It is no secret to anyone that the rule of counter-revolution has caused among social-democrats a profound ideological disintegration and wavering of thought. Everywhere one encounters S.D.s who, to use the apt expression of comrade Ana (in No. 95 of *Luch*), wander about "some going to the forest, some going for firewood." In the press, social-democrats express such views as that workers should prepare themselves not for revolution and not in anticipation of revolution, that the democratic revolution is over, etc. On such views, which no single responsible group or organization in the RSDLP has set forth in any definite, precise, or formal manner, the so-called liquidators (*Nasha Zarya* and *Luch*), nonetheless constantly base all their tactical reasoning, supported by the present Central Committee of the S.D.s of the Latvian region.

In the press of this tendency we encounter at every turn either indications of a principled distinction between the present state system of Russia and the pre-October one (as though we had no need of revolution to achieve the foundations of political freedom), or comparisons of the present tactics of Russian S.D.s with the tactics of European S.D.s under a constitution, for example that of the Austrians and Germans in the 1870s of the nineteenth century (as though a constitution already exists in Russia, according to Milyukov's opinion), or the putting forward of the slogan of an open workers' party and freedom of coalitions (a slogan intelligible only given the existence of the general foundations and principles of political freedom and a bourgeois constitution in the country), and so forth and so on.

Under such conditions, to refuse precise determination of the tactical tasks of S.D.s and an assessment of the political situation, or to postpone such determination and such assessment—means not only not to struggle against lack of principle, disintegration, despair, and lack of faith, but directly to aid the disintegration, means indirectly to participate in supporting views that liquidate the old, party, revolutionary decisions of S.D.s.

Meanwhile, the RSDLP possesses a precise party answer to these urgent and fundamental questions. This answer was given by the December resolution of 1908, which is a party-binding resolution, repealed by no one.

The years that have passed since the adoption of this resolution have fully confirmed its correctness—its indications of changes in the nature of autocracy, of the counter-revolutionary character of liberalism, etc., and its conclusion that autocracy, though having renewed itself, continues to exist, that the conditions which provoked the revolution of 1905 continue to operate, that before the S.D. party stand the old tasks, which demand revolutionary solution and revolutionary tactics. The utilization of the Duma tribune and of all legal possibilities, absolutely demanded by the decisions of the same (December 1908) conference of the RSDLP, must be carried out entirely in the spirit of this revolutionary tactics and in the name of the old revolutionary tasks of the RSDLP.

Therefore we propose to all S.D. organizations once again to discuss carefully this resolution, confirmed, incidentally, by the January 1912 conference of the RSDLP, and to propose to the congress of S.D.s of the Latvian region definitely to reaffirm this resolution.

We draw the serious attention of all comrades to the unparty procedure of the August (liquidationist) conference of "S.D. organizations" of 1912,{75} which removed from the agenda the question of an assessment of the moment and of the determination of general tactical tasks, thereby throwing wide open the doors to all manner of renunciation of revolutionary tasks (under the pretext of the unproven character of the "forecast" regarding revolution, etc.).

We protest in particular against the Bund, which played so significant a role at the August conference and which at its IX conference went so far in this renunciation of revolutionary tasks as to remove from its program the slogan of a democratic republic and the confiscation of landlords' lands!