Dear friend! It is necessary for us to clarify thoroughly the question on which we apparently diverge, and I earnestly beg you to submit this letter of mine for discussion by all members of the Central Committee (or the Executive Commission256). The divergence is as follows: 1) you think that peace with the Marchers is possible (Boris even congratulates us on peace! It's both laughable and tragic!); 2) you think that an immediate Congress is a confession of our impotence. I am convinced that you are grievously mistaken on both points. 1) The Marchers are going to war. Martov at a gathering in Geneva directly shouted that we are a force. In the newspaper they slander us and basely misrepresent the issue, covering up their intriguing with cries about bureaucratism directed at you. Martov continues to shout on all sides about the complete worthlessness of the Central Committee. In a word, it is naive and simply impermissible to doubt that the Marchers have set themselves the goal of seizing the Central Committee through the same intriguing, boycotts, and scandals. A struggle with them on this ground is beyond our strength, because the Central Organ is a terrible weapon and our defeat is inevitable, especially in view of the failures. By wasting time, you are heading toward certain and complete defeat of the entire majority; you are silently swallowing the foreign (Liga) insults to the Central Committee and inviting new ones. 2) The Congress will prove our strength, will prove that not in words alone, but in deed we do not permit the command of the entire movement by a clique of foreign scandal-mongers. A Congress is needed precisely now, when there is a slogan: struggle against disorganization. Only this slogan justifies the Congress and justifies it completely in the eyes of all Russia. By losing time, you lose this slogan, you prove your impotent, passive submission to the Marchers. To dream of strengthening one's position through constructive work while the Central Organ is being slandered, while the Marchers conduct boycotts and agitation—is simply ridiculous. This means slowly destroying yourself in an inglorious struggle with intriguers, who will then say (and are already saying): look how incompetent this Central Committee is! I repeat: do not deceive yourselves with illusions.

Either you will impose peace on the Marchers at the Congress, or you will be shamefully driven out or replaced at the first failure. Now the Congress has a purpose: to end the impossible disorganization, to remove the Liga, which makes a mockery of every Central Committee, to take firm control of the Soviet in our hands, and to set up the Central Organ properly. How to set it up?—in the worst case, by leaving even a five-person group (or restoring a six-person group); but this worst case is improbable if we have a large majority. Then we will either defeat the Marchers decisively (Plekhanov is already hinting at a new Vademecum*, seeing that there will be no peace, and threatening to attack both disputing sides. This is exactly what we need!), or we will openly say that we have no directing Central Organ and transform it into a discussion organ with free articles by the majority and minority under signatures (even better: remove the polemic with the Marchers into pamphlets, and in the *Iskra* wage war only against the government and against the enemies of social-democracy).

So: abandon the naive hope of working peacefully in such an impossible atmosphere. Direct all main forces toward tours; let Lan go, immediately secure your committees decisively, then launch an attack on others'—and... the Congress, the Congress no later than January!

P. S. If Martov asks Lan about the publication257, let Lan by all means pass the word to Kol, by all means, otherwise an enormous scandal! Martov and Dan speak to Kol at meetings with impossible insolence!

P. P. S. Today, the 18th, another base act by the Marchers: refusal to print my letter in No. 54, which is why I have left the editorial board**, on the pretext that Hans was against publishing documents (they lied! Hans was against it only on condition of peace!). The refusal is accompanied by a heap of vile insinuations to the effect that the Central Committee tried to take the Central Organ into its own hands, that negotiations were about restoring confidence in the Central Committee, and so on. The tactic is clear: to hypocritically cover up the opposition of the Dans, Martynovs etc. against the Central Committee and to quietly pour filth on the Central Committee in the newspaper. I will not by any means leave the base No. 53 without an answer. Telegraph immediately: 1) do you agree to print my letter outside the *Iskra*? Action*** 203; 2) do you agree to direct all forces at once toward the Congress? Action 204. If yes to both questions, then Action 407. If no to both, then Action 45.

The day after tomorrow I will send you my letter on my withdrawal from the editorial board. If you do not agree to an immediate Congress and intend silently to endure Marcher insults, then I will probably have to leave altogether, also from the Central Committee.

Written 18 December 1903

Sent from Geneva to Kiev

First published in 1929 in Lenin Miscellany X

Printed from the manuscript