The contrary opinion, often spread by the Narodniks[83] and the Socialist-Revolutionaries, is based either on complete ignorance or on deliberate distortion of the facts.

    The very first draft programme of the Russian Social-Democrats, published by the Emancipation of Labour group in 1884, contained the demand for the "radical revision of agrarian relations" and the abolition of all feudal relations in the countryside (not having at hand the old Social-Democratic literature that was published abroad at the time, we

page 170

are compelled to quote from memory, so that we can vouch for the general sense, but not for the actual wording of the quotations).

    Later Plekhanov, both in the magazine Sotsial-Demokrat [84] (late 1880s), as well as in the pamphlets: Russia's Ruin and The Tasks of the Socialists in Fighting the Famine in Russia (1891-92), repeatedly, and in the most emphatic terms, stessed the vast importance of the peasant question in Russia. He even pointed out that in the impending democratic revolution a "general redistribution"[85] was possible, and that the Social-Democrats did not fear or shrink from such a prospect. He argued that while by no means a socialist measure, a "general redistribution" would give a powerful impetus to the development of capitalism, to the growth of the home market, to an improvement in the conditions of the peasantry, to the disintegration of the village commune, to the development of class contradictions in the countryside and to the eradication of all vestiges of the old, feudal bondage system in Russia.

    Plekhanov's reference to a "general redistribution" is of special historical importance to us, for it clearly shows that the Social-Democrats adopted from the very outset the theoretical formulation of the agrarian question in Russia to which they have adhered up to the present day.

    Ever since they founded their Party, the Russian Social-Democrats have maintained the following three propositions. First. The agrarian revolution will necessarily be a part of the democratic revolution in Russia. The content of this revolution will be the liberation of the countryside from the relations of semi-feudal bondage. Second. In its social and economic aspect, the impending agrarian revolution will be a bourgeois-democratic revolution; it will not weaken but stimulate the development of capitalism and capitalist class contradictions. Third. The Social-Democrats have every reason to support this revolution most resolutely, setting themselves immediate tasks, but not tying their hands by assuming commitments, and by no means refusing to support even a "general redistribution".

    Those who are unaware of these three propositions, who have not noticed them in all the Social-Democratic literature on the agrarian question in Russia, are either ignorant

page 171

of the subject or evade its essence (as the Socialist-Revolutionaries always do),

    Reverting to the history of the evolution of Social-Democratic views on the peasant question, we may also mention, among the literature of the late 1890s, "The Tasks of the Russian Social-Democrats" (1897),[*] where the opinion that Social-Democrats are "indifferent" to the peasantry is emphatically denied, and the general views of the Social-Democrats on this subject are reiterated -- and also the newspaper Iskra.[86] The third issue of that paper, published in the spring (March and April) of 1901, that is, twelve months before the first major peasant uprising in Russia, contained an editorial entitled "The Workers' Party and the Peasantry",[**] which re-emphasised the importance of the peasant question and, among a series of other demands, put forward the demand for restitution of the cut-off lands.

    This article may be regarded as the first rough draft of the agrarian programme of the R.S.D.L.P. that was published in the name of the editors of Iskra and Zarya [87] in the summer of 1902, and which was adopted by the Second Congress of our Party (August 1903) as the official Party programme.

    In this programme the whole struggle against the autocracy is regarded as a struggle waged by the bourgeois order against feudalism, and the imprint of Marxist principles is very distinctly seen in the main proposition of its agrarian section: "With a view to eliminating the survivals of serfdom which are a direct and heavy burden upon the peasantry, and for the purpose of facilitating the free development of the class struggle in the countryside, the Party demands. . . ."

    The critics of the Social-Democratic programme nearly all evade this main proposition: they overlook the obvious.

    In addition to demands that raised no controversy (abolition of the social-estate taxation of the peasantry, reduction of rents, freedom to use land at will), the agrarian programme adopted at the Second Congress also contained a number of clauses demanding the refunding of land re-

    The last clause about cut-off lands gave rise to most criticism among Social-Democrats. It was criticised by the Social-Democratic Borba Group, which proposed (if I remember rightly) the expropriation of all the landed estates,[88] and also by Comrade X.[89] (whose criticism, together with my reply,[*] was published in pamphlet form in Geneva, in the summer of 1903, just before the Second Congress. The delegates to that Congress had copies of it). Comrade X. proposed substituting, for the clause about cut-off lands and the refunding of land redemption payments, (1) the confiscation of church, monastery and crown lands, to be "transferred to the democratic state", (2) "the imposition of a progressive tax on ground-rent drawn by the big landowners, so that this form of revenue should go to the democratic state for the needs of the people", and (3) "the transfer of part of the private land (big estates), and of all the land, if possible, to large self-governing public organisations (the Zemstvos)".

