The slogan of boycotting 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 immediate revolutionary struggle of the broad masses was then succeeded 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 highly important tasks became – the utilization of the open Duma tribune for purposes of aiding social-democratic agitation and organization.

Meanwhile, a part of the workers who had participated in the immediate revolutionary struggle were unable, in the face of this rapid turn of events, to quickly transition to applying revolutionary social-democratic tactics under the new conditions of counter-revolution and came to a halt at simple repetition of the slogans that had been revolutionary in the epoch of open civil war, but which now, by their bare repetition, could retard the process of rallying the proletariat under the new conditions of struggle.

On the other hand, on the basis of this heavy upheaval, in an atmosphere of decline in revolutionary struggle, apathy and bewilderment even among a section of the workers, in a period of smashing of workers' organizations and their insufficient force of resistance to the corrupting 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, so-called recallism and ultimatism could find temporary success.

The work of the Third Duma, openly mocking the needs of the workers, strengthens the recallist mood among these strata of workers, incapable as yet, by virtue of their insufficient social-democratic education, of understanding the circumstance that this very activity of the Third Duma gives social-democrats the possibility of revolutionary utilization of this representation of the exploiting classes for clarifying to the broad strata of the people the true character of autocracy and all counter-revolutionary forces, as well as – the necessity of revolutionary struggle.

The recallist mood among this part of the workers was nourished moreover by those extremely serious errors which were committed by the social-democratic Duma faction, particularly in the first year of its activity.

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

a) with respect to these strata of workers – prolonged work of social-democratic education and organization, systematic and persistent explanation of the entire political sterility 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 faction and Duma work in general – establishment of close connection between the Duma faction and the advanced workers, comprehensive assistance to it and organized control and pressure on it by the entire party, among other means, through open exposition of its errors, factual implementation of party leadership of the faction's activity as a party organ, and generally the carrying out by Bolsheviks in practice of the decisions of the last all-party conference on this matter, for only strengthening of attention of workers' circles to the activity of the Duma social-democratic faction and their organized participation in the Duma activity of social-democracy is capable of actually straightening out the tactics of our Duma faction;

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

In the course of the bourgeois-democratic revolution, our party was joined by a number of elements attracted not by its purely proletarian program, but predominantly by its vivid and energetic struggle for democracy and who adopted the revolutionary-democratic slogans of the proletarian party outside their connection with the entire struggle of the socialist proletariat as a whole.

Such elements, insufficiently imbued with the proletarian viewpoint, appeared also in the ranks of our Bolshevik faction. On the soil of the period of reaction, these elements display increasingly their insufficient social-democratic firmness and, coming into ever sharper contradiction with the foundations of revolutionary social-democratic tactics, have created over the last year a tendency attempting to formulate a theory of recallism and ultimatism, which in practice merely raises to a principle and aggravates false conceptions about social-democratic parliamentarism and Duma social-democratic work.

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

No less harmful to the cause of social-democratic work than open recallism is so-called ultimatism (i.e., that tendency which principally refuses to utilize the Third Duma tribune or attempts by practical considerations to justify its evasion of fulfillment of this obligation, and, striving toward the recall of the Duma social-democratic faction, replaces prolonged work of education and straightening out of the Duma faction with the presentation to it of an immediate ultimatum). Politically, ultimatism at present differs in no way from recallism and merely introduces even greater confusion and disunity by the veiled character of its recallism. Attempts by ultimatism to establish its direct connection with boycottism, practiced by our faction at a definite moment of the revolution, merely distort the actual meaning and character of the absolutely correct boycott of the Bulygin and First State Duma applied by the overwhelming majority of our party. By attempting to derive from particular 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 essentially the reverse side of Menshevism, which preaches indiscriminate participation in all representative institutions, regardless of the given stage of development of the revolution, regardless of the presence or absence of revolutionary upsurge.

All the attempts made thus far by recallism and ultimatism to ground their theory in principle inevitably lead them to the denial of the foundations of revolutionary Marxism. The tactics outlined by them inevitably lead to a complete rupture with the tactics of the left wing of international social-democracy as applied to modern Russian conditions, leading to anarchistic deviations.

Recallist-ultimatist agitation has already begun to bring undoubted harm to the workers' movement and social-democratic work. With its further continuation it can become a threat to party unity, for this agitation has already led to such distorted phenomena as the unification of recallists and Socialist-Revolutionaries{18} (in St. Petersburg) for carrying through refusal to render assistance to our party's Duma representation, as well as to certain public appearances before workers jointly with certain syndicalists.

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