When a comrade{115} delegated by the Central Committee of the Social-Democracy of the Latvian Territory made a report at a plenary session of the Central Committee of the RSDLP on the state of work in the social-democracy of the Latvian Territory (this report was briefly set forth in No. 12 of our party's Central Organ), we gained an impression of the particularly "normal," painless development of Latvian social-democracy during this difficult period we are experiencing. This impression was created by the fact that the social-democracy of the Latvian Territory, being in its composition the most proletarian and guided chiefly by the workers themselves, has already accomplished the transition required by objective circumstances to the working out of a special tactic and the resolution of organizational tasks during this protracted period of counter-revolution. During the revolution, the Latvian proletariat and Latvian social-democracy occupied one of the first, most prominent places in the struggle against autocracy and all the forces of the old order. It is not without interest to note, incidentally, that official strike statistics for 1905 (published by the Ministry of Trade and Industry){116} show that Livonia Province stands in first place in respect to the persistence of proletarian strike struggle. In 1905, Livonia Province had a total of 53,917 factory workers, while the number of strikers was 268,567 – that is, almost five times (4.98 times) more! Each factory worker in Livonia Province struck on average 5 times that year. After Livonia Province comes Baku Province, where each factory worker struck 4.56 times, Tiflis Province – 4.49 times, Petrokov Province – 4.38 times, and Petersburg Province – 4.19 times. In Moscow Province in 1905, the number of striking workers was 276,563, that is, somewhat more than in Livonia Province, whereas the total number of factory workers in Moscow Province is 5 times greater than in Livonia Province (285,769 as against 53,917). From this it is evident how much more conscious, unanimous, and revolutionary was the appearance of the Latvian proletariat. But it is also well known that its guiding role as the vanguard in the assault on absolutism was not limited to strike struggle: it marched in the vanguard of armed uprising, it more than any other contributed to raising the movement to the highest stage – that is, to the stage of uprising. More than any other, it drew into the great revolutionary struggle against tsarism and landowners the Latvian agricultural proletariat and the Latvian peasantry.

Being one of the advanced detachments of Russian social-democracy during the revolution, the Latvian workers' party proved to be in the forefront also during the difficult period of counter-revolution. From the report mentioned above, we learned that in Latvian social-democracy there arose no special trend either from infatuation with revolutionary phrase-mongering (like our "recallists"), or from infatuation with legal possibilities (like our liquidators, who deny the illegal party and wave their hand at the tasks of restoring and strengthening the RSDLP). The Latvian social-democratic workers have managed to organize work to utilize all manner of legal possibilities: legal unions, various workers' societies, the Duma tribune, etc.; and at the same time they did not in the least "liquidate" the illegal, revolutionary social-democratic party; on the contrary, they preserved everywhere party illegal workers' cells, which will defend and develop the traditions of the great revolutionary struggle, persistently and steadfastly preparing ever wider and more conscious masses of fighters from the young generations of the working class.

Undoubtedly, among those causes which explain the successes of Latvian social-democracy, it is necessary to place first the higher degree of development of capitalism both in the city and in the countryside, the greater clarity and determinateness of class contradictions, their sharpening by national oppression, the concentration of the Latvian population and the higher degree of its cultural development. In all these respects, the circumstances in which the Russian working class has to develop and act are considerably less advanced. This backwardness now engenders a more acute crisis in the Russian section of the RSDLP. The petty-bourgeois intelligentsia plays a large role in our movement, bringing along with its merits also its defects: together with the working out of questions of theory and tactic, it brings the "working out" of every deviation from the social-democratic path into a special "tendency," as, for example, "recallism" and "liquidationism."

We take the liberty of expressing the hope that Latvian social-democracy, which has every reason to be proud of its successes, will not be so arrogant as to wave its hand dismissively at these painful questions of the RSDLP.

The more conscious the proletariat is, the clearer does it conceive its social-democratic aims, the more energetically does it struggle against all petty-bourgeois distortions in the workers' movement, the more does it concern itself with freeing its less developed fellow workers from the influence of petty-bourgeois opportunism.

The liquidationist tendency in the RSDLP is a product of Russian petty-bourgeois relations. The liberal bourgeoisie as a whole turns against the revolution, renounces it, curses the tactics of 1905, which, they say, are "bloody and barren," crawls before those in power, calls upon the people to confine themselves to legal methods of struggle alone. And the petty-bourgeois intelligentsia within our party succumbs to the influence of counter-revolutionary liberalism. A history of the revolution in five volumes is published ("The Social Movement in Russia at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century," edited by Maslov, Martov, and Potresov), and in this history the teaching of renegades is in fact propagandized – that the proletariat "overestimated" its forces, "underestimated" the forces of the bourgeoisie, etc. In reality, the masses of the proletariat underestimated the betrayal of the bourgeoisie, overestimated the forces of the bourgeoisie in the struggle for freedom, underestimated their own forces – the forces of the offensive of millions of the oppressed and exploited.

Legal journals are published ("Nasha Zarya" and "Vozrozhdenie"), in which it is preached that the restoration and strengthening of the illegal party, our old, time-tested RSDLP, is a "reactionary utopia." In an illegal Menshevik organ – the "Voice of the Social-Democrat" – such gentlemen are defended and the slogan is proclaimed: "struggle for legality." One of the most prominent leaders of Menshevism, Plekhanov, withdraws from the editorial board and from the staff of all these publications, declaring war against them and calling upon Menshevik party members to support and strengthen the revolutionary, illegal party of the proletariat – the RSDLP.

Thus our party has entered into a decisive battle against groups of independent legalists, who (that is, the legalists) incorrectly call themselves social-democrats. In reality, they are destroying the work of social-democrats, they are destroying the social-democratic organization of the working class, they are trading it for amorphous legal groups, which have no principles whatsoever and which in fact make the working class dependent upon liberal ideology and liberal political leadership.

Some ten years ago our party conducted a struggle against the so-called "economism," which is very akin to the present "liquidationism." Now the struggle is more difficult, insofar as all the forces of counter-revolution – not only the old, but also the new (contemporary), liberal-bourgeois counter-revolution – are directed toward destroying in the proletariat the traditions of 1905, toward destroying its illegal social-democratic party. But the working class, which knew how to be the leader in the revolution of 1905, will undoubtedly overcome all these deviations from the social-democratic path. Before the revolution of 1905, social-democrats worked for 20 years in completely illegal circles and built a party which leads millions in the assault on autocracy. After the revolution, we can – and consequently, we must – not only continue the work of illegal cells, but intensify it tenfold, surround these cells with a dense network of legal organizations, use the tribune of the Black Duma for our agitation, instil in the workers' masses the lessons acquired in revolutionary struggle, and create a social-democratic party which will lead tens of millions to a new assault on autocracy.

Published in July 1910 in the newspaper "Zinna" No. 100
Signature: N. Lenin

Printed from the newspaper text. Translated from Latvian.