    I criticised this programme and said that it was an "inferior and contradictory formulation of the demand for nationalisation of the land"; I stressed that the demand for peasant committees was important as a fighting slogan to rouse the oppressed social-estate; that the Social-Democrats must not tie their hands by pledging themselves to oppose even the "sale" of the confiscated land; that the restitution of cut-off lands does not in the least restrict the aims of Social-Democracy, but merely restricts the possibility of the rural proletariat and the peasant bourgeoisie advancing common aims. I stressed that "if the demand for all the land is a demand for the nationalisation of the land or its transference to the land-holding peasants of today, we shall appraise this demand from the standpoint of the proletariat's interests, taking all factors into consideration [our italics]; we cannot, for instance, say in advance whether, when the revolution awakens them to political life, our

page 173

land-holding peasants will come out as a democratic revolutionary party, or as a party of order" (pp. 35-36).[*]

    The same idea -- that the cut-off lands will restrict neither the magnitude of the peasant movement nor our support for it, if it develops further -- I also expressed in my pamphlet To the Rural Poor (published in 1903, before the Second Congress), where I say that cut-off lands are not a "barrier" but a "door",[**] and where, far from rejecting the idea of all the land going to the peasantry, I even welcome it in certain political conditions.

    As regards the"general redistribution", I wrote the following in August 1902 (Zarya, No. 4, p. 176) in defending the draft agrarian programme:

    "The demand for general redistribution contains the reactionary utopian idea of generalising and perpetuating small-scale peasant production, but it also contains (in addition to the utopian idea that the 'peasantry' can serve as the vehicle of the socialist revolution) a revolutionary element, namely, the desire to sweep away by means of a peasant revolt all the remnants of the serf-owning system."[***]

    Thus, reference to the literature of 1902-03 irrefutably proves that the authors of the demand about cut-off lands never regarded it as restricting the peasant movement, or our support of it. Nevertheless, the course of events proved that this part of the programme was unsatisfactory, because the peasant movement was growing in breadth and depth with tremendous speed, and our programme was giving rise to bewilderment among the broad masses. Yet the party of the working class must reckon with the broad masses and cannot keep on referring only to commentaries, which explain a programme that is obligatory for all by arguments that are not obligatory for the Party.

    The necessity for revising the agrarian programme was growing. At the beginning of 1905, one of the issues of the "Bolshevik" Social-Democratic newspaper Vperyod (published weekly in Geneva from January to May 1905) contained proposals for amending the agrarian programme,

page 174

among which was the proposal for deleting the clause about cut-off lands and substituting for it "support for the peasant demands, up to and including confiscation of all the landed estates".[*]

    However, at the Third Congress of the R.S.D.L.P. (May 1905), and at the "conference" of the "Minority" held at the same time, the question of revising the programme as such was not raised. Matters did not go beyond the adoption of a resolution on tactics, both sections of the Party agreeing to support the peasant movement, including confiscation of all the landed estates.

    Strictly speaking, those resolutions predetermined the question of revising the agrarian programme of the R.S.D.L.P. The last conference of the "Majority" (December 1905) accepted my proposal to suggest deleting clauses about cut-off lands and about the refunding of land redemption payments, and replacing them by the statement that we support the peasant movement to the point of confiscation of all the landed estates.[**]

    With this we may conclude our brief historical outline of the evolution of the views of the R.S.D.L.P. on the agrarian question.

    Comrade Maslov offers us Comrade X.'s draft, slightly modified. Specifically, he deletes the progressive tax on ground-rent, and amends the demand for transfer of the pri-

page 175

vate lands to the Zemstvos. Maslov's amendment consists, first, in that he deletes X.'s phrase: "and all the land, if possible" (i.e., to transfer all the land to the Zemstvos). Secondly, he deletes from X.'s draft all reference to the "Zemstvos"; and for the phrase "large self-governing public organisations (the Zemstvos)", he substitutes the phrase "large regional organisations". The whole clause as amended by Maslov reads as follows:

    "The transfer of private lands (big estates) to large self-governing regional organisations. The minimum size of land holdings to be alienated shall be determined by the regional popular representative body. "Thus Maslov emphatically rejects complete nationalisation, tentatively proposed by X., and demands "municipalisation", or, to be precise, "provincialisation". Against nationalisation, Maslov advances three arguments: (1) nationalisation would be an encroachment on the self-determination of nationalities; (2) the peasants, and particularly, homestead peasants, will not agree to the nationalisation of their land; (3) nationalisation will strengthen the bureaucracy inevitable in a bourgeois-democratic class state.

