The Third Conference of the RSDLP (Second All-Russian)

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The Third Conference of the RSDLP. (“Second All-Russian”) was held in Kotka (Finland) on July 21-23 (August 3-5), 1907. Twenty-six delegates attended, nine of them Bolsheviks, five Mensheviks, five Polish Social-Democrats, five Bundists, and two Lettish S.D’s. The questions on the agenda were: participation in the elections to the Third Duma, election agreements, and the All-Russian Congress of Trade Unions. On the first question three reports were delivered: those of Lenin (against boycott) and Bogdanov (for boycott) on behalf of the. Bolsheviks, and that of Dan on behalf of the Mensheviks and the Bund. The Conference adopted Lenin’s resolution; on the question of the All-Russian Trade-Union Congress, four draft resolutions were submitted, which were handed over to the Central Committee of the RSDLP as material. One of the drafts was based on the text of a resolution proposed by Lenin.

1. Draft Resolution on Participation in the Elections to the Third Duma

Whereas,

(1) active boycott, as the experience of the Russian revolution has shown, is correct tactics on the part of the Social-Democrats only under conditions of a sweeping, universal, and rapid upswing of the revolution, developing into an armed uprising, and only in connection with the ideological aims of the struggle against constitutional illusions arising from the convocation of the first representative assembly by the old regime;

(2) in the absence of these conditions correct tactics on the part of the revolutionary Social-Democrats calls for participation in the elections, as was the case with the Second Duma, even if all the conditions of a revolutionary period are present.

(3) the Social-Democrats, who have always pointed out the essentially Octobrist nature of the Cadet Party and the impermanence of the Cadet electoral law (11-XII-1905) under the autocracy, have no reasons whatever for changing their tactics because this law has been replaced by an Octobrist electoral law;

(4) the strike movement which is now developing in the central industrial region of Russia, while being a most important guarantee of a possible revolutionary upswing in the near future, at the same time calls for sustained efforts towards converting the movement, which so far is only a trade-union one, into a political and directly revolutionary movement linked with an armed uprising,

the Conference resolves:

(a) to take part in the elections to the Third Duma too;

(b) to explain to the masses the connection of the coup d’état of 3-VI-1907 with the defeat of the December up rising of 1905, as well as with the betrayals by the liberal bourgeoisie, while at the same time showing the inadequacy of trade-union struggle alone and striving to convert the trade-union strike movement into a political and direct revolutionary struggle of the masses for the over throw of the tsarist government by means of an uprising;

(c) to explain to the masses that the boycott of the Duma is not by itself capable of raising the working-class movement and the revolutionary straggle to a higher level, and that the tactics of boycott could be appropriate only provided our efforts to convert the trade-union upswing into a evolutionary assault were successful.

2. Outline of a Draft Resolution on the All-Russian Congress of Trade Unions

The Conference considers it the duty of all members of the Party energetically to carry out the London Congress resolution on the trade unions, all local conditions being taken into consideration when effecting organisational contacts between the trade unions and the Social-Democratic Party or when the latter’s leadership is accepted by the former, and always, under all conditions, paying primary attention that the Social-Democrats in the trade unions should not confine themselves to passive accommodation to a “neutral” platform—a favourite practice of all shades of bourgeois-democratic trends (Cadets, non-party Progressists, Socialist-Revolutionaries, etc.,)—but should steadfastly uphold the Social-Democratic views in their entirety and should steadfastly promote acceptance by the trade unions of the Social-Democrats’ ideological leadership and the establishment of permanent and effective organisational contacts with the trade unions.