V. I. Lenin

Announcement on the Publication of Rabochaya Gazeta {1}

Thedeep crisis of the workers’ movement and the
Social-Democratic Party in Russia still continues. Disintegration of the
Party organisations, an almost universal exodus of the intellectuals from
them, confusion and wavering among the Social-Democrats who have remained
loyal, dejection and apathy among fairly wide sections of the advanced
proletariat, uncertainty as to the way out of this situation—such are the
distinguishing features of the present position. Among the Social-Democrats
there are not a few who are faint-hearted and of little faith, who are
ready to despair of finding their bearings in the prevailing confusion, to
despair of restoring and strengthening the Party, the R.S.D.L.P., with its
revolutionary aims and traditions, who are ready to stand aloof and to
isolate themselves in narrow, petty circles concerned only with
“cultural” work and so forth.

Thecrisis continues, but its end is already clearly visible, the way
out has been fully indicated and tested by the Party, the confusion and
wavering has already been channelled into fairly definite tendencies,
trends and factions, a very clear-cut appraisal of which has been made by
the Party—while the assumption of definite shape by the anti-Party
tendencies and the clear appraisal of them are already half-way towards
getting rid of confusion and wavering.

Inorder not to give way to despair and disillusion it is necessary
only to understand the full depth of the sources of the crisis. One cannot
skip over or avoid this crisis, one can only survive it by means of
persistent struggle, for it is not accidental but engendered by the
special stage of both the economic and the political development of Russia. The
autocracy reigns as before. Violence is still more brutal. Tyranny is still
more powerful. Economic oppression is still more brazen. But the autocracy
can no longer maintain itself merely by the old methods. It is
compelled to make a new attempt, an attempt at an open alliance
with the Black-Hundred feudal landlords and the Octobrist capitalists, an
alliance in the Duma and through the Duma. The hopelessness of this attempt
and the growth of a new revolutionary crisis are obvious to anyone who is
still capable of thought. But this revolutionary crisis is being prepared
in a new situation, in which classes and parties are marked by immeasurably
greater consciousness, solidarity and organisation than before the
Revolution of 1905. Russian liberalism has been converted from a
well-meaning, dreamy, fragile and immature opposition of benevolent
aspirations into a strong, parliamentarily-disciplined party of bourgeois
intellectuals, who are conscious enemies of the socialist proletariat and
of a revolutionary settlement of accounts with the feudal landlords by the
peasant masses. To beg for concessions from the monarchy, to threaten it
with revolution (hateful and terrifying to the liberals themselves),
continually to betray the struggle for emancipation and desert to the
enemy—such is the inevitable lot of the liberal, Constitutional-Democratic Party, inevitable owing to its class nature. The
Russian peasantry has shown its capacity for mass revolutionary struggle if
the latter is launched by the proletariat, and its capacity for perpetually
vacillating between the liberals and the Social-Democrats. The Russian
working class bas shown that it is the only class that is revolutionary to
the end, the only leader in the struggle for freedom, even for bourgeois
freedom. And now the great task of continuing the struggle for freedom can
and will be accomplished only by the revolutionary struggle of the
proletariat, drawing with it the working and exploited masses. Operating in
the new situation, among more conscious and united enemies, the working
class must refashion also its own Party, the R.S.D.L.P. In place of leaders
from the intelligentsia it is bringing to the fore leaders from among the
workers. A new type of working-class member of the Social-Democratic

Party is arising, independently carrying on all the activities of
the Party and, compared with the previous type, capable of rallying,
uniting and organising masses of the proletariat ten times and a hundred
times as great as before.

Itis to this new worker in the first place that we address our
Rabochaya Gazeta . This worker has grown out of the stage of
wanting to be talked to in childish language or fed with pap. He needs to
know all about the political aims of the Party, how it is built, its
inner-Party struggle. He is not daunted by the unvarnished truth about the
Party on whose strengthening, revival and rebuilding he is engaged. He is
not helped, but rather harmed, by those revolutionary phrases in general
terms and those sugary conciliatory appeals which he finds in the symposia
of Vperyod or in Trotsky’s newspaper Pravda , without obtaining from either the one or the other a clear, precise,
straightforward exposition of the Party’s policy and the Party’s position.

