Date: 1913
Source: ru:PSS/v24

Dear Comrades!

The year we have spent working together in the State Duma has revealed a host of clashes and frictions between us and you—namely, the other seven Social-Democratic deputies. The situation even escalated to open polemics in the press, and your most recent decisions, adopted just before the closure of the State Duma in June 1913—when many deputies had already departed—finally demonstrated the utter impossibility and intractable deadlock of the current state of affairs. These decisions, passed by a vote of 7 to 6, consisted of denying the Bolsheviks (that is, six deputies) one of two seats on the Budget Committee and selecting only one (rather than two) for an important institution.

After repeatedly denying six working-class deputies one of two speakers allotted to them in the Duma—by a margin of 7 to 6—you have now reached the breaking point: this decision was the final straw that overflowed the cup.

You are well aware that we have acted—and continue to act—entirely and exclusively in the spirit of consistent Marxism, ideologically aligning ourselves with its overarching principles in every respect.

Comrades, you know full well that there are perfectly objective facts demonstrating that we are not exaggerating when we assert the complete alignment of our activities with the consciousness and will of the vast majority of Marxist, advanced workers in Russia. The history of Pravda—the first workers’ newspaper, founded in the wake of the workers’ movement’s upsurge in April–May 1912—has borne this out, uniting the majority of workers around it. The circulation of Pravda, reaching 40,000 copies, testified to this fact. The regular group meetings held across factories and workshops in support of Pravda, which the newspaper always published openly, further confirmed it. The elections to the Workers’ Curia in the Fourth State Duma, which returned all Bolshevik curial deputies and, compared with the Workers’ Curia elections in the Second and Third State Dumas, showed an undeniable, universally acknowledged, tremendous rise in the influence of Marxism and anti-liquidationist convictions among the conscious workers of Russia—these too bore witness to this reality. Finally, the election of a board for the Union of Metalworkers in St. Petersburg, as well as the history of the first workers’ newspaper in Moscow this year, left no doubt as to our position. It is self-evident that we regard it as our unconditional duty to act in strict accordance with the will of the majority of Marxist‑united workers in Russia.

Meanwhile, you seven deputies are acting independently of—and indeed against—the will of that very majority. You boldly adopt decisions that run counter to the will of the majority of conscious workers. Consider, for example, your decision to admit, on somewhat half‑hearted grounds, the non‑Social‑Democrat Jagello—a figure whom not a single Social Democrat in Poland has yet recognized—or your adoption, contrary to the will of the majority of workers, of nationalist slogans such as so‑called cultural‑national autonomy and the like. We do not know precisely what your relationship is with the liquidator trend; we suspect that you tend more toward vacillation in the direction of liquidationism than toward full adherence to it. But be that as it may, it remains an indisputable fact that you do not regard the judgments and demands of that majority of conscious workers in Russia—those with whom we walk hand in hand—as binding upon yourselves.

Needless to say, under such conditions, any socialist in any country of the world, any conscious worker, would regard your attempt to suppress us by a single vote, to deprive us of one of two seats on Duma committees or in other institutions, to exclude us from the list of Duma speakers, and so forth—as monstrous; to impose upon us tactics and policies condemned by the majority of conscious workers in Russia.

We recognize—and cannot but recognize—that at this juncture our differences extend far beyond the realm of Duma work alone. We are compelled to acknowledge that your efforts to suppress us and to deny us one of two seats are, without question, divisive and effectively eliminate any possibility of working together. Yet, mindful of the workers’ steadfast desire to preserve—at least before the outside world—the unity of Social‑Democratic deputies, especially in Duma proceedings, and taking into account our year‑long experience—which has shown that such unity can be achieved through agreement in Duma debates—we propose that you establish, once and for all, in clear and unambiguous terms, that no suppression of the six curial working‑class deputies by a vote of 7 to 6 is permissible. The preservation of genuine unity within the Social‑Democratic faction of the Fourth State Duma is possible only if the equality of the seven and the six is fully and irrevocably recognized, and if the principle of mutual agreement is applied to all questions of Duma work.

“For Truth,” No. 13, October 18, 1913

Printed according to the text of the newspaper “For Truth.”