## On the Russian Organising Commission for Convening the Conference

Having heard and discussed the report of the representative of the Russian Organising Commission (R.O.C.) on its activities in convening the general Party conference, the conference considers it its duty to note the enormous importance of the work carried out by the Russian Organising Commission in rallying all Russian Party organisations, irrespective of faction, and in rebuilding our Party as an all-Russian organisation.

The activities of the R.O.C., in which Bolsheviks and Russian Menshevik Party members worked together in harmony, deserve all the more approval because the R.O.C. had to work under unprecedentedly severe police conditions and faced a whole series of obstacles and difficulties arising from the internal Party situation.

## On the Constitution of the Conference

Taking into account,

1) that the disintegration and break-up of the majority of Party organisations, caused by the broad wave of counter-revolutionary sentiment and the desperate persecution by tsarism and by the prolonged absence of a practical Party centre, the Central Committee, made the position of the R.S.D.L.P. extremely grave in the period 1908–1911;

2) that at the present time, in connection with the revival of the working-class movement, an intensified striving is everywhere to be observed among the advanced workers to restore the illegal organisations of the Party and to carry on systematic legal and illegal Social-Democratic work, and that on this ground the great and intensified initiative of the majority of the local organisations of the R.S.D.L.P. in regenerating the Party and convening a general Party conference has been displayed;

3) that the most urgent practical tasks of the working-class movement and of the revolutionary struggle against tsarism (guidance of the economic struggle, general political agitation, proletarian meetings, the election campaign for the Fourth Duma, etc.) make it absolutely essential to take immediate and most energetic measures to restore a competent practical Party centre closely linked with the local organisations;

4) that after an interval of more than three years since the last conference of the R.S.D.L.P. and after more than two years of attempts to convene a gathering of representatives of all the organisations of the Party, it has at last been possible to rally over 20 Russian organisations (St. Petersburg, Moscow, Saratov, Kazan, Samara, Nizhni, Sormovo, Rostov, Yekaterinoslav, Kiev, Nikolayev, Lugansk, Baku, the Tiflis group, the Vilna group, Dvinsk group, Yekaterinburg, Ufa, Tyumen, a number of localities in the Central Region, and others) around the Russian Organising Commission which convened the present conference; this Commission announced the conference to all Social-Democrats several months ago and invited to it absolutely all, without a single exception, the organisations of our Party, and all organisations were given the opportunity of participating in the conference;

5) that, despite a number of severe police breakdowns, all the Party organisations functioning in Russia, with purely isolated exceptions, are represented at the present conference;

6) that Social-Democratic groups of activists in the legal working-class movement in a number of major Russian cities (Petersburg, Moscow, the Caucasus) were invited to the conference and expressed sympathy with it;—

— the conference constitutes itself as a general Party conference of the R.S.D.L.P., which is the supreme organ of the Party.

## On the Absence of Delegates from the National Centres at the General Party Conference

While recognising the extreme importance of consolidating the unity of the Social-Democratic workers of all nationalities of Russia, and while finding it absolutely necessary to establish unity with the “nationals” in the localities and to strengthen the ties between the national organisations and the all-Russian centre, the conference is compelled at the same time to record the following:

1) Experience has definitively proved the impermissibility of such a state of affairs in the Party in which the “nationals”, working in complete isolation from the Russian organisations, carried out a federation of the worst type and—often independently of their own wishes—placed the most important Russian organisations in such a position that, without the national centres, which in practice do not at all participate in Russian work, the R.S.D.L.P. could not carry into effect the most essential and most important Party undertakings.

2) One of the national centres (the Bund{65}) during the past year openly assisted the liquidators and tried to organise a split in the R.S.D.L.P., while other centres (the centres of the Latvians and the P.S.D.{66}) at the decisive moment held aloof from the struggle against the destroyers of the Party—the liquidators.

3) The Party elements in the national organisations, and above all all the worker Party members, insofar as news of the life of the Russian organisations reaches them, decisively declare for unity with the Russian illegal Social-Democratic organisations, for support of the R.O.C. and for the struggle against liquidationism.

4) The Central Committees of all three national organisations were three times invited to the Party conference (by the Z.O.C., the R.O.C. and the delegates to the conference) and were given every opportunity to send their delegates.

