V. I.

Lenin

The R.S.D.L.P. has passed through unprecedentedly hard years of rampant counter-revolution and is now on the right way to
re-establishing its organisation and increasing its forces and its guiding
influence on the Russian proletariat, which dealt powerful blows at the
autocracy in 1905 and will destroy it in the coming revolution.

The hard years 1908–11 were years of division; it was in that period
that the present Executive Committee of the Social-Democratic Party of
Poland and Lithuania, which had joined our Party in 1906 and had marched
with us Bolsheviks against the Menshevik opportunists, seceded from the
R.S.D.L.P.

The worker Social-Democrats of Poland should make a critical appraisal
of this secession of the present Executive from the R.S.D.L.P. Therefore I
very gladly accept the proposal of the Warsaw Committee of the
S.D.P. of Poland and Lithuania that I should briefly explain in Gazeta Robotnicza [4] the causes of the division in the Party and the sorry
role which the present Executive played in it, and should point out the
immediate tasks of the Social-Democratic proletariat of all Russia.

I

Our comrades, the Polish workers, are familiar with the
differences existing between the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks during the
revolution of 1905. A number of prominent representatives of the S.D.P. of
Poland and Lithuania, such as Rosa Luxemburg, were on the Mensheviks’ side
at first, in 1904, but the revolution soon revealed their error, clearly
demonstrating the Mensheviks’ opportunism.

The counter-revolution of 1908–11 initiated a new stage in Russian
history. The old autocracy moved a step closer to a bourgeois monarchy. The
Duma of the landlords and the big bourgeoisie came into being. Tsarism bad
not yet lost its feudal character, but it was pursuing a bourgeois agrarian
policy designed to institute private landownership as early as possible, at
the price of unprecedented ruin and extermination of millions of
peasants. Bourgeois liberalism made a sharp turn towards
counter-revolution, and indulged in veritable orgies of renegacy.

Unparalleled division and dissension prevailed among the intelligentsia
in general. The proletariat was subjected to persecution on the part of
tsarism, which was taking its vengeance for the revolution, and to torrents
of slander on the part of the renegades.

The task of the R.S.D.L.P. was to preserve the revolutionary
Social-Democratic Party of the working class by adapting itself to the new conditions of work.

The very first steps towards accomplishing that task brought out new
anti-proletarian trends in the R.S.D.L.P. that tended to undermine the very existence of the Party. They were engendered by the historical
situation which our counter-revolution had created. These bourgeois trends
are liquidationism and otzovism .

The liquidators, caught up by the wave of bourgeois desertion,
repudiated the revolution. Giving up the illegal Party as a bad job, they
sought only a legal basis for them selves in the allegedly
“constitutional” regime of June 3 (16) and advocated its constitutional
renovation. An “open workers’ party” and slogans of constitutional reform were the gist of their policy. It was not a Social-Democratic,
but a liberal labour policy.

Obviously, it would be simply ridiculous to compare the liquidators
with the West-European opportunists within the Social-Democratic workers’
parties (as the present Executive does under Tyszka’s influence). Our
liquidators re fuse to recognise the Party in its illegal, i.e., its
present, form, and are founding a new , legal party. It is not a
trend inside the Party, but a withdrawal from the Party. The liquidators’
obvious repudiation and destruction of the Party gave rise to sharp
resistance from the Mensheviks themselves.

The worker Mensheviks in Russia refused to follow the liquidators,
and outside Russia the Menshevik Plekhanov put himself at the head of the
“pro-Party” Mensheviks (anti-liquidators). Plekhanov has now publicly and
unequivocally admitted in the press that the liquidators are founding a new party.

We shall adds for the Polish workers’ information, that the
liquidators’ main press organs are: abroad, Golos Sotsial-Demokrata [5] (Martov, Dan, Axelrod and other Golos
supporters); in Russia, Nasha Zarya (Potresov, Levitsky,
Cherevanin and others). The “otzovists” (from the word otozvat , [1] meaning the Social-Democratic deputies to the Third Duma) boycotted the
Third Duma, for they did not realise the necessity of using the Duma
rostrum and all “legal opportunities” for revolutionary Social-Democratic
work. They reduced the slogans of the revolutionary tactics of 1905 to
meaningless phrases. Experience soon showed that boycotting the Third Duma
was an absurdity leading the Russian Social-Democrat boycotters to
anarchism even against their will. In the summer of 1907 most Bolsheviks
favoured a boycott; but as early as the spring of 1908 they had learned the
lesson taught by experience and very sharply rebutted otzovist propaganda
in St. Petersburg and Moscow. After being defeated so thoroughly in Russia,
the otzovists and their defenders eked out a miserable existence abroad in
the form of the absolutely impotent little group of Vperyod
(Lunacharsky, Alexinsky and others).