    Maslov criticises the division of the landed estates ("dividing up") merely as a pseudo-socialist utopia of the Socialist-Revolutionaries, but does not give his opinion of this measure as compared with "nationalisation".

    As for Rozhkov, he wants neither division nor nationalisation. All he wants is deletion of the clause about cut-off lands and the substitution of a clause like the following: "Transfer to the peasants without redemption of all lands that serve as instruments for their economic enslavement" (see Comrade N. Rozhkov's article in the symposium The Present Situation,[91] p. G). Comrade Rozhkov demands the confiscation of church and other lands, but says nothing about their "transfer to the democratic state" (which Comrade Maslov proposes).

    The next is Comrade Finn, who in his unfinished article (in Mir Bozhy,[92] 1906) rejects nationalisation and evidently is inclined to support the demand that the landed estates be divided up among the peasantry as their private property.

    Nor does Comrade Plekhanov say anything at all in his Dnevnik, No. 5, about making definite changes in our agrarian

page 176

programme. In criticising Maslov, he merely advocates "flexible tactics" in general, rejects "nationalisation" (using the old arguments advanced in Zarya ), and appears to be in favour of dividing the landed estates among the peasantry.

    Lastly, K. Kautsky, in his splendid essay "The Agrarian Question in Russia", sets forth the general principles of the Social-Democratic views on the subject, expresses his complete sympathy with the idea of dividing up the landed estates and apparently admits the possibility of nationalisation too, in certain conditions; but he says absolutely nothing at all either about the old agrarian programme of the R.S.D.L.P. or about the proposals to amend it. Summing up the opinions which exist in our Party on the agrarian programme of the R.S.D.L.P., we obtain the following four main types:

    (1) The agrarian programme of the R.S.D.L.P. should demand neither nationalisation nor confiscation of the landed estates (a view held by advocates of the present programme, or of slight amendments, like those proposed by Comrade N. Rozhkov);

    (2) The agrarian programme of tho R.S.D.L.P. should demand confiscation of the landed estates, but not nationalisation of the land in any form (this view is evidently supported by Comrade Finn, and perhaps by Comrade Plekhanov, though his opinion is not clear);

    (3) Alienation of the landed estates, together with a peculiar and restricted sort of nationalisation ("Zemstvoisation" and "provincialisation", as proposed by X., Maslov, Groman and others);

    (4) Confiscation of the landed estates and, in definite political conditions, nationalisation of the land (the programme proposed by the majority of the committee appointed by the Joint Central Committee of our Party; this programme, which this writer advocates, is given at the end of the present pamphlet).*

    Let us examine these opinions.

    The supporters of the present programme, or of a programme like that proposed by Comrade Rozhkov, start out

page 177

either with the idea that confiscation of the big estates, which will result in their division into small ones, is altogether indefensible from the Social-Democratic point of view, or with the idea that confiscation should not appear in the programme, that its place is in the resolution on tactics.

    Let us begin by examining the first opinion. We are told that the big estates represent an advanced capitalist type. Their confiscation and division would be a reactionary measure, a step backward to small-scale production. Social-Democrats cannot support such a measure.

    We think that this opinion is wrong.

    We must take into account the general and ultimate result of the present peasant movement, and not lose sight of it over individual cases and particulars. Taken as a whole, the landed estate in Russia today rests on a system of feudal bondage rather than on the capitalist system. Those who deny this cannot explain the present breadth and depth of the revolutionary peasant movement in Russia. Our mistake in putting forward the demand for the restitution of cut-off lands was that we did not sufficiently appraise the breadth and depth of the democratic, that is, the bourgeois-democratic movement among the peasantry. It would be unwise to persist in this mistake now that thc revolution has taught us so much. The advantages of the confiscation of all the landed estates for the development of capitalism would far outweigh the disadvantages that would ensue from dividing up the big capitalist farms. Division will not destroy capitalism, and will not throw back its development but will to a very great extent clear the ground for it and provide a more gcneral, extensive and firm basis for its (capitalism's) further development. We have always said that it is not by any means the business of the Social-Democrats to restrict the scope of the peasant movement: and at the present time to reject the demand for confiscation of all the landed estates would obviously mean restricting the scope of a social movement which has taken definite shape.