In view of all this, and finding it impossible to delay the work of the R.S.D.L.P. because of the unwillingness of the national centres to send their delegates to the general Party conference, the conference places all responsibility for the non-appearance of the “nationals” on their centres, and instructs the Central Committee of the R.S.D.L.P. to strive tirelessly to achieve unity and the establishment of normal relations with the national organisations belonging to the R.S.D.L.P.

The conference expresses its conviction that, despite all obstacles, the Social-Democratic workers of all nationalities of Russia will wage the struggle for the proletarian cause, amicably and hand in hand, against all enemies of the working class.

## On Reports from the Localities

In connection with the reports from the localities heard, the conference notes:

1) everywhere in the localities, energetic work is being conducted among the Social-Democratic workers to strengthen the local illegal Social-Democratic organisations and groups;

2) everywhere the need is recognised for combining illegal and legal Social-Democratic work; the Social-Democrats everywhere have recognised that our illegal Party organisations must have as bases for work among the masses all manner of legal workers’ societies. However, for practical Social-Democratic work in the trade unions, co-operatives, clubs, etc., for the dissemination of Marxist literature, for utilising the Duma speeches of the Social-Democrats, etc., still not enough has been done, and in this sphere it is absolutely necessary to intensify the energy of the illegal Social-Democratic groups;

3) in the localities everywhere, without a single exception, Party work is carried on jointly and amicably, mainly by Bolsheviks and Menshevik Party members, and also by the Russian _Vperyod_ supporters where they exist and by all other Social-Democrats who recognise the need for an illegal R.S.D.L.P.,—and all this work is carried on in a spirit of defence of Party principle and of struggle against liquidationism.

The conference expresses confidence that, in connection with the beginning revival in the working-class movement, energetic work will continue to strengthen the old and create new, sufficiently flexible organisational forms that will assist the struggle of the Social-Democratic Party for the old revolutionary aims and revolutionary methods, under the new circumstances.

## On the Present Situation and the Tasks of the Party

The conference first of all confirms the resolution on the June Third regime and the tasks of the Party adopted by the Party conference in December 1908. The conference points to the particularly great importance of that resolution, the theses of which concerning the historical significance and class essence of the entire June Third regime, on the one hand, and concerning the growth of the revolutionary crisis, on the other, have been fully confirmed by the events of the past three years.

Of these events, the conference notes in particular the following:

a) The agrarian policy of tsarism, with which the governmental parties of the landlords and the big bourgeoisie, as well as, in practice, the counter-revolutionary liberals, associated their counter-revolutionary interests, not only did not lead to the creation of any stable bourgeois relations in the countryside, but did not save the peasantry from mass famines which signify an extreme worsening in the condition of the population and a colossal squandering of the country’s productive forces.

b) Remaining impotent in the sphere of world competition of the modern capitalist states and being thrust more and more into the background in Europe, tsarism, in alliance with the Black-Hundred nobility and the growing industrial bourgeoisie, is now endeavouring to satisfy its rapacious interests through a crudely “nationalist” policy directed against the borderlands, against all the oppressed nationalities, against the more cultured regions (Finland, Poland, the North-Western territory) in particular, and through colonial seizures directed against the peoples of Asia (Persia, China) who are waging a revolutionary struggle for freedom.

c) The economic upswing is paralysed to an enormous degree by the complete dislocation of the economic situation of the peasantry, the predatory budget policy of the autocracy and the decay of the bureaucratic apparatus; on the other hand, the growing high cost of living intensifies the poverty of the working class and the broad masses of the population.

d) In connection with this, the broad masses of the population, during the five-year existence of the Third Duma, have become more and more convinced of its unwillingness, inability and impotence to do anything to improve the position of the broad masses of the people and of the anti-popular character of the parties predominating in it.

e) In wide circles of the democracy, and in the first place among the proletariat, the beginning of a political revival is to be observed. The workers’ strikes of 1910–1911, the beginning of demonstrations and proletarian meetings, the beginning of a movement among the urban bourgeois democracy (student strikes), etc.—all these are manifestations of the growing revolutionary mood of the masses against the June Third regime.

