V. I.

Lenin

The Liquidators and Malinovsky’s Biography

In their numerous articles concerning Malinovsky’s resignation, [1] the liquidators assert, among other slanderous things,
that Malinovsky was brought into prominence only by the “splitting
activities” of the Pravdists, that Malinovsky was a political
“weathercock”, and so on and so forth.

Below we quote, word for word, an editorial article in the
liquidationist newspaper Luch , which the liquidators published the
day after Malinovsky was elected to the Duma, i.e., at a time when the
liquidators did not yet have to stoop to foul lies in their struggle
against their opponents.

The following is the full text of the article ( Luch , October 28, 1912, No. 37):

R. V. MALINOVSKY

(Deputy representing the Moscow workers)

The deputy elected by the workers of the Moscow Gubernia
is Roman Malinovsky, former secretary of the St. Petersburg Metalworkers’
Union. In his person the Social-Democratic group in the Duma acquires for
the first time a prominent practical worker in the trade union movement,
who in the grim years of reaction played an active part in the legal
working-class organisations.

Malinovsky has been a member of the Union since its foundation on May 1, 1906. At the beginning of 1907 he was elected
Secretary of the Union and held that responsible post continuously until
November 1909, when lie was arrested at a preliminary meeting of the first
workers’ delegation to the Temperance Congress. Deportation from
St. Petersburg interrupted his activities in the Union, but he continued to
maintain ideological contact with the organisation.

The years of Malinovsky’s secretaryship was a period in
the life of the Union in which it had to contend, not only with severe
external conditions, but also with the apathy of the workers
themselves. Malinovsky’s personal example served as an effective weapon
against this “internal enemy”.

His energy seemed inexhaustible. He undertook the responsible task of leading a strike with the same ardour as he carried out
the painstaking work of organisation.

And, what is most, important, Malinovsky always strove to
link up this day-by-day work with the general tasks of the working-class
movement in the struggle around the problems of the day, never losing sight
of the ultimate aim.

Trade union work took up a great deal of Malinovsky’s time and energies, but his activities did not end there. In one degree or
another he has participated in all the workers’ actions of the past few
years. He represented the St. Petersburg workers at the Co-operative
Congress in Moscow in 1908. At Easter 1909, he represented the
St. Petersburg metalworkers at the First Congress of Factory Panel Doctors,
where he read a paper on old age and disability insurance. The metalworkers
also elected him their delegate to the Temperance Congress, but his arrest
prevented him from attending.

In Moscow Malinovsky’s activities have of necessity been
more restricted. But here, too, he has not been idle; he took an active
part in the preparations for the Second Congress of Factory Panel Doctors,
and at one time was closely associated with the workers’ co-operative
movement, etc

The new Moscow deputy has always shown a lively interest
in the political working-class movement too.

In his convictions he is a Bolshevik. But this did not prevent him in 1908, when, after the London Congress, the Bolsheviks tried
to secure Party representation on the executives of the trade unions, from
opposing his political friends for the sake of unity of the trade union
movement. It did not prevent him at the First Congress of Factory Panel
Doctors from protesting against the disruptive conduct of the Moscow
Bolsheviks in the interests of unity of the workers’ delegation.

There is every reason to believe that the activities of
the new workers’ deputy will be as fruitful in the political field as they
have been in the trade union movement.

Such were the complimentary terms in which the liquidators themselves wrote about the Bolshevik Malinovsky two years ago . Could
they have written otherwise, considering the work that Malinovsky was doing
in the sight of all the workers? Even the liquidators, who at
that time were already his political opponents, could not but treat him
with pro found respect. They spoke of his preceding activities, which had
already brought him to the fore, in terms that were most flattering to
Malinovsky. They held him up as an example to others, There was not a word
about his being a “weathercock”. Nor was the fairy-tale yet invented that
ho had been returned to the Duma as a candidate of liquidationist
“unity”.

A fortnight later the first meeting of the united Social-Democratic
group in the Duma was held. The liquidators themselves unanimously elected
Malinovsky as the vice-chairman of the group, in exactly the same way as
they had previously supported his candidacy as chairman of workers’
delegations to public congresses (the Congress of Factory Panel Doctors,
for example), and so forth. After the Duma elections, the most prominent
member of the August bloc (the pillar of today’s journal Borba )
wrote letters to Malinovsky couched in the most flattering terms, in which
he all but called him a future Bebel.

But when it was discovered that Malinovsky sharply opposed
liquidationism, when he took a step which he him self shortly afterwards
had to admit was a profoundly erroneous one, the liquidators poured upon
the ex-deputy, upon whom they had previously showered their praise, the
filthiest slander they could collect in the garbage heaps of the
Black-Hundred newspapers.

Everybody knows that with his political background and talents
Malinovsky could have played an important role in any political group, and
that the liquidators would have honoured him had he associated himself with
them. But the liquidators are not ashamed to say that Malinovsky was pushed
into the forefront by the “split”.

It makes one blush with shame to see people using a man’s
private misfortune in their struggle against a hostile political trend. We
have no desire to compare Malinovsky with
Khrustalev [2] but what would the liquidators have said, after what
happened to Khrustalev, had their political opponents made the fate of this
one man an excuse for discrediting Menshevism, and “used” the Khrustalev
case against the entire Menshevik trend? And yet it is common knowledge
that Khrustalev was a Menshevik, that he was their prominent representative
at the London Congress, in the press, and so forth. It is common knowledge
that at one time the Mensheviks were proud of Khrustalev.

The Pravdists have no lack of political opponents; but not a single hostile newspaper—with the exception, perhaps, of the
Dubrovinites and Purishkevich’s paper—has sunk so low as the
liquidationist newspaper has sunk these days. Even the liberals have
behaved far more decently.

To hurl the most incredible insults at an opponent and then to end up
with a long-winded appeal for ... unity with this very slandered
opponent—such are the mean, canting and despicable tactics of all these
Martovs and Dans.

Their disgusting conduct in connection with Malinovsky’s resignation
should open the eyes even of the blind.