Needless to add that, owing to the weakness of the majority of
organisations in Russia and to the fact that the groups abroad were out of
touch with the work going on in Russia, most of those groups were quite
“freely” engaged in destroying and disrupting the Party, completely
ignoring all discipline and holding no mandate from any organisation in
Russia to direct a newspaper or publish pamphlets and leaflets. Besides the
little groups holding different views on questions of principle, there
sprang up, as usually hap pens, various little groups that had no
principles at all, and strove to make some little political capital by
broker age, petty diplomacy, and intrigues under the guise of “reconciling” and “uniting” the Party. Past masters in this respect
were Trotsky with the Vienna newspaper Pravda and Tyszka with the
Executive Committee.

II

The R.S.D.L.P. was confronted with the question of how to
re-establish the Party.

Clearly, it was impossible to re-establish the Party jointly
with those who wanted to liquidate the Party or with those who
boycotted the Duma and legal opportunities. Either the little groups abroad
which were pursuing that bourgeois policy must abandon it in submission to
the overwhelming majority of the organisations, groups and circles in
Russia, or Russia must re-establish the Party in spite of those
groups abroad.

In January 1910 the Central Committee of the R.S.D.L.P. held a plenary
meeting for the last time; it made an attempt to save the liquidators and
otzovists, who were breaking away from the Social-Democrats, and to guide
them on to the path of Party work. The absurdity and un-Social-Democratic
character of both deviations were so obvious that no one ventured
to defend them. It was unanimously recognised that both were
bourgeois trends, and that only by repudiating them could
conditions be provided for the revival of the Party.

But unanimous decision is insufficient if it is not followed by united
action. The liquidators and otzovists, contrary to the decisions of the
Plenary Meeting of the Central Committee, did not relax but
intensified their destructive work. It turned out that it was the
Party’s Central Organ, led by the Bolsheviks and the Poles, that fought
for the Party during a year and a half (January 1910 to
June 1911), with the Menshevik Plekhanov contributing vigorously to the
struggle against the liquidators.

“ Working” against the Party with might and main were the
liquidators, the Vperyod group, Trotsky and the Bund. The Letts
vacillated, most often siding with the liquidators.

The liquidators carried their destructive work to the point of
destroying the Central Committee of the Party! The Plenary Meeting resolved
to re-establish the C.C. in

Russia and to co-opt new members; but the liquidators would not even attend
a single sitting, and declared that both the illegal Party and the illegal
C.C. were “harmful”. Under these circumstances, can anyone compare the
liquidators with the West-European opportunists unless he is bent on
intrigue?

The Party was left without a C.C., and its disintegration was
unavoidable. Only the Russian organisations, i.e., those operating
in Russia, could re-establish it. And that is when Tyszka displayed his
hypocritical policy of intrigue in all its splendour by winning in the
Executive Committee a majority over the adherents of a more principled
policy and pushing the Executive to a break with the R.S.D.L.P., to the
point where it found itself between the Party and the liquidators
of the Party.

To explain that policy, which harms the Polish Social-Democratic
movement, we shall first of all cite a fact of the ideological
struggle in our Party.

The Plenary Meeting of the Central Committee unanimously condemned
liquidationism, as we have pointed out above. But one section of the most
important resolution (known as its Clause 1) was formulated in such a way
as to have the directly opposite meaning; it played into the hands of the
liquidators. This clause expressed the opinion that at present, i.e., at a
time of counter-revolution, the Social-Democrats were for the first time making full use of the methods of the international
Social-Democracy. This clause, which left a loophole for renegade theories,
was proposed by Tyszka, who tried to manoeuvre between the liquidators and
the Party. It is only natural that the liquidators should have
enthusiastically supported the clause, helping Tyszka to “victory”; some
of the Bolsheviks—the so-called group of “conciliators” (i.e., virtual
Trotskyists)—also went over to the side of the liquidators.

After the Plenary Meeting Plekhanov superbly and scathingly ridiculed
the clause (not knowing who its author was) for its “looseness”,
vagueness, and generality. I spoke after Plekhanov and told about my
fruitless struggle against Tyszka’s alliance with the “conciliators” and liquidators. [2]

In two years, not one of the numerous writers of the Executive
has spoken a single word in defence of that clause.

All that Tyszka’s manoeuvring has resulted in is a liquidationist
distortion of the views of the Party.

The results of this policy have been even more unfortunate in regard to
the organisational question.

The Central Committee does not exist. The Party can be re-established
only by a conference of the organisations in Russia. But how to convene
such a conference? Obviously, it must be convened not together
with those who are liquidating the Party, but without them .

Tyszka is walking the tight-rope, manoeuvring and playing at
“unification” of the Party with those who are liquidating it. First
Tyszka plus a small group of “conciliators” (a perfectly impotent little
group abroad, which did not during a whole year receive a single order for
its printed writings from any organisation in Russia) joined the
Bolsheviks, assumed control over the convening of a conference,
gave money to the agents who were to convene it, and dispatched those
agents, asserting as they did so that they were “unifying” the Party (an
assertion which brought Homeric laughter both from the liquidators and from
us).

The agents began their tour with Kiev , with a Menshevik
organisation whose status was so indisputable that even our sworn enemies,
Trotsky and the Letts, admitted this in the press. In view of the furious
attacks of the liquidators on our Conference, the Polish workers must know
that it was with the participation of the above-mentioned organisation that
the Russian Organising Commission for the convening of the Conference was
formed (in October 1911). And it was a delegate from that organisation
(Kiev) that was chairman of the Credentials Committee at the Conference!

