V. I. Lenin

The Jubilee Number of Zihna {1}

Whenthe comrade delegated by the Central Committee of the
Social-Democratic Party of the Lettish Region made a report on the status
of work in the Social-Democratic Party of the Lettish Region at the plenary
meeting of the Central Committee of the R.S.D.L.P. (this report was
summarised in No. 12 of our Party’s Central Organ), we were left with the
impression of an unusually “normal” and painless development of the
Lettish Social-Democratic movement during the difficult times through which
we are passing. What created this impression was that the,
Social-Democratic Party of the Lettish Region, being the most proletarian
in composition and with a mainly working-class leadership, has already, in
accordance with the demands of objective circumstances, proceeded to work
out special tactics and solve the organisational problems of this
protracted period of counter-revolution. During the revolution the Lettish
proletariat and the Lettish Social-Democratic Party occupied one of the
first and most prominent places in the struggle against the autocracy and
all the forces of the old order. Incidentally, it is not without interest
to note that the official strike statistics of 1905 (published by the
Ministry of Trade and

Industry) {2} show that Livonian Gubernia takes first place for the
persistence of the proletarian strike movement. In 1905 the number of
factory workers in Livonian Gubernia totalled 53,917, while the number of
strikers was 268,507, i.e., almost five times (4.38) as many! In that year
every worker in Livonian Gubernia went on strike on the average
5 times. Next after Livonian Gubernia comes Baku Gubernia, where each
factory worker struck 4.56 times, Tiflis Gubernia—4.49 times, Petrokov

Gubernia—4.98 times and St. Petersburg—4.19. In Moscow Gubernia in 1905
the number of workers on strike came to 276,563, i.e., only a few more than
in Livonian Gubernia, although the total number of factory workers in
Moscow Gubernia is five times as large as in Livonian Gubernia (285,769
against 53,917). We see from this how much more class-conscious, unanimous
and revolutionary the Lettish proletariat was in its activity. But we also
know that its role of vanguard in the offensive against absolutism was not
limited to strike action: it was in the van of the armed uprising, it
contributed most of all to raising the movement to the highest level, i.e.,
the level of an up rising. It succeeded more than any other in drawing the
Lettish agricultural proletariat and the Lettish peasantry into the great
revolutionary struggle against tsarism and the landlords.

Besidesbeing one of the leading contingents of Russian
Social-Democracy during the revolution, the Lettish workers’ party has
proved to be in the front ranks too during the difficult period of
counter-revolution. We learned from the report mentioned above that no
special trend has arisen among the Lettish Social-Democrats either of an
infatuation for revolutionary phrases (like our “otzovists”) or of an
infatuation for legal opportunities (like our liquidators , who
reject the illegal Party and stand aside from the task of restoring and
strengthening the R.S.D.L.P.). The Lettish Social-Democratic workers have
succeeded in setting about the work of utilising all kinds of legal
avenues: the legal unions, various workingmen’s associations, the Duma
tribune, etc. Moreover they have not in the least “liquidated” the
illegal, revolutionary Social-Democratic Party; on the contrary, they have
everywhere preserved the workers’ illegal Party units, which will uphold
and continue the traditions of the great revolutionary struggle, training
by steady and persistent effort increasingly numerous and class-conscious
masses of combatants drawn from the young generations of the working class.

Thereis no doubt that among the causes to which the success of the
Lettish Social-Democrats is due we must assign the foremost place to the
higher development of capitalism, both in town and countryside, the greater
clarity

and definiteness of the class contradictions, their aggravation by national
oppression, the concentration of the Lettish population and its superior
cultural development. In all these respects the situation in which the
Russian working class has to develop and operate is much less developed. It
is this underdevelopment that is now engendering a more acute crisis in the
Russian section of the R.S.D.L.P. The petty-bourgeois intellectuals in our
movement play a big role. They bring liabilities as well as assets: they
bring not only the elaboration of questions of theory and tactics but an
“elaboration” of every deviation from the Social-Democratic path into a
distinct “trend”, as, for example, “otzovism” and “liquidationism”.

