How the Congress was Constituted

Add a subpage to this text

Read the help page for usage.

 

This item was published as an editorial note to the resolution of the Third Congress “On the Constitution of the Congress” in Proletary, No. 1, May 27 (14), 1905.

In supplementation of the resolution adopted at the beginning of the Congress, the Central Committee deems it necessary, on the basis of subsequent information, to add the following. The Congress set the total number of votes in our Party at 71, namely: 62 from the 31 qualified organisations and 9 from the central bodies. The Congress did not recognise the Kremenchug, Kazan, and Kuban committees as qualified Party organisations. The following committees had voting delegates at the Congress: St. Petersburg, Moscow, Tver (at the conclusion of the Congress), Riga, Northern, Tula, Nizhni-Novgorod, Ural, Samara, Saratov, the Caucasian League (8 votes, the equivalent of four commit tees), Voronezh, Nikolayev, Odessa, Polesye, North-Western, Kursk, and Orel-Bryansk. Altogether 21 organisations with 42 votes. In addition there were the CC delegates and the representatives of the CC on the Council commanding four votes. All in all, 46 votes out of 71. Present with consultative voice were: the delegates from the Archangel Committee, the League of the Urals (a second delegate, who arrived towards the end of the Congress), the Kazan Committee, the Odessa Committee, the Ekaterinoslav, Kharkov, and Minsk groups, the Editorial Board of Vperyod, and the Committee of the Organisation Abroad. The delegate of the Kremenchug Committee had expressed a desire to take part in the Congress proceedings, but he arrived too late. Furthermore, the delegates to the Third Congress received a document during the proceedings from which it appears that, owing to the efforts of the Organising Committee to convene the all-Party Congress, representatives of the following organisations had arrived abroad: the St. Petersburg group of the CC, the Odessa group of the CC, the Nikolayev Committee, the Kharkov Committee, the Kiev Committee, the Ekaterinoslav Committee, the Kuban Commit tee, the Don Committee, the Donets League, the Siberian League, the periphery of the Moscow Committee, the Sormovo periphery, the Smolensk Committee, the Crimean League, and the Ukrainian Social-Democratic League. The document is a letter to “The comrades assembled in Congress at the invitation of the Organising Committee”, signed by the representatives of all the above-mentioned organisations. From this it will be seen that the Organising Committee actually succeeded in making possible an all-Party congress in the full sense of the word.

Altogether the Congress held 26 sessions. The following questions of tactics were on the agenda: (1) the armed uprising; (2) the attitude towards the government’s policy on the eve of and during the revolution; (3) the position on the peasant movement. Then questions of organisation: (4) the relations between the workers and the intellectuals within the Party organisations; (5) the Party Rules. Further, the questions dealing with our relationship towards other parties and organisations, namely: (6) the relationship to the breakaway section of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party, (7) to the non-Russian Social-Democratic parties, (8) to the “Socialists-Revolutionaries”, and (9) to the liberals. Further, (10) improvement of propaganda and agitation; (11) report of the CC; (12) reports of delegates from the local committees; (13) elections; (14) standing order for publication of the proceedings and decisions of the Congress, and for the assumption of office by newly elected functionaries.

The publication of the proceedings of the Congress has been entrusted to a committee specially elected by the Congress. This committee has already commenced its work.

CC, RSDLP