Proceeding from all these data, the conference confirms the tasks facing the Party which are indicated in detail in the resolution of the December 1908 conference, specially noting that the task of the conquest of power by the proletariat, which leads the peasantry behind it, remains, as before, the task of the democratic revolution in Russia. The conference specially draws the attention of comrades

1) to the fact that, as before, the order of the day calls, first and foremost, for prolonged work of socialist education, organisation and rallying of the advanced masses of the proletariat;

2) to the need for intensified work to restore the illegal organisation of the R.S.D.L.P., which must utilise all manner of legal opportunities even more widely than hitherto, must be capable of guiding the economic struggle of the proletariat and is the only force that can guide its ever more frequent political actions;

3) to the need for initiating and extending systematic political agitation and all-round support for the incipient movement of the masses and for broadening it under the banner of the Party’s slogans carried out to the full. Republican propaganda against the policy of the tsarist monarchy must be specially brought to the forefront, among other things also as a counterweight to the widely conducted propaganda of curtailing slogans and restricting work within the framework of the existing “legality”.

## On the Elections to the Fourth State Duma

### I

The conference recognises as absolutely necessary the participation of the R.S.D.L. Party in the forthcoming election campaign for the Fourth Duma, the putting forward of independent candidates of our Party and the formation in the Fourth Duma of a Social-Democratic group which, as a part, shall be subordinated to our Party as a whole.

The main task of the Party in the elections, and likewise of the future Social-Democratic group in the Duma itself—a task to which all others must be subordinated—is socialist class propaganda and the organisation of the working class.

The main electoral slogans of our Party in the forthcoming elections must be:

1) a democratic republic

2) an eight-hour working day

3) confiscation of all landed estates.

In all our pre-election agitation, it is necessary to explain these demands as graphically as possible on the basis of the experience of the Third Duma and of all the activities of the government in the sphere of both central and local administration.

In inseparable connection with the three above-mentioned demands, all the other demands of the Social-Democratic minimum programme must be propagated, such as: universal suffrage, freedom of association, election of judges and officials by the people, state insurance of the workers, replacement of the standing army by the arming of the people, etc.

### II

The general tactical line of the R.S.D.L.P. in the elections must be as follows: the Party must wage a relentless war against the tsarist monarchy and the parties of the landowners and capitalists that support it, while tirelessly exposing the counter-revolutionary views of the bourgeois liberals (headed by the Cadet Party) and their sham democracy.

Special attention in the pre-election struggle must be devoted to dissociating the position of the party of the proletariat from all non-proletarian parties and to explaining both the petty-bourgeois essence of the sham socialism of the democratic groups (mainly Trudovik, Narodnik, Socialist-Revolutionary{67}) and the harm to the cause of democracy resulting from their vacillation on questions of consistent and mass revolutionary struggle.

As regards electoral agreements, the Party, remaining on the basis of the decisions of the London Congress, must:

1) in the workers’ curia put forward its own candidates everywhere and not permit any agreements here with other parties or groups (liquidators);

2) bearing in mind the great agitational significance of the mere fact of putting forward independent Social-Democratic candidatures, care must be taken that the Party should have its own candidates also in the second urban electoral assemblies and, if possible, in the peasant curia;

3) at re-ballotings (Article 106 of the Electoral Statute), when electors are being chosen by the second assembly of urban voters, it is permissible to conclude agreements with the bourgeois democracy against the liberals, and subsequently also with the liberals against all governmental parties. One form of agreement may be the drawing up of common lists of electors for one or more towns, in proportion to the number of votes cast at the initial elections;

4) in the five cities (Petersburg, Moscow, Riga, Odessa, Kiev) in which direct elections with re-balloting exist, at the initial elections independent Social-Democratic candidatures must be put forward in the second category of urban voters. In the event of a re-ballot here, in view of the obvious absence of a Black-Hundred danger, agreements are permissible only with democratic groups against the liberals;

5) no electoral agreements may relate to the putting forward of a common platform and must neither bind Social-Democratic candidates by any political obligations whatsoever, nor hinder the Social-Democrats from decisively criticising the counter-revolutionary nature of the liberals and the half-heartedness and inconsistency of the bourgeois democrats;

6) at the second stage of the elections (in the uyezd assemblies of delegates, in the gubernia electoral assemblies, etc.) it is necessary, wherever there is a need to defeat an Octobrist-Black-Hundred or generally governmental list, to conclude agreements on the distribution of deputy seats, in the first place with the bourgeois democracy (Trudoviks, Popular Socialists, etc.), and then also with the liberals (Cadets), non-party people, Progressists, etc.

