V. I. Lenin

Source: ru:PSS/v54;es:MT
Translated: machine translation (DeepSeek) from the Russian; AI-translated.

The Russian workers’ centres were not represented at all at this conference. Petersburg was represented by the liquidators from the so-called Initiative Group, 584 who do not belong to the Social-Democratic Party and are waging a bitter struggle against it in their magazine and newspaper. 585 Moscow was represented only by a delegate from an insignificant section of the Party organisation, and he had an imperative mandate to pursue the political line of the Party Conference held in January 1912. 586 All the rest of Russia (Kiev, Yekaterinoslav, Kharkov, the Volga and Ural regions, the Central Industrial Area, the Don region, and many others) was not represented at all, with the exception of Krasnoyarsk and Sevastopol; but the Party learned of the existence of any organisations in these two towns only from the liquidators’ magazines and from the report on the “conference”.

Of course, it has long been no secret to the Party that a group of liquidators, with the assistance of the Bund, 587 which has essentially nothing in common with genuine Russian Social-Democratic work, was making an attempt to convene a conference. (For the information of German readers it should be recalled that when Russian Party work is spoken of, the “Bund”, whose sphere of activity is confined exclusively to the Jewish proletariat, is not included.) The true character of this attempt was, however, so clear that Comrade Plekhanov, when invited to attend the “conference”, replied that he would not do so not only because he considered this “conference” one-sided, but also because neither “Party elements” nor “anti-Party elements” were taking part in it. This was stated literally in the report published by the Organising Committee of the liquidators’ conference in September 1912. These words of the neutral Comrade Plekhanov are, however, omitted from the German report which appeared in the *Volkszeitung*, No. 226, of September 28 of this year. We now ask every German comrade whether this report can be considered conscientious? Even among those émigré groups which gave their formal consent to the convening of a conference jointly with the liquidators, Alexinsky, a former deputy of the Second Duma and a representative of the Vperyod group, 588 left it as a sign of open opposition to the liquidators’ Party conference, because he did not consider it a competent Party conference.

We must also point out, if only in a few words, the following. During the half-year (from January 1 to June 30, 1912) the anti-liquidator newspapers in Petersburg, *Zvezda* and *Pravda*, united 550 workers’ groups, while the liquidators united only 16. The latter’s new newspaper, *Luch*, 589 was received with hostility by the workers of Petersburg from the moment it appeared, as an attempt to create a split in the Party. At the elections to the Duma on September 16 (29) of this year, the liquidators suffered a complete defeat in the election of workers’ representatives (elections to the workers’ curia of the Duma). The group which convened this private conference of the liquidators who are fighting the Party has nevertheless failed, despite all the means of publicity at its disposal, to mislead the Russian organisations. It is now making frantic attempts, by the same means of publicity, to misinform at least the German comrades.

We protest against this most emphatically, and point out that the anonymous information of the liquidators will continue to mislead the German comrades until they demand that the “informants” come out publicly under their own names and with proofs in their hands.

The Central Committee of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party

1912