V. I.

Lenin

(LETTER TO THE EDITORS)

We should have welcomed, from all points of view, the appearance of
L. Martov’s articles in Luch , promising an analysis of the
question of “the tactical essence of the present dispute”, if the very
first article had not contained a blatant untruth. My words to the effect
that the dispute with the liquidators had nothing to do with the
organisational question [1] were declared to be “unexpected” by L. Martov. “Just look at this!” he
exclaimed. “All of a sudden, with the help of God, we have a change”, and
so on.

Yet L. Martov knows full well that there has been no change at all,
that nothing whatever unexpected has happened. In May 1910, over three
years ago, I wrote in a Paris publication, which Martov knows quite well,
“ about a group of legalist-independents ” (the ideas of Nasha Zarya and Vozrozhdeniye ) and said that it had “definitely
rallied together and definitely broken with the
Party”. [2]

It is obvious that here, too, the dispute does not concern the
organisational question ( how to organise the Party?) but the
question of the existence of the Party, of the secession of the
liquidators from the Party, of their complete breakaway from the
Party. Martov must realise that this is not a dispute on the question of
organisation.

In October 1911, in a publication equally well known to Martov, signed
also by me, it was said: “In reality, it is by no means the organisational
question that is now in the forefront”, but of the “ existence ”
of the
Party. [3]

The affairs of the liquidators must be in a bad way if Martov, to evade
an examination of the Party’s precise decisions, is telling fairy-tales and
publishing a blatant untruth.