The RSDLP candidates in the forthcoming Duma elections will be nominated by local party organizations without distinction of views and tendencies. The minority of social-democratic workers everywhere will have to submit to the majority.

The notorious dual candidacies – simply nonsense, serving only to frighten foreign comrades and to extract money.

All that was needed was for the notorious ten "tendencies" to frighten [us] with ten candidacies and to beg for money abroad for each candidate.

There will be no dual candidacies. The Liquidators are so weak that they are utterly incapable of putting up second candidacies. We are conducting no negotiations whatsoever with the handful of party renegades – the Liquidators. Neither the Central Committee in Russia nor local organizations take the Liquidators seriously. Pay attention, for example, to recent events in Petersburg. The Liquidators reported in the newspaper *Nevsky Golos* (No. 6) that meetings were taking place in Petersburg with them (the Liquidators) regarding the conduct of the election campaign. Both *Nevskaya Zvezda* (No. 16) and *Pravda* (No. 61) of July 21 and 23 reported that they had not sent their representatives to the meeting; moreover, one participant in the meeting declared in *Nevskaya Zvezda* that workers throughout Russia would carry out the decisions of the January Conference of the RSDLP.

"The unification of different tendencies," he declared, with the Liquidators in mind, "is utterly inconceivable in a social-democratic election campaign" (*Nevskaya Zvezda* No. 16 of July 8 (21), 1912).

No amount of money in the world will win the sympathy of Russian workers for the Liquidators. But, of course, it is possible with money from the Board to put up fictitious second candidacies in various places. In that case, responsibility for such candidacies, which would in fact be the candidacies of the German Board, will naturally fall on the Board itself.

The money given to the Liquidators will serve them, lacking as they do a daily newspaper, for the founding of a competing organ. This money will be used for organizing a split by those who in years of struggle have proven their worthlessness; the money will be used for trips and the like, for the founding of a new party. – If the Board wishes at present by one means or another to help the Liquidators, then it will compel us, despite all our respect for our sister German party, to appeal to the International. Then we shall prove to the Vienna International Congress[152] with documentary evidence that the Board expressed its readiness through financial support to promote a split among us, to bring dual candidacies into being, and to galvanize this corpse – the shattered Liquidators. If the German comrades wish to help the RSDLP, they should transfer the money to the Central Committee of the old party, not to those organizing a new party.

After the Board cancelled the planned conference, it informed us that it "is not in a position to give money to any of the party groups in Russia for election struggle until there is indicated to us (the Board) collectively by all concerned an institution enjoying universal confidence and empowered to receive and distribute money."

This apparent neutrality of the Board amounts in reality to its refusal to support the working-class party in Russia because of slanders against it from foreign groups and the "conference" of the Liquidators.

In addition to the remarks made above, we consider it our duty to add the following.

The legally existing Russian newspapers, guided in the Marxist spirit, are at present the most important open mouthpiece for Russian social-democratic working masses in connection with the agitational work of the party.

The newspapers appearing abroad, illegal for Russia, cannot in essence claim the same significance as those mentioned above, although their principled importance for the theoretical illumination of the movement is, without question, extraordinarily great. It is well known how easily and sometimes thoughtlessly such newspapers are founded by small scattered groups of Russian émigrés abroad; these newspapers lead a miserable existence among these very groups and scarcely reach the hands of Russian party members. Therefore in essence one cannot assign them any considerable significance for party life in Russia.

After six months of struggle by anti-Liquidator newspapers (from January to June 1912), there is but a single organ of the Liquidators – *Nevsky Golos*. This newspaper as a political organ has virtually ceased to exist; in the course of a month and a half (from June to mid-August) only two issues appeared (Nos. 6 and 7). It is clear that no newspaper of this kind can withstand the police persecution that rages in Russia against all workers' newspapers and even many quite moderate liberal newspapers, if it does not draw vital force from close connection with the working masses.

Such newspapers, of major political importance and of direct practical significance, are now: the weekly *Nevskaya Zvezda* and the daily newspaper *Pravda*. Both newspapers appear in Petersburg; our political opponents from among the Latvian social-democracy give them the contemptuous nickname of organs of the "Lenin group." From the objective data set forth above, which can always be openly verified, it should become clear to our German comrades that this "Lenin group" in reality encompasses the overwhelming majority of Russian workers who are social-democrats.

From this it is entirely understandable why all reports coming from circles of Liquidators and groups sympathizing with them deserve not the slightest claim to credibility. All rumors which these groups, together with the Jewish (Bund) and Latvian social-democratic [organizations], having no direct connection whatsoever with the Russian movement, have spread about a convened or allegedly to-be-convened general conference of all "tendencies"[153], turn out to be sheer fabrication. No such conference, even if it actually took place, would play any serious role in the struggle of the Russian proletariat. Consequently, in essence, if one dares to use a sharp word, we are dealing here with fraud.

In order to illuminate for our German party comrades even better the facts relating to this question, which are undoubtedly of important political significance, we shall conclude by citing several excerpts from an article by Axelrod, one of the leaders of the Liquidators, appearing in the latest issue of the monthly *Nasha Zarya*.

Axelrod writes:

"The idea of a 'non-factional' social-democratic… organ is at present a utopia, and moreover a utopia… running counter to the interests of party-political development… We have, so to speak, no formally organized factions; instead there are various circles and groups, some of which adhere to more or less definite political, tactical, and organizational views, while others sway in all directions, stumbling in the way of the first… The central point and main source of intra-party discord is, on the one hand, the different attitudes of various party circles toward the new, open, social-democratic workers' movement, and on the other – essential disagreements in the sphere of immediate political tasks and in the political tactics of Russian social-democracy. Questions of both categories… become precisely now… especially burning, urgently pressing… And it is over them that Russian social-democracy is split into two main camps… The question arises: will the projected (by some workers in Petersburg and many intellectuals abroad) workers' organ be able to occupy a neutral position between these two opposing camps, and is such a position in principle permissible? Obviously not… To talk under such circumstances in the party of 'non-factionalism' as a panacea – means… deceiving oneself and others as to the actual state of affairs in social-democracy… Factional organization and consolidation is a direct obligation and urgent matter for advocates of party reform, or rather, revolution (in the party)."

In the last words Axelrod is obviously speaking of the Liquidators… We can only advise our German party comrades that if from various quarters they are told about "non-factionalism" or a non-factional conference – with the participation of Liquidators – for better orientation to demand a translation of the entire article by Axelrod mentioned above for the German social-democratic press. Then it will be possible to form a correct conception of certain fabrications.

Secret! For organized members of social-democratic parties only!