V. I.

Lenin

The liquidators of all shades, writing in the legal Russian
press, are conducting a campaign of slander against the Party

Conference [2] with an easy shamelessness which might well be envied by
the Bulgarins and

Burenins. [3] The articles in Zhivoye Dyelo , which openly
question the delegates as to who sent them and, under the
protection of the censor ship, attack what cannot be defended in the legal
press, exemplify such disregard for the elementary rules of literary
decency that they are bound not only to evoke protests from the adherents
of the Conference, but also to disgust any fair-minded political leader. As
for the articles of the anonymous informer of

Vorwärts , [4] they reek of shameless braggadocio and florid
lying so overpoweringly as not to permit of any doubt that the liquidators’
order for them found itself in experienced hands. [1]

Driven into a corner, the groups and circles of liquidators do not
confine themselves, however, to a campaign of slander against the
Party. They are trying to convene a conference of their own. Every measure
has been taken, of course, to lend the Organising

Committee, [5] which is to convene this conference, the semblance of a
“pro-Party”, “non-factional”, “unity” body. After all, these are such
convenient words—when the liquidators want to hook all those who for some
reason are dissatisfied with the Party Conference. Trotsky was entrusted with singing all the virtues of the Organising Committee and
of the forthcoming liquidationist conference; nor could they have assigned
the job to anyone fitter than the “professional uniter”. And he did sing
them—in every variety of type his Vienna printer could find: “The
supporters of Vperyod and Golos , pro-Party Bolsheviks,
pro-Party

Mensheviks, [6] so-called liquidators and non-factionalists—in Russia
and abroad—are firmly supporting the work...” of the Organising
Committee.

( Pravda [7] No. 24.)

The poor fellow—again he told a lie, and again he miscalculated. The
bloc under the hegemony of the liquidators, which was being prepared in
opposition to the Conference of 1912 with so much fuss, is now bursting at
the seams and the reason is that the liquidators have shown their hand too
openly. The Poles refused to take part in the Organising
Committee. Plekhanov, through correspondence with a representative of the
Committee, established several interesting details, to wit:

(1) that what is planned is a “constituent” conference, i.e., not a
conference of the R.S.D.L.P., but of some new party; (2) that it is being convened on “anarchical” lines; (3) that the “conference is being convened by the liquidators”. After
these circumstances had been revealed by Comrade Plekhanov, there was
nothing surprising to us in the fact that the so-called Bolshevik (?!)
conciliators plucked up courage and resolved to convict Trotsky of—having
told a lie by listing them among the supporters of the Organising
Committee. “This Organising Committee, as it is now constituted, with its
obvious tendency to impose upon the whole Party its own attitude to the
liquidators, and with the principles of organisational anarchy which it has
made the basis for increasing its membership, does not provide the least
guarantee that a really general Party conference will be convened.” That
is how our emboldened “pro-Party” people comment on the Organising
Committee today. We do not know where the most Leftist of our Left—the
Vperyod group, who at one time hastened to signify its sympathy
with the Organising Committee—stand today. Nor is this of any
importance. The important thing is that the liquidationist character of the
conference to be held by the Organising Committee has been established by
Plekhanov with irrefutable clarity, and that the statesmanlike minds of the “conciliators” had to bow to this fact. Who remains, then?
The open liquidators and Trotsky.

The basis of this bloc is obvious: the liquidators enjoy full freedom
to pursue their line in Zhivoye Dyelo and Nasha Zarya “as before”, while Trotsky, operating abroad, screens them with
r-r-revolutionary phrases, which cost him nothing and do not bind them in
any way.

There is one little lesson to be drawn from this affair by those abroad
who are sighing for unity, and who recently hatched the sheet

Za Partiyu [8] in Paris. To build up a party, it is not enough
to be able to shout “unity”; it is also necessary to have a
political programme, a programme of political action. The bloc
comprising the liquidators, Trotsky, the Vperyod group, the Poles,
the pro-Party Bolsheviks (?), the Paris Mensheviks, and so on and so forth,
was foredoomed to ignominious failure, because it was based on an
unprincipled approach, on hypocrisy and hollow phrases. As for those who
sigh, it would not be amiss if they finally made up their minds on that
extremely complicated and difficult question: With whom do they want to
have unity? If it is with the liquidators, why not say so without mincing?
But if they are against unity with the liquidators, then what sort of unity
are they sighing for?

The January Conference and the bodies it elected are the only thing
that actually unites all the R.S.D.L.P. functionaries in Russia
today. Apart from the Conference there is only the promise of the

Bundists [9] and Trotsky to convene the liquidationist conference of the
Organising Committee, and the “conciliators” who are experiencing their
liquidationist hang-over.

