Date: 1911-02
Source: ru:LS/v18

To the Russian Collegium of the Central Committee.
[Second Half of February 1911, Paris.] 2
In view of the possibility—and indeed the likelihood—of convening the Central Committee in Russia, we feel it our duty to set forth our views on certain crucial questions that bear directly upon our position as responsible leaders before the Party.
1. At the Plenum of January 1910,
we, as the responsible representatives of the Bolshevik current, entered into an agreement with the Central Committee, which was published in
11 C.O.3 Our application, submitted by three officials authorized by the Meshkovskoye faction,
formally constitutes a breach of this agreement, since it was prompted by the failure—on the part of the Voices and Forwardists—to fulfill the conditions precisely stipulated in that agreement.
It goes without saying that, compelled by the actual absence of the Central Committee and the onset of schism abroad, should we choose to submit this application, we would gladly withdraw it—or agree to a revision of the contract—if the Central Committee were able to convene and restore the party work and party line that had been disrupted by the aforementioned factions.
2. This party line was clearly defined at the Plenum, yet the Voices, Trotsky, and Co. have vainly sought to obfuscate it. This line consists in the rejection of bourgeois theory—so pernicious in its influence upon the proletariat—as well as of liquidationism and renegatism. Both of these currents, after the Plenum and in direct violation of its resolutions, developed and crystallized into anti‑party factions: the Trotzkists and the Voices.
The letter was written by Lenin in his own name, and on behalf of G. Zinoviev and L. Kamenev. The concluding section of the letter was added by G. Zinoviev. Ed.

On one side stood the Forwardists; on the other, the Bolsheviks. Along the party line laid out by the Plenum, only those who were truly “from the Mezhnevi” faction—namely, the so‑called Party members or Plekhanovists—resolutely took up the struggle against the Trotzkists and the Voices.
3. Therefore, as representatives of the Bolshevik current, we firmly protest the attacks launched by the Voices against Innocentius for having refused, in the summer of 1910, to recognize as candidates for co-optation those Mezhnevi members who remained Voices—or who had not fully demonstrated their party loyalty through their actions. In acting thus, Innocentius—himself the chief representative of a distinct shade within Bolshevism—was entirely correct; [and we possess written evidence that he, precisely as a representative of this particular shade, publicly affirmed, in the presence of witnesses from the P.S.D., the principles of party loyalty that unite all Bolsheviks in this very way].
4. The attempt by the Voices, operating from abroad on behalf of a schismatic faction overseas, to propose “their own” candidates for co-option to the Central Committee is nothing short of a blatant mockery. If, at the Plenum, there might still have been individuals who half-heartedly believed in the Mezhnevi’s promise to fight against the liquidators, then by the following year it had become abundantly clear that the Voices could not be trusted on this issue. We firmly protest the practice of putting the candidates of the overseas liquidator faction to a vote, and we demand that the Russian Plekhanovists be consulted—since they can undoubtedly nominate candidates among the Mezhnevi members who are true party members.
5. The schismatic maneuvers of the Voices, the Forwardists, and Trotsky have now been fully recognized—not only by the Bolsheviks and the Poles (in the Central Office), but also by the Plekhanovists (see the resolution passed by the Parisian Plekhanovists). We note that the first decisive step toward schism—the announcement of a conference and of a “Fund” for it, held outside the purview of the Central Committee—was taken by Trotsky on November 27, 1910; our own application (December 5, 1910) was, in essence, a forced response to that move. The Forwardist school became one of the focal points of this schism: Trotsky participated in it despite the explicit directive of the Party’s School Commission. The Voices publicly accused us of “disrupting” this school.
Considering it our duty to disrupt the anti‑party factions abroad, we call for the appointment of an investigative commission to examine the “Funds” of this school—and to investigate the role played in its support by Trotsky and the Voices. While shouting about “expropriatory measures” that we had definitively liquidated at the Plenum, the Voices were not only engaging in blackmail…