### III

All Social-Democrats must immediately begin preparations for the election campaign, and to this end pay particular attention to the following:

1) the urgent formation of illegal Social-Democratic nuclei everywhere is necessary so that they may occupy themselves without delay with the preparation of the Social-Democratic election campaign;

2) due attention must be paid to strengthening and expanding the legal working-class press;

3) all electoral work must be conducted in close alliance with the workers’ trade unions and all other workers’ societies—and in choosing the forms of participation of these societies, their legality must be taken into account;

4) particular attention must be paid to the organisational and agitational preparation of the elections in the workers’ curia in the six gubernias in which the election of a deputy to the Duma from the workers’ curia is guaranteed (gubernias: St. Petersburg, Moscow, Vladimir, Kostroma, Kharkov and Yekaterinoslav). All, to the last man, of the worker electors—both here and in other gubernias—must be Social-Democratic Party members;

5) the assemblies of delegates from the workers must, guided by the decisions of the Party’s illegal organisations, decide who exactly is to be elected to the Duma from the workers, and must oblige all electors, on pain of boycott and trial for treason, to withdraw their candidatures in favour of the Party candidate;

6) in view of government persecution, the arrest of Social-Democratic candidates, etc., particularly consistent, systematic and cautious work is necessary, in order by all means, rapidly adapting to the various methods of police tactics, to paralyse all the subterfuges and violence of the tsarist government and get the Social-Democrats into the Fourth State Duma and then generally to strengthen the group of democratic deputies in that Duma;

7) the candidates of the Social-Democratic Party must be confirmed, and directives concerning the elections given, by the local illegal organisations and groups of the Party, under the general control and guidance of the Central Committee of the Party;

8) if, despite all efforts, it proves impossible to convene a Party congress or a new conference before the elections to the Fourth Duma, the conference empowers the Central Committee, or the institution which the latter shall appoint, to issue concrete instructions on questions of conducting the election campaign in individual localities or in conformity with special conditions that may arise, etc.

## On the Social-Democratic Duma Group

The conference recognises that the Social-Democratic Duma group has utilised the Duma rostrum in accordance with the line that was determined by the December (1908) Party conference and which must remain the guiding line for the direction of the Party’s Duma work.

The conference especially emphasises, as corresponding to the tasks of the proletariat, that feature of the group’s activity that, while most vigorously defending the interests of the workers and all measures that could improve their position (for example, in connection with the workers’ bills), it strove to shed light on all specific tasks from the standpoint of the general tasks of the liberation movement headed by the proletariat, pointing to the movement of the masses as the only path to the deliverance of Russia from the calamities and from the disgrace to which tsarism had brought her.

The conference hails the beginning of open actions by the workers in connection with the worthy conduct of the Social-Democratic Duma group, which in the Black Duma raised the banner of the Social-Democratic deputies of the Second Duma and exposed before the workers of the whole world all the provocative filth of the Black-Hundred tsarist gang which organised the coup d’état of 1907. The conference calls upon all politically conscious workers of Russia to render the most all-round support to the said actions of the Social-Democrats in the Third Duma and to the campaign of proletarian meetings started by the Petersburg workers.

The conference recognises that, in view of the forthcoming election campaign for the Fourth Duma, the Social-Democratic Duma group must devote even greater attention to explaining to the people the class essence of all non-proletarian parties (and in particular to exposing the counter-revolutionary and treacherous essence of the Cadet Party), guided in this by the resolution of the London (1907) Congress, which in all its most essential parts has been confirmed by the experience of the counter-revolution. The central slogans which must unify the actions of the Social-Democratic group, direct the character of its work and focus all specific demands and reforms on the main points must be the following three slogans: 1) a democratic republic; 2) an eight-hour working day; 3) confiscation of all landed estates for the benefit of the peasants.

## On the Character and Organisational Forms of Party Work

Recognising that the experience of the past three years has absolutely confirmed the basic theses of the resolution on the organisational question adopted by the December (1908) conference, and assuming that, on the basis of the beginning revival in the working-class movement, a further development of the organisational forms of Party work along the same path becomes possible—i.e., along the path of creating illegal Social-Democratic nuclei surrounded by as widely ramified a network as possible of all kinds of legal workers’ societies—the conference considers that:

1) the most active participation of the illegal Party organisations in guiding the economic struggle (strikes, strike committees, etc.) and the establishment of co-operation in this sphere between the illegal Party nuclei and the trade unions, particularly with the Social-Democratic nuclei in the trade unions, and also with individual functionaries of the trade union movement, are necessary;

2) it is desirable—having regard here to local conditions—that the Social-Democratic nuclei in the trade unions, organised on the occupational principle, should be combined with Party nuclei built on the territorial principle;

