V. I.

Lenin

Over eighteen months ago, in August 1912, there occurred an
event of fairly great importance in the history of the working-class
movement in Russia. On the eve of the elections to the Fourth Duma, the
liquidators “united” with, as they put it, the representatives of
different trends at the August Conference, thereby attempting to prove that
they were not liquidators at all, that they had not liquidated anything,
and had no intention of doing so, and that “unity” between them and the
really serious, non-fictitious workers’ Marxist organisations was quite
possible.

The August Conference shifted the dispute between the liquidators and
their opponents to a different plane: it became, not only a question of
whether the liquidators’ theory and tactics were correct, but also of
whether the liquidators’ utterances were confirmed or refuted by their own deeds. Was their August Conference a fiction,
make-believe, a fraud and a bubble, or was it a serious affair, a sincere
step, something real that showed the possibility of the
liquidators rectifying their errors?

That is how the matter stood.

The liquidators’ deeds, the results of their August Conference, had to
provide an answer to this question.

This answer has now been given by the only Marxist body, namely, the
Lettish Marxists, recognised by all trends and groups without
exception as Marxists who have not violated Party decisions, and have
themselves gone through the famous August experience. We learn
from well informed sources that the meeting of the highest representatives
of the organised Lettish Marxists in Russia has drawn to a close. The
supremely authoritative character of this assembly of representatives of
the Lettish organised Marxists has not been challenged by anyone, not by a single trend or by a single
group; on the contrary, it was attended by representatives and authorised
delegates, not only from the majority of the workers of Russia
(anti-liquidators), but also from the liquidators , from their
leading, August body, as well as from the Bund and the P.S.P. Left-wing.

The eighteen months’ experience of August blocs and institutions was
discussed from every angle and appraised by those who had themselves gone
through this experience in an endeavour to help the liquidators rid
themselves of liquidationism.

What was the upshot of this discussion and appraisal?

“ The attempt on the part of the conciliators ,” the decision of the Lettish organised Marxists reads , “ to unite at all costs with the liquidators ( the August Conference of
1912) proved fruitless, and the uniters themselves became ideologically and politically dependent upon the liquidators ”....

This is the official decision of an unbiased body of Marxists, which
fully and conclusively exposes the August fiction!

What we have been saying for two years, and what the liquidators—while calling God to witness, and heaping abuse upon
us—have been denying, has now been proved and officially declared by
those who themselves participated in the August Conference, in the
August bloc, and in the leading August body.

The Lettish organised Marxists have officially admitted that the
“focal point of the inner-Party struggle during the past five years has
been the question of the liquidationist trend” long ago condemned by the
entire Party, and that their, the Lettish, representative was being recalled from the August leading body because that body (so runs the
decision of the Lettish Marxists) “ has not dissociated itself from the liquidators ”.

Thus, events have fully proved that we were right, and have once again
exposed the liquidators. We were right when we said that the August
Conference was a fiction, an imposture, a customary (in petty-bourgeois
parties and groups) pre-election fraud . The liquidators dared not
go to the elections with their banner and honestly stand by their convictions; they hid behind the August bloc, calling God to witness that
they were not liquidating anything.

The Letts have exposed this fraud.

Mind you, these Letts were and remain neutral , so neutral that
they decided not to enter into any organisational relations with any
section of the Russian organised Marxists! The exposure of the August
fiction and of the liquidators’ election masquerade is the more significant
for its coming from neutral organisations.

We shall have more than one occasion to revert to the decisions of the
Lettish Marxists, which prove once again how right we were when we said
that the unity of the Marxist workers in Russia was possible only in opposition to the liquidators. In conclusion, we would mention only
one particularly important decision on the national principle in the
Marxist organisation.

The Lettish Marxists themselves represent the workers of a
disfranchised and oppressed nation, and conduct their activities in centres
with very mixed populations. In Riga, for example, they have to deal with
German, Russian, Lettish, Jewish and Lithuanian proletarians. Long years of
experience have firmly convinced the Lettish Marxists of the correctness of
the principle of international unity in the local organisations of
the working class.

“ In every city ,” the Lettish Marxists’ decision reads , “ there must be one united organisation of Marxist proletarians, which must operate on the lines recognised by the Stockholm Congress, and in conformity with the commentaries of the All-Russia Conference of 1908 .”

These commentaries, as we know, definitely condemned the
principle of federation. Not the federation of national workers’
organisations, but international unity, a single organisation that conducts
activities in all the languages spoken by the proletariat in every
local area.

That is the only correct principle of Marxism. That is the only
socialist form of resistance to the nationalist philistines, who are trying
to split the proletariat into national sections . That is a demand
for the decision of the entire Party to be carried out, a decision the Bund
has violated and is continuing to violate in a most flagrant manner.

An end is coming to the deception sown among the workers by the
liquidators and Bundists, who are causing a split while trying to shout
loudest about “unity”. The decision of the Lettish Marxists, who are
neutral in our (Russian) conflict, has conclusively proved to all workers
that real unity can and must be built up only in opposition to
those splitters who defy the Party’s long-standing and constant demand for
the abandoning of liquidationism and of the principle that workers’
organisations should be divided according to nationality.