V. I.
Lenin

192

To: THE BUREAU ABROAD OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE, R.S.D.L.P.

Dear Comrades, Our inquiry as to how you understand your competence in
matters concerning conflicts in the Central Organ has not yet been answered. Nevertheless we consider it necessary to offer you
some explanation with regard to a number of conflicts that have occurred in
the new Editorial Board of the C.0. since the plenum—as we propose to do
in the near future for the information of the whole Party and
all Social-Democrats.

We shall begin with the last statement of Comrades Dan and Martov of
March 29.

1. It is not true that we decided to publish the article from Tiflis
“containing violent attacks on the Caucasian Regional Committee”, for it
had been decided to omit that section of the article and leave only the
polemics on points of principle with the Georgian newspaper which the
author, a local functionary, charges with liquidationism. The authors of
the statement, moreover, conceal from you the fact that the manuscript of
this polemical article was sent to the author of the Georgian article in
order to give him an opportunity to reply in the same issue of the
C.0. (Later on, at the last meeting of the Editorial Board, we decided to
turn over the whole polemic together with the reply to Diskussionny Listok . [1]

)

2. The authors of the statement conceal from you why we rejected
Comrade Dan’s article on the tasks of the Party with regard to the
persecution of the trade unions. We rejected it because the “tasks of the
Party in this article are reduced to exchanging the struggle to overthrow
the autocracy for the petty cash of Cadet ‘struggle for
legality’”.

3. Comrades Dan and Martov consider it “unnatural” for us to have
conferred separately on how to rebuff the base attacks on the C.0. and on
the unity of the Party, while considering it “perfectly natural” that
they them selves, two editors of the C.0., should have met with other
editors of Golos Sotsial-Demokrata in order to launch a
foul attack on the
C.O. [5] A conference of like-minded people within a collegium and joint
discussion of an article before laying it on the editorial desk for final judgement (moreover, in a
case such as the given one), they consider to be a violation of the
law. But to be a member of the Editorial Board of the C.O., entrusted by
the C.C., among other things, with the task of “explaining the danger of
deviations” towards liquidationism . and otzovism, and at the same time a member of the Editorial Board of Golos Sotsial-Demokrata , which shields, encourages and defends
liquidationism and with regard to which the C.C. has spoken of the need to
terminate its existence—this they do not consider incompatible
with political integrity. This habit of stabbing the Central Organ and
Party unity in the back while at the same time demanding “collegiality”
in drafting a reply to the back-stabbing they themselves have dealt, a
habit characteristic of underground manipulators, we leave to the authors
of the statement. To discuss with them their own attacks against the
Central Organ would have been an undignified farce on our part. The only
thing We could do was to lay the article on the editorial desk in order to
give them a chance to acquaint themselves with its contents and to hear
their objections. That is what was done.

4. The authors of the statement write that we “directly deceived”
them, for “no mention was made of any intention to publish—and with
shocking distortion of the truth to boot—part of the correspondence
between members of the C.C. and the C.C. Bureau Abroad”. Not only did we
not mention this to them, we made no mention of the contents of the article
in general, for the simple reason that we gave the article to them . Comrade Dan actually looked through the manuscript. This is
indeed deception on the part of Dan and Martov, who expected that you would
not notice that a few lines earlier they write that we gave theta the article to read in the manuscript , in other words, had no intention to
conceal anything from them. In order to show what our “shocking distortion
of the truth” consists in, we are printing in No. 12 of the Central Organ
all relevant excerpts from the C.C. letter. The reader will be
able to judge for himself.

5. The authors of the statement write about the “secrecy aspect of the
matter”. But they forget to tell you that we did not disclose in the press the place occupied in the Party
organisation by the three liquidators, that Dan and Martov themselves
published not only their names but also those of other liquidators in
Nos. 19–20 of Golos Sotsial-Demokrata . As for us, we can only
reply to this in the words of Plekhanov that the only thing that
“threatens” liquidators of the Party is “an order of merit round the
neck”.

6. The authors of the statement write that Bolsheviks too refuse to go
into the
C.C. [2]

But they deliberately forget to tell you that it is not a matter of who
wants or does not want to enter the C.C. but of who considers the C.C. and
the Party unnecessary and harmful.