    Hence those comrades who are at present opposing the demand for confiscation of all the landed estates are committing the same mistake as those British miners who, working less than eight hours a day, are opposing the enactment of an eight-hour day for the whole country.

page 178

    Other comrades make a concession to the "spirit of the times". They say: In the programme, let us have the cut-off lands, or alienation of the lands which serve as instruments of enslavement. In the resolution on tactics, let us have confiscation. The programme must not be mixed up with tactics.

    Our reply to this is that the attempt to draw a hard and fast line between programme and tactics can only result in scholasticism and pedantry. The programme defines the general and basic relations between the working class and other classes. Tactics define particular and temporary relations. This is quite true, of course. But we must not forget that the entire struggle we are waging against the survivals of serfdom in the countryside is a particular and temporary task in comparison with the general socialist aims of the proletariat. If a "constitutional regime" à la Shipov lasts in Russia for ten or fifteen years, these survivals will disappear; they will cause the population untold suffering, but nevertheless they will disappear, die out of themselves. Anything like a powerful democratic peasant movement will then become impossible, and it will no longer be possible to advocate any sort of agrarian programme "with a view to abolishing the survivals of the serf-owning system". Thus the distinction between programme and tactics is only a relative one. But a mass party which is now operating more openly than before would be put to a very great disadvantage if the programme contained a particular, limited and restricted demand, while the resolution on tactics contained a general, broad and all-embracing demand. Whatever the case may be -- whether the Dubasov-Shipov "Constitution" becomes firmly established or whether the peasants' and workers' insurrection is victorious -- we shall have to revise our Party's agrarian programme again fairly soon just the same. So we need be in no particular hurry to build a house for all time.

    Let us now examine the second type of opinion. We are told: confiscation and division of the landed estates -- yes, but no nationalisation in any circumstances. Kautsky is quoted in support of division, and the arguments formerly advanced by all Social-Democrats (cf. Zarya, No. 4) against nationalisation are reiterated. We fully and absolutely

page 179

agree that, on the whole, division of the landed estates would, at the present time, be a decidedly progressive measure, both economically and politically. We also agree that in bourgeois society, the small proprietor class is, in certain conditions, "a stauncher pillar of democracy than the class of tenant farmers dependent on a police-controlled class state, even if it is a constitutional state" (Lenin, "Reply to X.", p. 27[*]).

    But we think that if we confine ourselves to these considerations at the present stage of the democratic revolution in Russia, if we confine ourselves to advocating the old position we took up in 1902, it will certainly mean that we are discounting the material changes that have taken place in the social-class and political situation. In August 1902 Zarya pointed out (see Plekhanov's article in No. 4, p. 36) that Moskovskiye Vedomosti [93] was advocating nationalisation, and expressed the undoubtedly correct opinion that the demand for nationalisation of the land is far from everywhere, and certainly not always, a revolutionary demand. This is true, of course; but in the same article Plekhanov says (p. 37) that "in a revolutionary period " (Plekhanov's italics), the expropriation of the big landowners may be essential in Russia, and in certain circumstances this question will have to be raised.

    Undoubtedly, the present situation is substantially different from what it was in 1902. The revolution rose to a high pitch in 1905, and is now gathering force for a new rise. That Moskovskiye Vedomosti should advocate nationalisation of the land (at all seriously) is out of the question. Quite the reverse: the keynote of the speeches delivered by Nicholas II and of the howling of Gringmut[94] & Co. has been defence of the inviolability of private landed property. The peasant uprising has already shaken up old serf-ridden Rus, and the dying autocracy is now placing its hopes entirely on the possibility of a deal with the landlord class, which has been scared to death by the peasant movement. Not only Moskovskiye Vedomosti, but Slovo too, the organ of the Shipovites, is attacking Witte and Kutler's[95] "socialist" draft, which proposes not nationalisation of the land, but only

    What does Maslov propose? He proposes a hodge-podge of nationalisation plus Zemstvo-isation, plus private ownership of land, but he does not indicate at all the different political circumstances in which this or that agrarian system would benefit (relatively) the proletariat. Indeed, in Point 3 of his draft Maslov demands the "confiscation" of church and other lands and their "transfer to the democratic state". This is nationalisation pure and simple. Why, one may ask, did he make no reservation about the political circumstances that would make nationalisation innocuous in bourgeois society? Why did he not propose here Zemstvo-isation instead of nationalisation? Why did he choose a formulation that precludes the sale of the confiscated land?[*] Maslov has replied to none of these questions.