3) the greatest possible initiative is necessary in organising Social-Democratic work in the legal societies: unions, reading-rooms, libraries, workers’ entertainment societies of various kinds, the dissemination of trade union organs and the direction of the trade union press in the spirit of Marxism, the utilisation of the Duma speeches of the Social-Democrats, the training of legal lecturers from among the workers, the creation (in connection with the elections to the Fourth Duma) of workers’ and other electoral committees by districts, by streets, etc., Social-Democratic agitation in connection with the elections to the organs of city self-government, etc.;

4) energetic efforts are necessary to strengthen and multiply the number of illegal Party nuclei, to find new, possibly more flexible, organisational forms for these nuclei, to create and consolidate guiding illegal Party organisations in every city and to propagate such forms of mass illegal organisation as “exchanges”, factory Party meetings, etc.;

5) propaganda circles should preferably be drawn into day-to-day practical work: the distribution of illegal Social-Democratic and legal Marxist literature, etc.;

6) it should be borne in mind that systematic literary Social-Democratic agitation and especially the regular distribution of a properly and frequently published illegal Party newspaper may be of great significance also in establishing organisational links both between the illegal nuclei and between the Social-Democratic nuclei in the legal workers’ societies.

## On the Tasks of the Social-Democrats in the Struggle Against the Famine

1) The famine which has affected twenty million peasants in Russia demonstrates once more the completely unbearable, oppressed position of the mass of the poor peasantry, crushed by tsarism and the class of feudal landlords—a position unthinkable in any civilised state in the world.

2) The present famine provides yet another confirmation of the failure of the government’s agrarian policy and of the impossibility of ensuring any sort of normal bourgeois development for Russia as long as her policy in general, and her agrarian policy in particular, is directed by the class of feudal landlords who, in the person of the Right parties, reign supreme both in the June Third Duma and in the State Council and in the court circles of Nicholas II.

3) The Black-Hundred parties (headed by the Messrs. Markovs and the like), by their statements in the Duma and by placing the responsibility on the “lazy peasants”, have brought the shamelessness of the tsar-landlord gang, which is plundering Russia, to such a pitch that the most ignorant have their eyes opened and the most indifferent are becoming agitated.

4) The governmental hindrances to the work of famine relief, the police harrying of the zemstvos, of the committees that collect contributions and organise soup kitchens, etc., are arousing the widest discontent even in the circles of the zemstvos and the urban bourgeoisie.

5) The liberal-monarchist bourgeoisie, while helping with its press to inform society of the famine and of the government’s conduct, has, on the other hand, in the person of the Cadet group in the Third Duma, come forward as such a moderate opposition that its conduct can in no circumstances satisfy the democracy; nor can one reconcile oneself to the philanthropic manner in which the majority of liberals pose the question of famine relief.

6) Among the working class, quite independently of the worsening of its economic position which results from the increased number of starving and unemployed, there is observable a spontaneous striving to make collections for the benefit of the starving and to give other help. This striving, natural in every democrat, let alone a socialist, must be supported and directed in the spirit of the class struggle by all Social-Democrats.

Taking all this into account—the conference resolves that it is necessary:

a) to exert every effort of the Social-Democrats to extend propaganda and agitation among the broad masses of the population, especially among the peasantry, explaining the connection between the famine and tsarism and its entire policy, distributing in the countryside, for agitational purposes, the Duma speeches not only of the Social-Democrats and Trudoviks, but also of such friends of the Tsar as Markov II, and spreading the political demands of Social-Democracy: overthrow of the tsarist monarchy, establishment of a democratic republic, confiscation of the landed estates;

b) to support the workers’ striving to help the famished as far as possible, advising them to direct their donations exclusively to the Social-Democratic Duma group, to the workers’ press or to workers’ cultural-educational and other societies, etc., and to set up special nuclei of Social-Democrats and democrats when joining groups, committees and commissions for famine relief;

c) to endeavour to direct the democratic indignation aroused by the famine into demonstrations, meetings, mass open-air gatherings and other forms of the mass struggle against tsarism.

## On the Attitude to the Duma Bill on State Insurance of the Workers

### I

1. The portion of the wealth produced by the wage-worker which he receives in the form of wages is so insignificant that it barely suffices to satisfy his most vital needs of life; the proletarian is thus deprived of all possibility of making savings out of his wages against the loss of his capacity to work through injury, sickness, old age, disability