7. The authors of the statement complain that their articles have been
rejected. But all these complaints have only one object: artificially to
create the grounds for the existence of Golos Sotsial-Demokrata . For this reason the authors of the statement are
boycotting “ Diskussionny Listok ”, in which their articles could be freely printed. They are deliberately wrecking this Party
publication, too, whose purpose it is to obviate the need for factional
organs, to enable all trends in the Party freely to express themselves
whenever their views differ from those of the Central Organ. For example,
we suggested that Comrade Martov’s article “On the Right Path” be printed
either in the Central Organ with an editorial comment (since the article challenges C.C. decisions) or in Diskussionny Listok . The first of these alternatives was called giving the article
a “ gendarme ” escort, and the second, “exiling” it. And we were
literally told: “now we shall open hostilities against you.”

8. The authors of the statement complain that we print ed an article
about the conference which they allege “completely distorts the decisions
of the plenary meeting on this question”. What lies behind this complaint
is this:
the article in question wholly agrees with the C.C. letter on the
conference, [6] and the anti-liquidationist letter of the C.C. about the
conference is not to the taste of the extreme liquidator Dan. The article
was written by the comrade who wrote the C.C. letter. And Comrade Martov
signed the C.C. letter. It was adopted unanimously. When
he sent the proofs to the author of the letter, Comrade Martov wrote:
“ I have no objections to your text of the letter about the
conference.” But now, before the liquidationist cock has had time to crow
thrice, L. Martov hastens (together with Dan) to disavow the letter he himself accepted . The statement of ... written by Dan and signed also
by Martov naïvely reveals the real cause of the dissatisfaction of the
Golos people with the C.C. letter on the conference and with our
article on the same subject: the plenary meeting, it appears, allegedly
decided to “reconcile” the Party with the “so-called liquidationism”
and to “fill in the gulf” between the liquidators and the Party. But the
Central Organ is not carrying out this task. We confess that we are doing
the exact opposite. What is surprising is only this: why did the authors of
the statement complaining about the rejection of articles themselves reject in Golos Sotsial-Demokrata an article signed among
others by Comrade Martov, namely, the “Letter of the C.C.” concerning the
conference? Why did they not reprint it either in full or at least in part ? Probably because the C.C. letter “completely distorts the
decisions” of the Central Committee.

9. The authors of the statement have the audacity to turn to you, the
Central Committee Bureau Abroad, with a demand for “satisfaction” for the unpleasantness caused them by the exposure of the
three practical liquidators. They evidently believe that you might agree
not to bring into the light of day the monstrous outrage against our Party
committed by their associates Mikhail, Roman and Yuri. They evidently
ascribe to you the intention of concealing from the Party the
conspiracy against the Party which we exposed and which a member of the C.C. in his letter from Russia asked you to make public . We of course leave it to you to give
an appropriate reply to such an insult to your Party conscience. We on our
part believe that no Party body will venture to side with the Romans,
Yuris, Mikhails and their accomplices to any extent or in any way, not even
indirectly. Such individuals and bodies should be pilloried without delay and openly in the name of the entire Party. We in the
Central Organ of our Party, where we have been placed by the will of the
plenum, shall unswervingly pursue this line . The same fate will
befall anyone who throws in his lot with those who would destroy the
Party— whoever he may be .

10. The authors end their statement by threatening you that if you do
not do as they wish they will set about exposing cases that were closed by
the plenary meeting of the C.C. And this they promise to do despite the
C.C. decision. But this threat is no longer an instance of the usual
fraktioneller
Dreck, [3] as the representative of Latvian Social-Democracy put it at the plenary
meeting of the C.C. referring to the way the Golos people had
seized on these issues for the sake of factional muck; it is downright
factional blackmail with regard to the C.C. Bureau Abroad. And, of
course, we leave it to you, comrades, to deal worthily with these
blackmailers operating with factional muck .

But we refuse to go into all the falsifications, distortions of facts
and downright lies amassed against us in the statements, complaints and
protests of Martov and Dan. You yourselves, comrades, will unquestionably
be able to get to the bottom of all this factional muck, although we do not
doubt that it will evoke in you the same natural feeling of revulsion it
has aroused in us. Nevertheless we would like in conclusion to draw your
attention to two things.