---
Notes:
[1]
To acquaint the German comrades with the actual state of affairs in the
R.S.D.L.P., the editorial board of the Central Organ published a special
pamphlet in German, exposing, among other things, the methods of the
anonymous writer in Vorwärts .

— Lenin

[2]
This refers to the Sixth (Prague) All-Russia Conference of the
R.S.D.L.P., held January 5–17 (18-30), 1912.

[3]
Bulgarin, F. V. —a reactionary journalist and publisher of
the first half of the nineteenth century who engaged in denouncing and
slandering progressive magazines and writers of his day. He was notorious
for his denunciations of Alexander Pushkin.

Burenin, V. P. —a journalist who contributed to the reactionary newspaper Novoye Vremya . He engaged in vicious attacks
against representatives of all progressive social and political trends.

Lenin uses these two names as synonyms for individuals who resort to
dishonest methods of conducting polemics.

[4]
Vorwärts (Forward)—central organ of the German
Social-Democratic Party, published from 1891 to 1933. The slanderous
articles against the Prague Conference of the R.S.D.L.P. which appeared in
Vorwärts were written by Trotsky.

[5]
This refers to the Organising Committee set up by the January 1912
meeting of liquidators representing the Bund, the Caucasian Regional
Committee and the Central Committee of the Social-Democrats of the Lettish
Territory. Among those who took an active part in the work of the
Organising Committee in addition to the non-Russian Social-Democratic
organisations were the editorial boards of the Vienna Pravda and
of Golos Sotsial-Demokrata , the Vperyod group and representatives of the liquidators’ St. Petersburg “initiating
group”. Trotsky was the virtual head of the Organising Committee, which
was officially entrusted with convening the August 1912 anti-Party
conference.

[6]
The Vperyod group was an anti-Party group of otzovists,
ultimatumists, god-builders and empirio-monists (adherents of the
reactionary, idealist philosophy of Mach and Avenarius). The group was
formed in December 1909 on the initiative of A. A. Bogdanov and
0. A. Alexinsky. It published a printed organ called Vperyod . In
1912 it united with the Menshevik liquidators to form a general anti-Party
bloc (the August bloc) against the Bolsheviks. This bloc was organised by
Trotsky. Failing to gain support among the workers, the group virtually
fell to pieces in 1913–14. Its final disintegration occurred in 1917 after
the February Revolution.

The Golos supporters were Menshevik liquidators grouped around
Golos Sotsial-Demokrata (P. B. Axelrod, F. I. Dan, L. Martov,
A. S. Martynov, A. N. Potresov and others), which was published from
February 1908 to December 1911 first in Geneva and then in Paris.

The pro-Party Bolsheviks were a group of Bolsheviks who took a
conciliatory view of liquidationism and otzovism. Most of the conciliators
opposed the Lenin bloc of Bolsheviks and pro-Party Mensheviks. They urged
unprincipled unification of the Bolsheviks with various groups that had no
support among the masses but sought to exert influence in the Party.

The pro-Party Mensheviks were a small group of Mensheviks led
by Plekhanov. They had broken away from the Menshevik liquidators, and
opposed liquidationism in 1908-12.

[7]
Pravda (Vienna)—a factional newspaper published by the
Trotskyists from 1908 to 1912. Its first three issues were published in
Lvov, the rest in Vienna. Twenty-five issues appeared in all.

With the exception of its first two issues, which appeared as the organ
of the Ukrainian Spilka (Union), the newspaper represented no Party
organisation in Russia and was described by Lenin as “a private
undertaking”. Its editor was Trotsky. Under cover of “non factionalism”,
the newspaper opposed Bolshevism from the outset, and upheld liquidationism
and otzovism. It advocated the centrist theory of “co-operation” between
revolutionaries and opportunists within one and the same party. Following
the January 1910 Plenary Meeting of the Central Committee it took a frankly
liquidationist stand. It also backed the anti-Party Vperyod group
of the otzovists and ultimatumists.

In 1912 Trotsky and his newspaper were the initiators and chief
organisers of the anti-Party August bloc.

[8]
Za Partiyu ( For the Party )—a sheet which the pro-Party Mensheviks and conciliators published at irregular intervals in
Paris from April 16 (29), 1912, to February 1914. Five issues were brought
out. Among those who wrote for it were G. V. Plekhanov, S. A. Lozovsky and
A. I. Lyubimov. It was disseminated chiefly abroad and expressed mainly the
views of the Paris group of Plekhanov’s supporters.

[9]
The Bund (The General Jewish Workers’ Union of Lithuania,
Poland and Russia) came into being in 1897, at the founding congress of the
Jewish Social-Democratic groups in Vilna. In the main, it comprised
semi-proletarian Jewish artisans in the west of Russia. It represented
nationalism and separatism in Russia’s working-class movement.