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Special pages :
A. The Preparations For The Congress
- Preface
- A. The Preparations For The Congress
- B. Significance of the Various Groupings at the Congress
- C. Beginning of the Congress. The Organising Committee Incident
- D. Dissolution of the Yuzhny Rabochy Group
- E. The Equality of Languages Incident
- F. The Agrarian Programme
- G. The Party Rules. Comrade Martovâs Draft
- H. Discussion on Centralism Prior to the Split Among the Iskra-ists
- I. Paragraph One of the Rules
- J. Innocent Victims of a False Accusation of Opportunism
- K. Continuation of the Debate on the Rules. Composition of the Council.
- L. Conclusion of the Debate On The Rules. Co-Optation To The Central Bodies. Withdrawal of the Rabocheye Dyelo Delegates
- M. The Elections. End of the Congress
- N. General Picture of the Struggle at the Congress. The Revolutionary and Opportunist Wings of the Party
- O. After the Congress. Two Methods of Struggle
- P. Little Annoyances Should Not Stand in the Way of a Big Pleasure
- Q. The New Iskra. Opportunism In Questions Of Organisation
- R. A Few Words On Dialectics. Two Revolutions
- Appendix. The Incident of Comrade Gusev and Comrade Deutsch
A. The Preparations For The Congress[edit source]
There is a saying that everyone is entitled to curse his judges for twenty-four hours. Our Party Congress, like any congress of any party, was also the judge of certain persons, who laid claim to the position of leaders but who met with discomfiture. Today these representatives of the âminorityâ are, with a naĂŻvetĂŠ verging on the pathetic, âcursing their judgesâ and doing their best to discredit the Congress, to belittle its importance and authority. This striving has been expressed most vividly, perhaps, in an article in Iskra, No. 57, by âPractical Workerâ,[1] who feels out raged at the idea of the Congress being a sovereign âdivinityâ. This is so characteristic a trait of the new Iskra that it cannot be passed over in silence. The editors, the majority of whom were rejected by the Congress, continue, on the one hand, to call themselves a âPartyâ editorial board, while, on the other, they accept with open arms people who declare that the Congress was not divine. Charming, is it not? To be sure, gentlemen, the Congress was not divine; but what must we think of people who begin to âblackguardâ the Congress after they have met with defeat at it?
For indeed, let us recall the main facts in the history of the preparations for the Congress.
Iskra declared at the very outset, in its announcement of publication in 1900, that before we could unite, lines of demarcation must be drawn. Iskra endeavoured to make the Conference of 1902[2] a private meeting and not a Party Congress.[3] Iskra acted with extreme caution in the summer and autumn of 1902 when it re-established the Organising Committee elected at that conference. At last the work of demarcation was finishedâas we all acknowledged. The Organising Committee was constituted at the very end of 1902. Iskra welcomed its firm establishment, and in an editorial article in its 32nd issue declared that the convocation of a Party Congress was a most urgent and pressing necessity.[4] Thus, the last thing we can be accused of is having been hasty in convening the Second Congress. We were, in fact, guided by the maxim: measure your cloth seven times before you cut it; and we had every moral right to expect that after the cloth had been cut our comrades would not start complaining and measuring it all over again.
The Organising Committee drew up very precise (formalistic and bureaucratic, those would say who are now using these words to cover up their political spinelessness) Regulations for the Second Congress, got them passed by all the committees, and finally endorsed them, stipulating among other things, in Point 18, that âall decisions of the Congress and all the elections it carries out are decisions of the Party and binding on all Party organisations. They cannot be challenged by anyone on any pretext whatever and can be rescinded or amended only by the next Party Congressâ.[5] How innocent in themselves, are they not, are these words, accepted at the time without a murmur, as something axiomatic; yet how strange they sound todayâlike a verdict against the âminorityâ! Why was this point included? Merely as a formality? Of course not. This provision seemed necessary, and was indeed necessary, because the Party consisted of a number of isolated and independent groups, which might refuse to recognise the Congress. This provision in fact expressed the free will of all the revolutionaries (which is now being talked about so much, and so irrelevantly, the term âfreeâ being euphemistically applied to what really deserves the epithet âcapriciousâ). It was equivalent to a word of honour mutually pledged by all the Russian Social-Democrats. It was intended to guarantee that all the tremendous effort, danger and expense entailed by the Congress should not be in vain, that the Congress should not be turned into a farce. It in advance qualified any refusal to recognise the decisions and elections at the Congress as a breach of faith.
Who is it, then, that the new Iskra is scoffing at when it makes the new discovery that the Congress was not divine and its decisions are not sacrosanct? Does that discovery imply ânew views on organisationâ, or only new attempts to cover up old tracks?
- â Practical Workerââpseudonym of the Menshevik M. S. Makadzyub, also referred to as Panin.
- â The conference of 1902âa conference of representatives of RSDLP committees held on March 23-28 (April 5-10), 1902, in Belostok. The Economists and Bundists intended to proclaim this conference a Party Congress; a report drawn up by Lenin and presented by the Iskra delegate proved that the gathering lacked proper preparation and authority to constitute itself such. The conference set up an Organising Committee to convene the Second Party Congress, but nearly all its members were arrested soon after. A new Organising Committee to convene the Second Congress was formed in November 1902 at a conference in Pskov. Leninâs views on the Belostok conference are set forth in his âReport of the Iskra Editorial Board to the Meeting (Conference) of RSDLP Committeesâ.
- â See Minutes of the Second Congress, p. 20. âLenin
- â See present edition, Vol. 6, p. 309.âEd.
- â See Minutes of the Second Congress, pp. 22â23 and 380. âLenin