V. I. Lenin

Reply to Liquidators’ Article in Leipziger Volkszeitung {2}

Anote on “a conference of organisations of the Russian
Social-Democratic Labour Party” appeared in No. 226 of
Volkszeitung {1} on September 28, but is regrettably based on one-sided and unverified
facts.

Weconsider it necessary to point out that the said conference was
actually in no sense a conference of Russian Party organisations. Russian
workers’ centres were not represented at the conference at
all. St. Petersburg was represented by the liquidators from the so-called
promotion group {3} who do not belong to the Social-Democratic Party and have been
fighting it fiercely in their magazine and newspaper. {4} Moscow was represented only by a delegate from an
insignificant section of the Party organisation, and he had been given an
imperative mandate to conduct the political line of the Party Conference
held in January 1912. The rest of Russia (Kiev, Yekaterinoslav, Kharkov,
the Volga and Ural regions, the Central Industrial Area, the Don district
and many others) was not represented at all, apart from Krasnoyarsk and
Sevastopol, but it was only from the liquidators’ magazines and the report
about the “conference” that the Party learned of there being any sort of
organisation in either city.

Fora long time it has of course been no secret to the

Party that a group of liquidators has been trying to call a conference with
the assistance of the Bund, which has essentially nothing to do with actual
Russian Social-Democratic activity. (For the information of German
readers let us add that when we speak about Russian Party work the
Bund is not included because its sphere of activity is con fined
exclusively to the Jewish proletariat.) However, the real character of this
attempt was so clear that Comrade Plekhanov replied to the invitation to
attend the “conference” that he would not do so not only because he
regarded the “conference” as being one-sided, but also because it was not
attended either by the “Party elements” or by the “anti-Party
elements”. That is exactly what was said in the report published by the
Organising Committee of the liquidators’ conference in September 1912. But
these words of the neutral Comrade Plekhanov are not in
the German report carried in No. 226 of Volkszeitung on September
28 inst. We put it now to every German comrade whether this report can be
considered honest. Even from the groups abroad which gave their formal
consent to the convocation of a conference together with the
liquidators, the former deputy of the Second Duma, Alexinsky, representing
the Vperyod group, left it as a sign of open opposition
to the liquidators’ party conference, because he did not regard it as a
valid party conference.

Itis our duty, however briefly, also to point out the following: In
the six months (from January 1 to June 30, 1912), the anti-liquidators’
newspapers in St. Petersburg, Zvezda and Pravda , united
550 workers’ groups as against the liquidators’ 16. Upon its appearance,
the latter’s new paper, Luch , {5} was given a hostile reception by the St. Petersburg
workers, who saw it as an attempt to split the Party. The liquidators were
roundly defeated in the election of workers’ representatives to the Duma
(elections to the workers’ curia of the Duma) on September 16 (29). Despite
its use of all the means of advertising, the group which had called this
private conference of liquidators fighting against the Party, failed to
mislead the Russian organisations. It is now making spasmodic efforts
through the same advertising channels to misinform the German comrades, at
least.

Wemost resolutely protest against this, and point out that the
liquidators’ anonymous information will continue to mislead the German
comrades until they demand that the “informers” should make a public
stand under their own names and with proof in their hands.

Central Committee of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party