Following the Plenum of the Central Committee in January 1910, the Bolsheviks made every effort to replenish the ranks of the Central Committee and to revive its activities. Members of the Central Committee, Makar and Innokenty, established contacts with local party organizations and with party activists engaged in the open workers’ movement; together with these comrades, they identified candidates for co-optation into the Central Committee, and so forth. Yet the Bolshevik attempts to reconstitute the Central Committee ended in the arrest of both men. From the Mensheviks, they received no assistance whatsoever in their work within Russia. The Menshevik delegates elected at the London Congress—Mikhail, Yuri, Roman—who had since joined the ranks of the independent legalists—not only refused to work within the Central Committee but also declared that they regarded the very existence of the Central Committee as harmful to the workers’ movement.

After a hiatus of several months, in 1910, Comrade Makar and Comrade Vyazemsky, who had escaped from exile, once again established a bureau tasked with convening the Central Committee[27]. A member of the bureau, the Bundist Yudin, took part in their work. Over the course of six months, they resumed contact with local organizations, nominated candidates for the Central Committee, dispatched agents, and—jointly with the Duma faction—participated in the organization of the electoral campaign for the by-elections in Moscow.

Among the Menshevik representatives, they managed to establish relations only with Comrade Kostrov, who came to attend just once or twice, merely to exercise his right to vote should the matter of convening the Central Committee arise.

After six months of activity, the Bolshevik “tsékists” were arrested along with several candidates slated for co-optation into the Central Committee, the comrade secretary, and a number of other individuals who had been involved in the bureau’s activities. In a letter sent from prison after their arrest, the tsékist comrades stated that for months on end, the gendarmes had systematically kept them under surveillance and were fully informed of all their movements—and that it was beyond doubt that a provocation had been orchestrated in connection with preparations to convene the Central Committee in Russia. Following the failure of two members of the bureau (Makar and Vyazemsky), the remaining tsékists—Yudin and Kostrov—did not engage in any substantive activity for twenty-one months; they did not even send a single letter either to the ZBCK or to the Central Committee.

As a result of eleven and a half years of work aimed at restoring the Central Committee in Russia, four of its Bolshevik members—Meshkovsky, Innokenty, Makar, and Vyazemsky—are now either in exile or in prison. From the gendarme investigations and from a series of arrests, it became abundantly clear that all the London-based candidates and Central Committee members were known to the authorities in meticulous detail, and that thorough surveillance had been organized against them. Under these circumstances, to make further attempts to convene the Central Committee in Russia would have meant courting certain failure, without the slightest hope of success.

The only viable way out of this predicament would have been to convene an overseas plenum. Nine individuals reside abroad who are entitled to participate in the plenum{105}. This would constitute more than half of the plenum’s full membership (fifteen individuals). Legally, they may—but in fact they ought—to declare themselves the plenum.

To propose postponing the formal convocation of the plenum until the remaining members could be assembled would have meant dragging things out for yet another several months.

With the exception of Mikhail, Yuri, and Roman, who had openly announced their break with the Central Committee and their preference for the liquidation of the party, the Mensheviks might “bring over” Kostrov and Pyotr. The Bolsheviks, for their part, might bring over Meshkovsky, Innokenty, Rozhkov, and Summer. It is impossible to say how many months this would take.

In light of the experience we have already endured, the real significance of this indefinitely protracted “work of bringing together” formal candidates is zero. Indeed, it is worse than zero, for it obscures from local organizations and groups the grim reality—a reality that demands energetic initiative—by substituting it with a game of mere seat‑allocations at the top. After eleven and a half years of unsuccessful attempts to restore the Central Committee’s activities, to continue to dangle new, endless delays before the party is nothing short of mockery. We have no intention of taking part in such mockery.