    In proposing the nationalisation of church, monastery and crown lands, and yet arguing against nationalisation in general, Maslov defeats his own purpose. His arguments against nationalisation are partly incomplete and inexact, and partly very feeble. First argument: nationalisation encroaches on the self-determination of nationalities. The authorities in St. Petersburg should not control the land in Transcaucasia. This is not an argument, but a sheer misunderstanding. In the first place, our programme recognises the right of nationalities to self-determination, and therefore, Transcaucasia, too, "has a right" to self-determination by secession from St. Petersburg. Maslov does not object to the four points" on the ground that "Transcaucasia" may not agree, does he? In the second place, our programme recognises extensive local and regional self-government as a general principle, and so it is positively ridiculous to talk about "the St. Petersburg bureaucracy controlling the land of the mountaineers" (Maslov, p. 22). Thirdly, it is in any case the St. Petersburg constituent assembly that will have

fact that these local bodies are engaged in matters that are harmless for the bourgeois state : they are engaged in "tinkering with wash-basins", water supply, electric trams, and similar matters that do not endanger the foundations of what is called "the existing social system". It would be childishly naïve to imagine that because the Zemstvos engage in activities such as supplying water and light, they can engage in the "activity" of abolishing landlordism. This is the same as if a municipal council with a 100 per cent Social-Democratic majority somewhere in the French Poshekhonye[97] were to set about "municipalising" all the privately-owned land in France that had privately-owned buildings erected on it. The whole point is that the measure which abolishes landlordism differs just a little from measures to improve water supply, lighting, sewage, and so forth. The whole point is that the first "measure " very daringly "encroaches" upon the foundations of the whole "existing social system", it violently shakes and undermines these foundations, and facilitates the proletariat's onslaught upon the bourgeois system as a whole, on a scale unprecedented in history. Yes, in such circumstances the first and most important thing any bourgeois state will have to concern itself with will be to preserve the foundations of bourgeois domination. As soon as the fundamental interests of the bourgeois and landlord state are encroached upon, all rights and privileges as regards autonomous "tinkering with wash-basins" will be abolished in the twinkling of an eye; all municipalisation will at once be scrapped, and every vestige of democracy in local government bodies will be extirpated by "punitive expeditions". The innocent assumption that democratic municipal autonomy is possible under a reactionary central authority, and that this "autonomy" can be used to abolish landlordism, is a matchless specimen of visual incongruities, or of infinite political naïveté.

  [82] The pamphlet Revision of the Agrarian Programme of the Workers' Party was written in support of the Bolshevik draft submitted to the Fourth (Unity) Congress on behalf of the majority in the Agrarian Committee of the Joint C.C. R.S.D.L.P. It contains the fundamental ideas which Lenin subsequently expounded in his report on the agrarian question to the Unity Congress.    [p.165]

  ^[83] Narodniks -- adherents of a petty-bourgeois trend that arose in the Russian revolutionary movement in the sixties and seventies of

page 537

the nineteenth century. They sought the abolition of the autocracy and the transfer of the landed estates to the peasants. On the other hand, they denied that the development of capitalist relations and the growth of a proletariat in Russia was a law-governed process, and hence regarded the peasantry as the chief revolutionary force. Seeing the village community as the embryo of socialism, they went to the country ("went among the people") and tried to rouse the peasants to the struggle against the autocracy. Taking an erroneous view of the role of the class struggle in historical development, they believed that history was made by heroes passively followed by the masses of the people. In their struggle against tsarism, the Narodniks used the tactics of individual terrorism.
    In the 1880s and 1890s, the Narodniks took the path of conciliation with tsarism. At that period they expressed the interests of the kulaks and waged a bitter struggle against Marxism.    [p.169]

  ^[84] Sotsial-Demokrat (Social-Democrat ) -- a non-periodical literary and political collection published by the Emancipation of Labour group. Its only issue appeared in 1888.    [p.170]

