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Special pages :
Letter to the Central Committee of the RSDLP, January 2, 1904
Source: Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1974, Moscow, Volume 34, pages 218-219.
P.S.[1] January 2, 1904. I have just received the proofs of Axelrodâs article in Iskra No. 55[2] (No. 55 will be out in a couple of days). It is much more disgusting even than Martovâs article (âOur Congressâ) in No. 53. We have here âambitious fantasiesâ âinspired by the legends about Schweitzerâs dictatorshipâ; we have here again accusations about âthe all-controlling centreâ âdisposing at its personal (sic!) discretionâ of âParty members who are converted (!) into cogs and wheelsâ. âThe establishment of a vast multitude of government departments, divisions, offices and workshops of all kinds.â The conversion of revolutionaries (really and truly, sic!) âinto head clerks, scribes, sergeants, non-commissioned officers, privates, warders, foremenâ (sic!). The CC, it says (according to the Majorityâs idea), âmust be merely the collective agent of this authority (the authority of the Iskra editorial board), and be under its strict tutelage and vigilant controlâ. Such, it says, is âthe organisational utopia of a theocratic natureâ (sic!). âThe triumph of bureaucratic centralism in the Party organisationâthat is the resultâ... (really and truly, sic!). In connection with this article I again and again ask all CC members: is it really possible to leave this without a protest or fight? Donât you feel that by tolerating this silently you are turning yourselves into nothing more nor less than gossip-mongers (gossip about Schweitzer and his pawns) and spreaders of slander (about bureaucrats, i.e., yourselves and the Majority as a whole)? And do you consider it possible to conduct âpositive workâ under such âideological leadershipâ? Or do you know of any other means of honest struggle apart from a congress?
((The Martovites, apparently, have Kiev, Kharkov, Gornozavodsky, Rostov and the Crimea. This makes ten votes+the League+the editorial board of the CO+two in the Council=16 votes out of 49. If all efforts are at once directed towards Nikolayev, Siberia and the Caucasus, it is fully possible to leave them with one-third.))
- â This letter is a postscript to the previous letter of December 30, 1903, both being dispatched on January 5, 1904.
- â This refers to Axelrodâs article âThe Unity of Russian Social-Democracy and Its Tasksâ, published in Iskra Nos. 55 and 57. Lenin here refers to the first part of this article published in issue No. 55 under the sub-heading âLiquidation of Primitivism Summed Upâ.