Weventure to express the hope that the Lettish Social-Democrats, who
have every reason to be proud of their successes, will not consider these
vexed questions of the R.S.D.L.P. beneath their dignity.

Themore class-conscious the proletariat, the more clearly does it
visualise its Social-Democratic aims, the more vigorously does it fight
against all petty-bourgeois distortions in the workers’ movement, the more
is it concerned to free its less developed working-class comrades from the
influence of petty-bourgeois opportunism.

Theliquidationist trend in the R.S.D.L.P. is a product of the
petty-bourgeois relations in Russia. The whole liberal bourgeoisie takes
its stand against the revolution, repudiates it, anathematises the tactics
of 1905, which, it says, were “bloody and abortive”, grovels before the
powers that be, exhorts the people to confine themselves to legal
methods of struggle. And the petty-bourgeois intellectuals in our Party
succumb to the influence of counter-revolutionary liberalism. A history of
the revolution has been published in five volumes ( The Social Movement in Russia at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century , edited by Maslov,
Martov and Potresov). This history in effect propagates the doctrine of the
renegades, that the proletariat “over estimated” its strength and
“underestimated” the strength of the bourgeoisie, and so forth. Actually
what the masses of the proletariat did underestimate was the treachery of
the bourgeoisie; they overestimated the strength of the bourgeoisie in the
fight for freedom, and underestimated their own forces—the force of the offensive of the oppressed and
exploited millions.

Legaljournals are being published ( Nasha Zarya and
Vozrozhdeniye ) which preach the doctrine that to restore and
strengthen the illegal Party, our old R..S.D.L.P. that has stood the test
of years, is a “reactionary utopia”. The illegal Menshevik organ
—Golos Sotsial-Demokrata —comes out in defence of such gentlemen and proclaims the slogan:

“Fight for legality.” One of the most prominent leaders of Menshevism,
Plekhanov, leaves the editorial board and staff of contributors of all
these publications, declaring war on them and appealing to the
Mensheviks— the pro-Party Mensheviks —to support and strengthen
the revolutionary, illegal party of the proletariat—the R.S.D.L.P.

Thusour Party has begun a decisive fight against groups of independent
legalists who wrongly call themselves Social-Democrats. In reality they are
wrecking the cause of the Social-Democrats, they are destroying the
Social-Democratic organisation of the working class, changing it into
amorphous legal groups which have no principles and which are in fact
making the working class dependent on the ideology of the liberals and on
liberal political leadership.

Aboutten years ago our Party carried through a struggle against
so-called Economism, which was very much akin to the liquidationism of
today. Now the struggle is more difficult, since all the forces of the
counter-revolution—not only of the old but also of the new (modern),
liberal-bourgeois counter-revolution—are bent on doing away with the
traditions of 1905 among the proletariat and destroying its illegal
Social-Democratic Party. But the working class, which knew how to lead the
Revolution of 1905, will undoubtedly overcome all these deviations from the
Social-Democratic path.

Beforethe Revolution of 1905 the Social-Democrats worked for twenty
years in totally illegal circles and built up a party which is leading
millions towards the overthrow of the autocracy. Now, after the revolution
we can—and, consequently, we must—not only continue the work of the
illegal Party units, but increase this work tenfold, surround the Party
units with a dense network of legal organisations, utilise the tribune of the black-reactionary Duma for our
agitation, instil among the mass of the workers the lessons learned in the
revolutionary struggle, and create a Social-Democratic Party which will
lead tens of millions of people to a new onslaught against the autocracy.

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Notes:
{1}
Zihna ( Struggle )—a newspaper, the Central Organ of the Lettish Social-Democrats, founded in March 1904. It was issued at
considerable intervals in Riga, Brussels and Petrograd; from 1919 it was
the organ of the Communist Party of Latvia.

{2}
This refers to the works of V. Y. Varzar, Statistics of Strikes at Factories During 1905 and Statistics of Strikes at Factories During the Three Years 1906–08 , published in St. Petersburg by the
Ministry of Trade and Industry, 1908 and 1910.