V. I.   Lenin

Comment by Sotsial-Demokrat Editors on Statement by Commission Convening Plenary Meeting of C.C.[2]


Published: Sotsial-Demokrat, No. 23, September 14 (1), 1911. Published according to the Sotsial-Demokrat text.
Source: Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, [1974], Moscow, Volume 17, pages 245-246.
Translated: Dora Cox
Transcription\Markup: R. Cymbala
Public Domain: Lenin Internet Archive (2004). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.README


For a long time, ever since December 1910, the Editorial Board of the Central Organ has been warning the Party that the Golos group is sabotaging the plenary meeting.[1] We now have the facts of their sabotage of plenary meetings, first in Russia and then abroad.

The meeting in Russia was wrecked by Mikhail, Yuri, and Roman. By their “clever rebuttal” they merely confirmed their having been invited to attend a meeting of the Central Committee, if only to co-opt new members, and that it was not the wicked “factional” “Leninist” Bolsheviks who had invited them, but conciliators. Yet the three gentlemen refused to attend the meeting. It was their refusal that sabotaged the work of the Central Committee in Russia, for all the Bolshevik members of the Central Committee who went to Russia (and they were all of them practical leaders) were “eliminated” before they succeeded in calling a plenary meeting after that trio had refused to attend.

No matter what the Golos people say now, no matter what they swear to and what assurances they give, no matter how they try to confuse the issue and wriggle out by resorting to imprecations, feuds, and chicanery, there is no getting away from the facts. And it is a fact that a trio of the chief leaders of the legalists—Mikhail + Yuri + Roman, the closest associates of Mr. Potresov and of the other heroes of the Stolypin labour party—sabotaged the Central Committee in Russia.

Now the Golos group has sabotaged the Central Commit tee abroad as well. The Bolsheviks demanded that it be convened in December 1910; but the liquidationist Central Committee Bureau Abroad refused to convene it, pleading that that was the business of the Central Committee Bureau in Russia (this was a lie, because a meeting held abroad did not preclude one being held in Russia).

The second time, after the arrests in Russia, the Bolsheviks demanded that the meeting be convened abroad in April or May 1911. Again the Central Committee Bureau Abroad refused on the plea that half the “Russian Bureau” had survived.

Four or five months have passed since then, and the falsity of the excuses cited by the Bureau Abroad has been fully exposed: in four months not a single letter has been received from “that half” of the “Bureau”, there has been no news of a single step taken by that half, not a single spark of life shown. The Liebers, Igorevs, and Schwartzes deceived the Party. By referring to the non-existent Bureau in Russia, they refused to convene the Central Committee abroad. Yet, the Meeting of members of the Central Committee held in June, proved that nine members of the Central Committee were abroad at the time.

Anyone who is capable of thinking and of keeping a clear head amid the shouts, imprecations, feuds, and chicanery, cannot help seeing that the Central Committee has been definitely wrecked by the Golos people.

The Golos group has done everything it could to destroy the Party. The Party will do everything it can to destroy them.


Notes

[1] See pp. 23–38 of this volume.—Ed.

[2] Lenin wrote this comment to the statement made by the commission appointed by the Meeting of Central Committee members in June 1911 to prepare for a plenary meeting of the Central Committee. The statement cited facts of sabotage on the part of the liquidators to prevent preparations for a plenary meeting of the Central Committee in Russia and abroad.


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