It should be clear that the majority on the Russian Organising
Commission consists of Bolsheviks and part of the “pro-Party” (i.e.,
anti-liquidationist) Mensheviks. The other little groups were not
represented on it, being no more than fictitious units abroad having no
connections in Russia.

That is when Tyszka, in despair because there was no possibility of
mediating and intriguing, playing at unification with the liquidators,
dissociated himself from the

Russian Organising Commission and did not attend the Conference even though
he had been invited three times .

Instead, he attended a meeting of the liquidators [6] to discuss the convening of another
(liquidationist) conference, and then left it, saying that there were
liquidators there!! Is not a “conciliator” like that a buffoon? [3]

III

The January Conference of the R.S.D.L.P. united most of the
organisations in Russia: St. Petersburg, Moscow, the Volga, the Caucasus,
the South, the Western Territory. The Conference established that the
liquidators ( Nasha Zarya ) had placed themselves outside the
Party. It disclaimed all responsibility for the little groups abroad which
were disrupting the Party by their actions.

At its twenty-three sittings, the Conference examined all the tactical
questions in detail and adopted a whole series of resolutions in the spirit
of the previous four years work of the Central Organ and all the leading
Party bodies. The Conference defined its terms of reference as the supreme
Party body and elected the Central Committee.

It is quite understandable why the liquidators, and all the impotent
little groups abroad along with them, attack the Conference, foaming at the
mouth. The Conference condemned them. Every condemned person is entitled to
abuse his judges all day long.

But there is no other Central Committee, no other
Social-Democratic Party in Russia. Tyszka and the Executive who kept away
from this Conference and assure the Polish workers that it is possible
(with the help of brokers) to “unify” the Party with the liquidators, are
deceiving the workers. As a result of this deceit, the Polish workers were
unable to confer with their Russian comrades, to discuss with them tactics
and slogans at such an important time as the revolutionary upswing in April and May, as well as the elections to
the Fourth Duma.

The revolutionary upswing of the Russian proletariat is obviously
growing stronger. To assist this strengthening, consolidate the illegal
organisation, give the movement the correct revolutionary slogans, rebut
the opportunism of the legalist liquidators, imbue the legal organisations
with an anti-liquidationist spirit, and carry out the elections to the
Fourth Duma along these lines—these are the immediate tasks which the
R.S.D.L.P. is now carrying out in practice—tasks the theoretical attitude
to which was defined at the All-Russia Conference in January.

As far as the trend of their work is concerned, the Polish
revolutionary worker Social-Democrats are marching with us. I should
therefore like to close by expressing confidence that the proletariat of
Poland will be able to join us, the R.S.D.L.P., organisationally as well,
despite the vacillation of the present Executive on matters of principle.

---
Notes:
[1]
To recall.— Tr .

[2]
See present edition, Vol. 16, pp. 226–31.— Ed .

[3]
The Executive Committee, writing in Vorwärts , calls
Trotsky an agent of the liquidators, and in Czerwony Sztandar [7] it argues that there can be no unity, not only with the
liquidationist Left wing of the Polish Socialist Party, but with the
liquidationist Bund in Poland!! Tyszka, on the other hand, promises to
unify the R.S.D.L.P. with the Russian liquidators. — Lenin

[4]
Gazeta Robotnicza ( Workers’ Newspaper )—an illegal organ published by the Warsaw Committee of the Social-Democratic Party of
Poland and Lithuania from May to October 1906. Publication was resumed in
1912. The split among the Polish Social-Democrats in 1912 gave rise to two
parallel Party committees. There were two Warsaw Committees and two
newspapers bearing the same title of Gazeta Robotnicza , one of
them being published by the supporters of the Executive Committee in Warsaw and the other by the oppositionist
Warsaw Committee in Cracow. Lenin’s article “The Situation in the
R.S.D.L.P. and the Immediate Tasks of the Party” was published in the
Cracow Gazeta Robotnicza No. 15–16. For the split in the
Social-Democratic Party of Poland and Lithuania, see Lenin’s article “The
Split Among the Polish Social-Democrats”

[5]
See Note 20.

[6]
This refers to the meeting which the liquidators held in Russia in the
middle of January 1912. The meeting was called on the initiative of the
Bund and the Central Committee of the Social-Democratic Party of the
Lettish Territory. It is known as the “Meeting of National
Social-Democratic Organisations”. It was attended by two delegates from
the Lettish Social-Democrats, two from the Bund, one from the Caucasian
Regional Committee and one from the Social-Democracy of Poland and
Lithuania (this last delegate was present only at the second sitting). The
meeting set up an Organising Committee for convening the
Trotskyist-liquidationist August conference of 1912.

[7]
Czerwony Sztandar ( Red Banner )—an illegal newspaper published by the Executive Committee of the Social-Democratic Party of
Poland and Lithuania from 1902 to 1918 (Zurich-Cracow-Warsaw
Berlin). Publication was suspended between 1914 and 1917. In all 195 issues
appeared.