  ^[85] "General redistribution " -- a slogan popular among the peasants of tsarist Russia. It expressed their desire for a general redistribution of the land.    [p.170]

  ^[86] Iskra (The Spark ) -- the first all-Russian illegal Marxist newspaper. Founded by Lenin in 1900, it played the decisive role in building the Marxist revolutionary party of the working class in Russia.
    It was impossible to publish a revolutionary newspaper in Russia on account of police persecution, and while still in exile in Siberia, Lenin evolved a plan for its publication abroad. When his exile ended (January 1900), Lenin immediately set about putting his plan into effect. In February, in St. Petersburg he negotiated with Vera Zasulich (who had come from abroad illegally, on the participation of the Emancipation of Labour group in the publication of the newspaper. At the end of March and the beginning of April a conference was held -- known as the Pskov Conference -- with V. I. Lenin, L. Martov, A. N. Potresov, S. I. Radchenko and the "legal Marxists" P. B. Struve and M. I. Tugan-Baranovsky participating, which discussed the draft declaration, drawn up by Lenin, of the editorial board of the all-Russian newspaper (Iskra ) and the scientific and political magazine (Zarya ) on the programme and the aims of these publications. During the first half of 1900 Lenin travelled to a number of Russian cities (Moscow, St. Petersburg, Riga, Smolensk, Nizhni-Novgorod, Ufa, Samara, Syzran) and established contact with Social-Democratic groups and individual Social-Democrats, obtaining their support for Iskra. In August 1900, when Lenin arrived in Switzerland, he and Potresov conferred with the Emancipation of Labour group on the programme and the aims of the newspaper and the magazine, on possible contributors, and on the editorial board and its location. The conference almost ended in failure (see present edition, Vol. 4 pp. 333-49 [Transcriber's Note: See Lenin's "How the "Spark" Was Nearly Extinguished". -- DJR]), but an agreement was finally reached on all disputed questions.

page 538

    The first issue of Lenin's Iskra was publisbed in Leipzig in December 1900; the ensuing issues were published in Munich; from July 1902 the paper was published in London, and from the spring of 1903 in Geneva. Considerable help in getting the newspaper going (the organisation of secret printing-presses, the acquisition of Russian type, etc.) was afforded by the German Social-Democrats Clara Zetkin, Adolf Braun, and others; by Julian Marchlewski, a Polish revolutionary residing in Munich at that time, and by Harry Quelch, one of the leaders of the British Social-Democratic Federation.
    The editorial board of Iskra consisted of V. I. Lenin, G. V. Plekhanov, L. Martov, P. B. Axelrod, A. N. Potresov, and V. I. Zasulich. The first secretary of the board was I. G. Smidovich-Leman; the post was then taken over, from the spring of 1901, by N. K. Krupskaya, who also conducted the correspondence between Iskra and the Russian Social-Democratic organisations. Iskra concentrated on problems of the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat and all working people of Russia against the tsarist autocracy, and devoted much space to major international events, above all developments in the working-class movement. Lenin was in actuality editor-in-chief and the leading figure in Iskra, to which he contributed articles on all basic questions of Party organisation and the class struggle of the proletariat in Russia.
    Iskra became the centre unifying Party forces, and gathering and training Party workers. In a number of Russian cities (St. Petersburg, Moscow, Samara, and others), groups and committees of the R.S.D.L.P. were organised on Leninist Iskra lines, and a conference of Iskra supporters held in Samara in January 1902 founded the Russian Iskra organisation. Iskra organisations sprang up and worked under the direct leadership of Lenin's disciples and comrades-in-arms: N. E. Bauman, I. V. Babushkin, S. I. Gusev M. I. Kalinin, P. A. Krasikov, G. M. Krzbizhanovsky, F. V. Lengnik, P. N. Lepesbinsky, I. I. Radchenko, and others.
    On the initiative and with the direct participation of Lenin the Iskra editorial board drew up a draft programme of the Party (published in Iskra, No. 21) and made preparations for the Second Congress of the R.S.D.L.P. By the time the Congress was convened most of the local Social-Democratic organisations in Russia bad adopted the Iskra position, approved its programme, organisational plan and tactical line, and recognised the newspaper as their leading organ. A special resolution of the Congress noted Iskra's exceptional role in the struggle to build the Party, and made the newspaper the Central Organ of the R.S.D.L.P.
    Shortly after the Congress the Mensheviks, backed by Plekhanov, took Iskra into their own hands and turned it into an organ fighting against Marxism and the Party, into a platform for the advocacy of opportunism. Beginning with issue No. 52, Iskra ceased to be a militant organ of revolutionary Marxism.    [p.171]