The Party’s position is a very difficult one, but the chief difficulty
is not that the Party has been terribly weakened and its organisations
often completely shattered, nor that inner-Party factional struggle has
become acute, but that the advanced section of Social-Democratic workers
has not realised clearly enough the nature and significance of this
struggle, has not rallied sufficiently for waging it successfully, has not
intervened, in it with sufficient independence and energy for creating,
supporting and consolidating that core of the Party which is
leading the R.S.D.L.P. from disorder, collapse and wavering on to a solidly
based road.

Thisroad has been fully pointed out by the decisions of the December
Conference of 1908, which were further developed in the decisions of the
plenary session of the Central Committee in 1910. This Party core consists
of that union of orthodox Bolsheviks (opponents of otzovism and bourgeois
philosophy) and pro-Party Mensheviks (opponents of liquidationism) which at
the present time is carrying out in practice, and not by virtue of
a merely formal attitude, the main work of the R.S.D.L.P.

Theworkers are being told that this union only intensifies and
accentuates factional struggle, a struggle against the liquidators and otzovists “instead of” a fight against liquidationism
and otzovism. This is sheer phrase-mongering, mere childish talk that
assumes the worker is not an adult but a child. It is an unpleasant truth
that, given the weakness of the Party, the shattered state of its
organisations and the inevitability of a base abroad, every trend easily
becomes a faction abroad that is virtually independent of the Party, but it
is ludicrous (or criminal) to hide this truth from the Social-Democratic
worker who has to rebuild his Party on the basis of a definite , precise and clear Party line. There is no doubt that the
most undesirable forms of factional struggle prevail among us at
present, but precisely in order to refashion the forms of this
struggle the advanced worker should not dismiss with a phrase or
contemptuously turn up his nose at the unpleasant (unpleasant for a
dilettante, a guest in the Party) task of refashioning unpleasant forms of
unpleasant struggle, but should understand the essence and
significance of this struggle and arrange the work in the
localities in such a way that for each question of socialist
propaganda, political agitation, the trade union movement, co-operative
work, etc., etc., the boundary is defined beyond which begins the
deviation from Social-Democracy to liberal liquidationism or
semi-anarchist otzovism, ultimatumism, etc., and should conduct Party affairs along the correct line defined by these boundaries. We make it
one of the main tasks of Rabochaya Gazeta to help the workers to
fix these boundaries for each of the most important concrete
problems of contemporary Russian life.

Theworkers are being told: it was the attempt at unity made by the
plenary session of the Central Committee in January 1910, which proved the
sterility and hopelessness of the inner-Party factional struggle that
“disrupted” unity. People who talk like that are either uninformed or
quite incapable of thought, or they are concealing their real aims
by means of some sort of resonant phrases that sound well but mean
nothing. The plenary session “disillusioned” only those who were afraid
to face the truth and buoyed themselves up with illusions. However great at
times the “conciliatory hotchpotch” at the plenum, the outcome was
exactly that unity which alone is possible and necessary.

If the liquidators and otzovists signed the resolution on the
fight against liquidationism and otzovism, and the next day still more
“zealously” stuck to the past, this only proved how impossible it is for
the Party to count on non-Party elements, it only showed more clearly what
these elements are like. The Party is a voluntary association and unity is
possible and useful only when people unite who are desirous and capable of
carrying out a common Party policy with at least some degree of
conscientiousness, or rather:

who are interested (through their ideas or tendencies) in carrying
out a common Party policy. Unity is impossible and harmful when it
attempts to muddle and obscure the consciousness of this policy, when it
attempts to bind by a fictitious tie those who are definitely pulling the
Party in an anti-Party direction. And unity between the main
groups of Bolshevism and Menshevism was achieved by the plenum and
consolidated, if not thanks to the plenum, at least through the plenum.