The actual state of the party today is this: in most localities, there exist small, irregularly convened party worker groups and cells. Everywhere among the workers, these groups enjoy considerable prestige. Everywhere, they wage fierce struggle against the liquidators and legalists in trade unions, workers’ clubs, and the like. Yet these groups remain unconnected with one another. They rarely encounter party literature. Within these worker groups, Bolsheviks and Mensheviks—party members, as well as some of the “Vperedists” who had not yet become entangled in the separate “Vperedist” faction established abroad—come together in solidarity.

Ever since the Plenum, the “Vpered” group has used its time abroad to strengthen and further isolate its own faction organizationally. Its representatives have withdrawn from the editorial board of the “Discussion Sheet”{106} and from the School Commission under the Central Committee. The “Vpered” group failed to implement the resolutions of the last Plenum—and, on the contrary, to the best of its ability, it actively obstructed the general party-wide Social-Democratic work. Preparations for the upcoming elections had long since begun in both legal and illegal party literature. And yet, in this politically crucial undertaking for the party, the “Vpered” group not only provided no assistance to the party—it did not even clearly state whether it supported participation in the elections to the Fourth Duma at all, or whether it opposed such participation. Even in their very latest literary pronouncements, the foreign leaders of the “Vpered” group continued to flirt with the “recallists.”

The far more serious anti‑party and anti‑social‑democratic force is represented by the faction of independent legalists (“Nasha Zarya,” “Delo Zhizni,” and those Mensheviks—such as Dan, Martov, and their allies—who cloak themselves in their protection). It has been conclusively demonstrated that these individuals are not subordinate to any Central Committee; on the contrary, they openly mock its resolutions. They neither can nor will implement the resolutions adopted at the latest plenum (“Do not underestimate the significance of the illegal party,” etc.). Indeed, they cannot refrain from pursuing a line that runs counter to the Party’s directives.

No Social Democrat can doubt that one may expect the “independent legalists” to launch an independent electoral campaign for the Fourth Duma—campaigning both alongside and against the Party itself.

The task facing Social Democratic Party members is clear: it is imperative to openly and resolutely call upon Party‑affiliated workers’ circles across Russia to begin preparing for the elections without delay. Only thoroughly Party‑aligned comrades—only those who have fully grasped the dangers posed by the liquidationist trend—should be put forward as Social Democratic candidates. There can be no postponement whatsoever of a direct confrontation with the independent legalists; it is essential to warn workers immediately about the grave threat that the independent legalists pose to the Social Democratic Party in the upcoming elections.

Such is the task before our Party today. Any deviation from this question—so vividly posed by life itself (and by the independent legalists)—any procrastination, any attempt to repeat the old game of “promises” and “assurances” from the legalists, threatens the Party with the gravest peril.

Our practical conclusion is this: the meeting of nine must, without fail and without delay, address the Party with an appeal that truthfully and comprehensively sets forth the failure of the Central Committee’s convocation in Russia, calling upon local circles to take the initiative and establish local and regional committees; to found and support a central organizational commission; to create and sustain literary Social Democratic organs—in which, as in “Zvezda,” published with the participation and backing of the Social Democratic Duma faction, there should be no place for liquidators—to wage a resolute, unyielding struggle against the “independent legalists,” and to foster closer collaboration in the workplace among representatives of genuinely Party‑aligned elements, regardless of their differing tendencies. Should not only five of the nine Central Committee members—but rather a substantial majority of the nine—agree to recognize themselves as a plenary session of the Central Committee, then this Central Committee meeting must promptly proceed to co-opt new members, establish an organizational commission tasked with convening a conference, and embark on the practical preparations for the elections to the Fourth Duma. Representatives of the Menshevik Party members must be immediately brought into the organizational commission and into the Central Committee itself. The Central Committee meeting must commit itself to a resolute struggle against the faction of independent legalists. And it goes without saying that such a struggle is entirely incompatible with the continued participation of the independent legalists in the Party’s central organs—organs which they had disrupted, obstructed, weakened, and kept in a state of “chronic ill‑health” for a full year and a half.

Written between May 19 and 23 (June 1–5), 1911.

First published here, based on a copy handwritten by F. E. Dzerzhinsky.