Published:
First published in 1926.
Sent from Geneva to Russia.
Printed from the original.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
1974,
Moscow,
Volume 34,
pages 336-337.
Translated: Clemens Dutt
Transcription\Markup:
D. Moros
Public Domain:
Lenin Internet Archive
(2005).
You may freely copy, distribute,
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• README
September 7, 1905
Dear friends,
Today I received news of your agreement to a conference on the Duma with the Bund, the Letts, etc.[2] Only today, although the thing happened a month ago! It is left for me to write you another “protest” (an occupation which, it seems, is becoming my profession)....
Definitely, I shall accuse you formally before the Fourth Congress of the crime called “restoration of duocentrism in defiance of the Rules and will of the Party”. Really, I shall. Just think—is it not duocentrism that you have introduced! I am obliged ex officio to run the organ of the Central Committee. Is that not so? But how can I do that when I do not get a scrap of writing on any question of tactics, and a for-r-r-rmal enquiry about the “pre-arranged” meeting on September 1 (new style) is left without reply! Just think what the outcome will be if there is disharmony between us! Is it so difficult to get someone to write in good time, if only on matters of “state importance”?
I have written about the Duma in Nos. 12, 14 and 15 of Proletary. I am also writing in No. 16, which will come out on September 12 (new style)[1] . In Posledniye Izvestia (September 1, new style, No. 247) the Bund talked itself popeyed. We’ll give them a whipping they won’t forget till they’re able to sit up again. These Bundists are such dolts and trumpeters, such nitwits and idiots, they are the limit! Iskra has got tangled up in lies, especially Martov in the Wiener Arbeiter-Zeitung (August 24, new style—translation in Proletary No. 15). For heaven’s sake, don’t rush in with an official resolution and do not give way an inch to this Bundist-new-Iskrist conference. Is it true that there will be no minutes? How can one possibly confer with these prostitutes without minutes?
I strongly warn you against the Armenian Social-Democratic Federation.[3] If you have agreed to its participation in the conference, you have made a fatal mistake, which must be rectified at all costs. It is represented in Geneva by a couple of disrupters who publish sheer trivia here and have no serious connections with the Caucasus. It is a Bund creatura, nothing more, specially invented to cultivate Caucasian Bundism. If you allow these people to attend a Russian Conference, that is, a conference of organisations working in Russia, you will get yourself into a terrible mess. All the Caucasian comrades are against this gang of disruptive writers (I know this from many people); and we shall soon trounce them in Proletary. You will only evoke protests from the Caucasus and a fresh squabble instead of “peace” and “unity”. For pity’s sake! How can one ignore the Caucasian Union, which is working so hard in Russia, and hobnob with the dregs of the Geneva marsh! I beg you most earnestly, don’t do it.
I have received the decision about dividing the money equally with the Organisation Committee. It will be carried out to the letter.
All the best.
N. Lenin
[1] See “The Boycott of the Bulygin Duma, and Insurrection”, “‘Oneness of the Tsar and the People, and of the People and the Tsar”’, “In the Wake of the Monarchist Bourgeoisie, or in the Van of the Revolutionary Proletariat and Peasantry?” and “The Theory of Spontaneous Generation” (present edition, Vol. 9).—Ed.
[2] The Conference of Social-Democratic Organisations in Russia was held in Riga on September 7–9 (20–22), 1905. It was attended by representatives of the C.C. of the R.S.D.L.P., of the Organisation Committee of the Mensheviks, of the Bund, of the Lettish Social-Democrats, of the Social-Democrats of Poland and Lithuania and the Revolutionary Ukrainian Party. The Conference approved the Bolshevik tactics of active boycott of the Bulygin Duma. The Conference decisions were assessed by Lenin, in his articles “The First Results of the Political Alignment” and “The Hysterics of the Defeated” ^^(see Vol. 9 of this edition)^^. The Mensheviks refused to sign the resolutions of the Conference.
[3] The Armenian Social-Democratic Federation—a nationalist organisation formed in 1903, shortly after the Second Congress of the R.S.D.L.P., which proclaimed itself the sole representative of the Armenian proletariat; like the Bundists, it recognised only the federative principle of party organisation.
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