Aworker who does not want to be spoken to in childish tones cannot
fail to understand that liquidationism and otzovism are just as much
non-accidental, deep-rooted trends as Bolshevism and Menshevism. Only
inventors of fairy-tales “for workers” explain the difference between
these two last factions as due to disputes between “intellectuals”. In
reality these two trends, which have left their mark on the whole history
of the Russian revolution, on all the first years (in many respects the
most important years) of the mass workers’ movement in Russia, were
produced by the very process of the economic and political reconstruction
of Russia from a feudal into a bourgeois country, were produced by the
influences exerted on the proletariat by various bourgeois classes, or,
more correctly, were produced by the situation of various strata of the
bourgeoisie within which the proletariat acted. It follows that
Social-Democratic unity in Russia is not possible through the destruction
of one of the two trends which took shape in the period of the most open,
most extensive, mass, free and historically important actions of the
working class during the revolution. But it follows also that the
foundations for a real rapprochement between the two factions are not to be
found in well-meaning phrases about unity, about the abolition of factions, etc., but only in the internal development of the
factions. It is such a rapprochement that the party of the working class
has been experiencing since we Bolsheviks in the spring of 1909 finally
“buried” otzovism, {2} while the pro-Party Mensheviks, headed by Plekhanov, began
a no less determined struggle against liquidationism. There is no doubt
that the overwhelming majority of the class-conscious workers of
both factions side with the opponents of otzovism and liquidationism. Therefore, however harsh the inner-Party struggle on this
basis, a struggle which is at times difficult and always unpleasant, we
must not forget the essence of the phenomenon on account of its
form . He who does not see underlying this struggle (which in the
present state of the Party inevitably takes the form of a struggle of
factions) the process of the consolidation of a, basic Party core
of class-conscious Social-Democratic workers is like one who fails to see
the wood for the trees.

Itis the aims of such a consolidation of a genuine Social-Democratic
core that will be served also by Rabochaya Gazeta , which we
Bolsheviks are founding, having secured that the pro-Party Mensheviks
(headed by Plekhanov) agree to support our publication. It necessarily
makes its appearance as a factional publication, as a factional enterprise
of the Bolsheviks. Here, too, perhaps, persons will be found who cannot see
the wood for the trees and who will raise an outcry about going
“ back ” to factionalism. By setting out in detail our view of the
nature and significance of the Party unity that is really coming about and
is really important and essential we have already exposed the value of such
objections, which would in fact signify only confusing the problem of unity and concealing certain factional aims. We
desire above all that Rabochaya Gazeta should help the workers to
understand quite clearly from beginning to end the entire Party position
and all the Party aims.

Inembarking on the publication of Rabochaya Gazeta we are
counting on the assistance both of the Central Committee of our Party and
of the local organisations, as well as of individual groups of
class-conscious workers at present cut off from the Party. We are counting
on the assistance of the Central Committee, knowing that for a number of
months past it has not succeeded in arranging its work correctly in Russia, its failure being due to the fact that, apart
from the Bolsheviks and pro-Party Mensheviks, it has not found
help anywhere and has frequently encountered the direct opposition
of the other factions. This painful phase in the life of the Central
Committee will pass, and in order that this should happen the sooner we
must not simply “wait” until the Central Committee is re-established,
until it has gathered strength, etc., but immediately , on the
initiative of individual groups and local organisations, start—even if on
the most modest scale at first—that work of strengthening the Party line
and real Party unity on which the Central Committee too is
primarily engaged. We count on the assistance of the local organisations
and individual groups of workers, for it is only their active work on the
newspaper, only their support, their re actions, their articles, materials,
information and comments that can put Rabochaya Gazeta on a firm
basis and ensure its continuance.

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Notes:
{1}
Rabochaya Gazeta ( Workers’ Gazette )—a popular newspaper, the organ of the Bolsheviks, published in Paris from October 30
(November 12), 1910 to July 30 (August 12), 1912; nine issues appeared.
Pro-Party Mensheviks also contributed to the newspaper. Its founder and
leader was Lenin, who published more than 10 articles in it. The Prague
Conference of the R.S.D.L.P. (January 1912) noted that Rabochaya Gazeta resolutely and consistently defended the Party and the Party
principle and made It the official organ of the Central Committee of the
R.S.D.L.P. (Bolsheviks).

{2}
This refers to the resolution written by Lenin and adopted by the
conference of the enlarged editorial board of Proletary in June
1909: “Otzovism and Ultimatumism” (see present edition, Vol. 45,
pp. 442–46).