolutionaries{18} (in St. Petersburg) for the purpose of implementing a refusal to aid our party's Duma representation, as well as to certain public appearances before workers jointly with certain syndicalists.

In view of all this, the expanded editorial board of Proletarii declares that Bolshevism, as a definite tendency in the RSDLP, has nothing in common with recallism and ultimatism and that the Bolshevik fraction must wage the most decisive struggle against these deviations from the path of revolutionary Marxism.

## 2. Tasks of the Bolsheviks in the Party

In the epoch of decisive triumph of counter-revolution, which followed the dispersal of the Second Duma, the entire party activity was prescribed by the force of circumstances with the task: in defiance of the efforts of reaction and amid deep decline of class proletarian struggle, to preserve the party organization, created in the years of the highest upsurge of proletarian struggle, – i.e., as an organization consciously standing on the ground of orthodox Marxism and uniting all "national" social-democratic organizations for the purpose of implementing a unified revolutionary social-democratic tactics.

In the course of this two-year struggle for the party and for party character, there were determined with complete clarity, on the one hand, the demarcation of the party from elements brought into it by the special conditions of the bourgeois-democratic revolution, and on the other hand, the further consolidation of revolutionary social democrats. On the one hand, there were fully determined those former fellow-travelers of social democracy who, leaving the party, transferred their entire activity to various legal organizations (cooperatives, trade unions, educational societies, commissions attached to the Duma fraction) and there not only failed to implement party policy, but, on the contrary, struggled against the party, seeking to tear these organizations away from it and counterpose them to it. Elevating legality to a fetish and the narrow forms of activity imposed by temporary humiliation and fragmentation of the workers' movement to a principle, these elements – outspoken liquidators of the party – took their stand, with complete obviousness to all, on the ground of theoretical and tactical revisionism. The closest connection between organizational liquidationism – struggle against party institutions – and principled struggle against Marxist theory and the foundations of the RSDLP program has now been demonstrated and proved with complete clarity by the entire history of the imposition of an opportunistic line on our Duma fraction by its intellectual advisors, the entire struggle between liquidators and party people within legal workers' organizations and in workers' groups at four congresses: People's Universities{19}, Cooperative{20}, Women's{21}, and Factory Doctors{22}.

On the other hand, the left wing of the party, which fell to it to direct the party during this period of decisive triumph of counter-revolution, theoretically recognized and in practice implemented the tactics of expedient combination of illegal and legal party work. This includes all party work on the Duma fraction and all party work in legal and semi-legal proletarian organizations. It is precisely these forms of work that were put forward by the peculiar conditions of the contemporary historical moment as a supplement to the basic forms of party work, as forms of influence of the illegal party on more or less broad masses. It is precisely in these forms of activity that the party practically, in fact, collides with liquidationism and deals it telling blows. On this same ground, party social democrats of various fractions have practically drawn closer and continue to draw closer{23}. And here, finally, on these same questions of tactics and organization of the party under the conditions of the Third Duma period, the Bolshevik fraction openly demarcates itself from pseudo-revolutionary, unstable, non-Marxist elements who came out against the new forms of party activity under the flag of the so-called "recallism."

At the present time, outlining the basic tasks of the Bolsheviks, the expanded editorial board of Proletarii states:

1) that in the further struggle for the party and for party character, the task of the Bolshevik fraction, which must remain the advanced fighter for party character and revolutionary social-democratic line in the party, is comprehensive active support of the Central Committee and the Central Organ of the party. Only all-party central institutions can at the present period of regrouping of party forces serve as an authoritative and strong representative of the party line, on which all genuinely party and genuinely social-democratic elements could be united;

2) that in the Menshevik camp of the party, with the complete capture of the official organ of the fraction, the "Voice of the Social Democrat," by Menshevik liquidators, the minority of the fraction, having fully experienced the path of liquidationism, is already raising its voice in protest against this path and seeking anew party ground for its activity (the letter of the "Vyborg" Mensheviks in St. Petersburg, the split of Mensheviks in Moscow, the split in the editorial board of the "Voice of the Social Democrat," the corresponding division in the Bund, etc.);

3) that under such circumstances, the task of the Bolsheviks, who will remain the consolidated vanguard of the party, is not only the continuation of struggle against liquidationism and all forms of revisionism, but also the drawing closer to Marxist and party elements of other fractions, as this is dictated by the common goals in the struggle for the preservation and strengthening of the RSDLP.

