V. I.

Lenin

The Liquidators and “Unity” [2]

The seventh issue of Nevsky Golos , which appeared a few days ago, can only be described as hysterical. Instead of a labour
chronicle, nearly two pages of it contain choice abuse against
Pravda and Nevskaya Zvezda . Curiously enough, this abuse
is offered under the slogan of “unity” of the working class, of “unity”
in the election campaign.

Gentlemen—we shall reply to the liquidators—unity of the working
class is a great principle. But, really, you make yourselves ridiculous if,
while shouting about “unity”, you try to impose on the working class the
platform and the candidates of a group of liberal liquidationist
intellectuals.

Pravda has proved by means of accurate figures that “liquidationism is nothing in the working-class movement, and that it is
strong only among the liberal intelligentsia” ( Pravda No. 80,
August 1, 1912 [1]

).

Nevsky Golos No. 7, of August 17, now reviles those articles of
Pravda , calling them “feuilleton-like”, “Khlestakovian”, and
so on. And yet it does not even try to question the simple fact that in the
course of six months Pravda drew 504 contributions from
groups of workers, while the liquidationist papers drew only 15 .

What is the conclusion to be drawn from this but that all the shouting
and noise and abuse and clamour about unity are merely intended to cover up
the extreme and total impotence of the liquidators within the working
class?

No matter how much Nevsky Golos may abuse us, we shall calmly
point out the incontrovertible facts to the workers. Look at the
collections listed in Nevsky Golos No. 7, and at those made in
July and August “to replenish the funds of the newspaper” (i.e., in plain language, to restore the liquidationist
paper suspended for lack of support from the mass of the workers). The
report on those collections lists 52 contributions totalling 827.11
rubles. Of these, only two were group collections: one by “ the Moscow initiating group ”, amounting to 35 rubles, and the other by a
“ group of friends in Paris ”—8.54 rubles. Of the remaining 50
individual contributions, 35 added up to 708 rubles, i.e., over 20 rubles per contribution on the average .

Nevsky Golos may fume and abuse—the facts will be no less
true for that. It is common knowledge that the “initiating groups” are
groups of liquidators who have broken away from the working-class
party. Even Plekhanov admitted this openly and plainly as long ago as
April 1912.

A group of break-away liquidators has resumed—with the donations of
bourgeois liberal intellectuals—the publication of its newspaper to fight
the working-class press! And yet this group is shouting about
“unity”. Now how can anyone help laughing at that?

---
Notes:
[1]
See pp. 196–200 of this volume.— Ed .

[2]
Pravda appended to the article “ The Liquidators and ‘Unity’\thinspace” a critical survey of the charges made against the
newspaper by the liquidators. This section of the article was written by
M.S. Olminsky.