First . We should like to remind you that the present attempt
of the Golos people to disrupt the C.C. is not the first . As far back as the summer of 1908, when the Bolshevik members
of the C.C. were arrested, the Golos people made a valiant attempt of this kind which was exposed at the plenary meeting of
the C.C. (in August 1908). At that time the Golos people proposed
to the Bund comrades to join in a conspiracy to disrupt the C.C. But a
member of the C.C. of the Bund (Comrade E.) informed of this a Bolshevik
member of the C.C. (Comrade G.) who had just been released from prison, and
the conspiracy failed. We still have on file the letter from the member of
the Bund C.C. in which he writes that the Golos leaders deny the
C.C. its very “Existenzreckt” (right to exist) and propose replacing it
with some sort of information bureau. [7] The fact that the proposal to betray the Party was made by
the Golos people in the C.C. to the Bund C.C. was confirmed also
by other comrades from the Bund at the December (1908) conference (see the
minutes of the conference). Add to this the recent exposure by the
Menshevik comrades Alexei Moskovsky and G. V. Plekhanov, and also the fact
that Golos Sotsial-Demokrata has not once come out against the
liquidators, but, on the contrary, constantly defends them, demanding that
they now be recognised on a par with the Party, and even takes up the
cudgels for Roman, Mikhail and Yuri, and you will have a pretty clear
picture of the prolonged, indefatigable, stubborn and most insidious
attempts of all kinds by which the liquidators are seeking to achieve their
purpose—to wreck the Party. At the same time the danger of the
liquidationist trend and the need to fight it most vigorously will become
obvious even to the blind. In view of this we believe that now is the time
to publish also the letter of the Bund C.C. member Comrade E. and in
general all the facts relative to the attempts to liquidate the
Party.

Second . If the two Golos men—our colleagues on the
Central Organ—write you that “a minimum of respect for the Party should
have obliged” us “to relinquish, our responsible Party positions”, we
believe that common political decency and a minimum of self-respect should
have induced them to abandon the false position they adopt in the Party and
in the Central Organ by coming out simultaneously in defence of the
liquidators. Incidentally, as distinct from them, we are not at all
inclined to ascribe evil intentions to them as individuals. The lies, the black mail threats
and all their other virtues spring not from their ill will, hut from their
false position which compels them to breed falsehood at every step. Es ist
der Fluch der bösen Tat, dass sie immer Böses muss gebähren . [4]

And the curse of their misdeed consists precisely in that they
simultaneously occupy seats in the Party organ and in the organ which is
out to liquidate the Party, with the result that they assume the
contradictory mission of standing both for the Party and against it. For
this reason they do not even have the “courage” of the Romans, the Yuris
and the Mikhails. This position of theirs is compatible neither with common
political decency nor with a minimum of self-respect. This is what creates
that false position, that, so to speak, peculiar brand of Azefism [8] for liquidationist purposes, which impels them, with
the best of intentions, toward the most unworthy actions.

Members of the Editorial Board of the Central Organ

A. Var
G. Zinoviev N. Lenin

April 5, 1910

P.S. For the time being, we are sending a copy of this statement at
once only to the Russian collegium of the C.C., the “national” C.C.s and
our Party press.

---
Notes:
[1]
A reference to an article by J. V. Stalin, “Letter from the
Caucasus”.— Ed .

[2]
Here the authors of the statement indignantly say that the “readers of
the article are likewise not told that the Polish Social-Democrats to this day have not been able to find anybody who would agree to represent them in the C.C. ” More, they have the temerity to underline these
words. This is just as foul a lie as the other allegations in the
statement. Just as the Polish Social-Democrats had their representative in
the C.C. before the plenary meeting, so they have one now, after it, who is
waiting for word when to attend the C.C. meeting. Already a week ago the
Polish C.C. member received a letter from his colleague in Moscow to the
effect that he still has to wait, for the C.C. cannot be convened as yet.
— Lenin

[3]
Factional muck.— Ed .

[4]
The worst thing about evil is that it inevitably breeds evil
(Schiller, Wallenstein . “Die Piccolomini”, Act V, Scene 1).— Ed .

[5]
A reference to publication by the Editorial Board of Golos Sotsial Demokrata in February 1910 in Paris of a leaflet entitled “Letter to
the Comrades” and signed by Axelrod, Dan, Martov and Martynov. The authors
of the leaflet charged the paper Sotsial-Demokrat with having
become an affiliate of Proletary and declared their intention to
continue publishing Golos Sotsial-Demokrata . Lenin analysed this
document and gave it a political appraisal in the articles “ Golos
(Voice) of the Liquidators Against the Party (Reply to Golos Sotsial-Demokrata )” and “Party Unity Abroad” (see present edition,
Vol. 16, pp. 156–64 and 185–89).

[6]
Sotsial-Demokrat No. 12 carried an unsigned article “On the
Party Conference”. The letter referred to, “To the Party Organisations
(on the Coming Party Conference)”, was written by a commission consisting of G. Y. Zinoviev, I. F. Dubrovinsky and
Y. 0. Martov.

[7]
A reference to a letter from M. M. Rosen (Ezra), a member of the
C.C. of the Bund, addressed to G. Y. Zinoviev.

[8]
Azefism —a synonym for political betrayal, from the name of
E. F. Azef, a Socialist-Revolutionary leader who proved to be a secret
police agent.