## 3. On Agitation for a Separate Bolshevik Congress or Bolshevik Conference Apart from the Party

Taking into account: – that the Bolshevik fraction since the restoration of party unity has singled out and consolidated supporters of its political line always on questions that have already become the subject of all-party discussion, and always through ideological struggle for its solution of these questions on the all-party arena – parallel platforms and discussion in party cells, at all-party congresses; – that only such a path guarantees both the consolidation of genuine comrades in arms and the attraction to the fraction of all elements essentially kindred to it; – that for the implementation of our basic goal, for influence on the party in the interests of the final triumph within it of the line of revolutionary social democracy, the singling out of Bolsheviks only on the all-party arena is the only correct and only expedient path; – that any other path – the path of convening special Bolshevik conferences and congresses – would inevitably lead to a split of the party from top to bottom and would deal an irreparable blow to that fraction which would take upon itself the initiative of such a final split of the RSDLP; Taking all this into account, the expanded editorial board of Proletarii decides:

1) To warn all comrades in arms against agitation for a specially Bolshevik congress, as agitation objectively leading to a split of the party and capable of dealing a decisive blow to the position already won in the party by revolutionary social democracy.

2) To schedule the nearest Bolshevik conference to coincide with the forthcoming party conference, and the supreme gathering of the fraction as a whole shall be the assembly of comrades in arms at the nearest party congress.

3) In view of the important questions on the agenda that are troubling the party and the fraction, the Bolsheviks in the Central Committee are instructed to insist on the possible acceleration of the convening of the all-party conference (period of 2–3 months) and then on the acceleration of the convening of the party congress.

## 4. On the Party School Organized Abroad in NN

The expanded editorial board of Proletarii, having examined the question of the school in NN, recognizes that the organization of this school by a group of initiators (including one of the members of the expanded editorial board of Proletarii, Comrade Maximov) proceeded from the very beginning independently of the editorial board of Proletarii and was accompanied by agitation against it. The steps taken thus far by the group of initiators have already made it abundantly clear that under the guise of this school a new center of a fraction breaking away from the Bolsheviks is being created. The initiators of this school, apart from the general centers, entered into communications with many Russian committees, organized an independent fund and collection of money, are organizing their own agents, without even informing of this either the editorial board of Proletarii or the all-party center.

Recognizing that, given the present shortage of experienced party workers, a properly organized and genuinely party school, even located abroad, could to a certain degree aid local organizations in the matter of developing suitable party workers from among the workers, and considering it necessary on our part to do everything that the position of our organization allows for the fulfillment of this assistance to local organizations, – the expanded editorial board, on the basis of the entire manner of action of the school's initiators in NN, states that these initiators are pursuing not general-fractional goals, i.e., not the goals of the Bolshevik fraction as an ideological tendency in the party, but their own special, group ideological-political goals. The expanded editorial board of Proletarii states that in connection with the disagreements that have come to light in our fraction on questions of recallism, ultimatism, the attitude toward the preaching of god-building and generally on the internal party tasks of Bolsheviks, in connection with the fact that the initiators and organizers of the school in NN are exclusively representatives of recallism, ultimatism, and god-building, – the ideological-political physiognomy of this new center is determined with complete clarity.

In view of all this, the expanded editorial board of Proletarii declares that the Bolshevik fraction cannot bear any responsibility for this school.

## 5. On the Split with Comrade Maximov

Recognizing that in connection with all the questions on the agenda it has become evident that there is an absence of principled and tactical unity between the ten members of the expanded editorial board of Proletarii, on the one hand, and Comrade Maximov, on the other hand; recognizing, further, that on the part of Comrade Maximov in recent time steps have been taken also directed at the violation of organizational unity of the Bolshevik fraction; noting, finally, that Comrade Maximov gave a negative answer to the question of submission to the resolutions of the expanded editorial board of Proletarii and their implementation in practice, – the editorial board of Proletarii in expanded composition relieves itself henceforth of all responsibility for all political steps of Comrade Maximov.