NOTE ON THE APPLICATION SUBMITTED BY THE BUREAU OF THE “WORKERS’ GAZETTE” CIRCLE*.
The Bureau of the “Workers’ Gazette Circle,” which had organized Comrade Lepin’s lecture “Stolypin and the Revolution,”1 in response to the announcement of Comrade Alexinsky’s lecture, points out that Comrade Lenin had already stated publicly, in his own lecture,2 regarding the persistent overtures made by Alexinsky and Lunacharsky, that he did not consider it feasible—and would not engage in debate with—a group that could not be regarded as in any way serious. Accordingly, the Bureau of the “Workers’ Gazette Circle” deems it necessary to caution the public and to warn it that the note appended to the announcement of Comrade Alexinsky’s lecture is nothing more than a peculiar form of advertising. Received on 24 October 1911.
1 Lenin’s lecture, “Stolypin and the Revolution,” was delivered in Paris on 31 October. Most likely, the content of this lecture was identical to Lenin’s article, which, under the same title, was published in the Social-Democrat, Nos. 24, 31 (18) of 18 October 1911 (Works, Vol. XVI, p. 221). Lenin had also delivered a lecture on the same topic on 26 September 1911 in Switzerland, in Zurich (see Lenin’s letter to Shklovsky dated 25 September 1911, Lenin Collection, Vol. XIII, p. 195), as well as in Bern on 28 September and in Geneva on 2 October.
The original document consists of a printed sheet roughly the width of a newspaper column, apparently intended for distribution. In the upper right corner appears an impression of a round seal bearing the following inscription: “Parti social démocrate ouvrier de Russie. Bureau Central des groupes à l’Étranger.” (“Russian Social Democratic Workers’ Party. Central Bureau of Foreign Groups.”) Ed.

10–17 June 1911 »
V. The “June” 1911 Meeting of the Members of the Central Committee of the RSDLP
1921S
LETTER TO THE LONDON CANDIDATES FOR THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE, L. TYSHKE,
A. S. VARSKY, AND A. I. RYKOV
To our comrades in London—candidates for the Central Committee who are living abroad, in Berlin: Comrade Tyshke, Barsky, and Vlasov.
[April, around the 23rd, 1911. Paris.]
Dear comrades! You are probably already aware that the Russian Bureau of the Central Committee has been arrested (see “Retch” No. 96, dated 8 April, with the note “The Arrests in Tula”). We, the members of the Central Committee who reside abroad, are duty-bound to take all necessary measures to convene a foreign plenary session in order to restore the collegial body. According to the Statutes of the Central Committee, adopted at the most recent plenary session, there exists a provision explicitly requiring the convocation of a plenary session whenever more than half of the members of the Russian collegium are incapacitated—provided that the arrested members cannot be immediately replaced by candidates. In the present case, the entire Russian collegium (that is, the Bureau of the Central Committee) has been rendered incapacitated. Yet replacing them with candidates is now impossible, since, as you know, the process of co-optation has not yet taken place.
In light of all this, we, the undersigned, [propose] to appoint—indeed, we propose to convene—a meeting of those London-based members of the Central Committee who are residing abroad (in Paris, on 8 May, at 110 Avenue d’Orléans, at 3 p.m.). At this meeting of London-based members of the Central Committee, we propose to [discuss practical measures] to definitively constitute the collegial body of the Central Committee, to convene a plenary session of the Central Committee, and to adopt concrete resolutions aimed at the immediate convocation of such a plenary session.