Published:
Proletary, No. 13, February 11, 1907.
Published according to the Proletary text.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Foreign Languages Publishing House,
1962,
Moscow,
Volume 12,
pages 93-94.
Translated:
Transcription\Markup:
R. Cymbala
Public Domain:
Lenin Internet Archive
(2004).
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We call our readers’ attention to the fact that the data on the elections of delegates by the St. Petersburg workers expose, to an ever greater extent, the way in which the Mensheviks got themselves votes for the Social-Democratic conference. From the Franco-Russian Subdistrict, for example, they “brought” 370 Menshevik Votes to the conference. Here the Bolsheviks did not count on a single valid Party vote. But what happened then? The delegate from the Franco-Russian Factory was a Bolshevik, who has now been chosen as elector!
And that is where an unexpected exposure of the Mensheviks came from.
To continue: the Menshevik weekly Nash Mir (No. 1, January 28) had the temerity to say of the Moscow District that “in the Bolshevik Neva and Moscow districts, exclusively Socialist-Revolutionaries were elected as delegates” (p. 14). It has already been shown in Proletary, No. 12 that this is a patent untruth as far as the Neva District is concerned, ’for there it was precisely the Mensheviks who were so thoroughly defeated by the Socialist-Revolutionaries.
Let us turn to the Moscow District. The Mensheviks consider this a Bolshevik district now that they have to find somebody to blame for the defeat other than them selves! But the Mensheviks must not forget that this time their words can be verified! We can take the official statement made to the Central Committee by the thirty-one Mensheviks on their reasons for leaving the conference (the printed pamphlet we analysed in Proletary, No. 12[1] ). Among the thirty-one signatures we find “five from the Moscow District”.
But the conference approved the mandates of four Bolsheviks and four Mensheviks from the Moscow District.
When Menshevik votes have to be mustered for the conference they count five Mensheviks against three or four Bolsheviks. In that case the Mensheviks want to be in the majority!
But when they want to shift the political responsibility on to somebody else they declare that the Moscow District is a “Bolshevik district”....
The Bolsheviks counted 185 votes for the Moscow District, and the Mensheviks, in that same pamphlet, admitted that they had challenged these votes only “tentatively”, that actually the votes should have been confirmed (p. 7 of the same pamphlet).
The Mensheviks counted their votes for the Moscow District as 48+98+97, altogether 243. Of these, 195 were challenged, although the Mensheviks themselves insisted at the time (p. 7 of the pamphlet) that all 243 votes should be confirmed!
The Mensheviks, therefore, considered themselves to have a very substantial majority in Moscow District—243 votes against 185. ... Nash Mir has, indeed, acted very injudiciously: its own words serve to prove that the Mensheviks acted dishonestly at the conference.
In conclusion we would remind the comrade who sent us the report on the Moscow District that it is extremely important to have complete figures, for each factory separately, on the election of delegates and on the number of votes polled by the different candidates.
[1] See pp. 29-32 of this volume.—Ed.
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