  ^[87] Zarya (Dawn ) -- a Marxist scientific and political magazine legally published in Stuttgart in 1901-02 by the Iskra editoriai board. Four issues (three books) appeared in all.

page 539

    Zarya criticised international and Russian revisionism, and defended the theoretical principles of Marxism. It published Lenin's writings: "Casual Notes", "The Persecutors of the Zemstvo and the Hannibals of Liberalism", "Messrs. the 'Critics' on the Agrarian Question" (the first four chapters of The Agrarian Question and "The Critics of Marx"), "Review of Home Affairs", and "The Agrarian Programme of Russian Social-Democracy".    [p.171]

  ^[88] The Borba (Struggle ) group consisting of D. B. Ryazanov, Y. M. Steklov and E. L. Gurevich, emerged in Paris in the summer of 1900. It assumed its name in May 1901. Secking to reconcile the revolutionary and the opportunist trends in Russian Social-Democracy, the group undertook in June 1901 to call in Geneva a conference of representatives of the Social-Democratic organisations abroad -- the editorial boards of Iskra and Zarya, the organisation called "Sotsial-Demokrat", the Foreign Committee of the Bund, and the Union of Russian Social-Democrats Abroad -- and participated in the work of the "unity" congress of the organisations abroad of the R.S.D.L.P. in Zurich on September 21-22 (October 4-5), 1901. In November 1901 the group issued a programmatic "Advertisement of the Publications of the Social-Democratic Borba Group". Its publications -- "Materials for the Drafting of a Party Programme" (issues I-III), "Leaflet of the Borba Group", etc. -- distorted revolutionary Marxist theory, which they interpreted in a doctrinaire and scholastic spirit, and took a stand against Lenin's principles of Party organisation. In view of its departure from Social-Democratic concepts and tactics, its disruptive actions and its lack of contact with the Social-Democratic organisations in Russia, the group was not admitted to the Second Congress of the R.S.D.L.P., and was dissolved by decision of the Congress.    [p.172]

  ^[89] X -- pseudonym of the Menshevik P. P. Maslov.    [p.172]

  ^[90] Pravda (The Truth ) -- a Social-Democratic monthly magazine of art, literature and public affairs, published in Moscow between 1904 and 1906, with the Mensheviks as the main contributors.    [p.174]

  ^[91] The symposium "The Present Situation " appeared in Moscow early in 1906. Compiled by the group of writers and lecturers under the Moscow Committee of the R.S.D.L.P., it expressed chiefly the Bolshevik point of view. It was confiscated shortly after its publication.    [p.175]

  ^[92] Mir Bozhy (The Wide World ; literally, God's World ) -- a monthly literary and popular-scientific magazine, liberal in trend; it was published in St. Petersburg from 1892 to 1906. During the first Russian revolution its contributors were Mensheviks. In October 1906 it changed its title to Sovremenny Mir (Contemporary World ).    [p.175]

  ^[93] Moskovskiye Vedonosti (Moscow Recorder ) -- a newspaper founded in 1756. From the 1860s onwards it expressed the ideas of the more

page 540

reactionary monarchist landlords and clergymen, and in 1905 it became an important mouthpiece of tbe Black Hundreds. During the first Russian revolution its editor was V. A. Gringmut, founder of the Black-Hundred 'Russian Monarchist Party". The paper was closed shortly after the October Revolution of 1917.    [p.179]

  ^[94] Gringmut, V. A. (1851-1907) -- Russian reactionary journalist, editor of the monarchist newspaper Moskovskiye Vedomosti from 1897 to 1907. During the revolution of 1905-07 he was one of the founders and leaders of the Black-Hundred "Union of the Russian People".    [p.179]

  ^[95] Kutler, N. N. (1859-1924) -- tsarist statesman, member of the Second and Third Dumas, a prominent Cadet.    [p.179]

  ^[96] The reference is to the democratic electoral system providing for universal, equal and direct suffrage by secret ballot.    [p.182]

  ^[97] Poshekhonye (derived from the name of a small town in tsarist Russia) -- a synonym for provincial "backwoods", an out-of-the-way corner with barbarous patriarchal customs. The term became current after the appearance of Old Times in Poshekhonye, a story by the Russian satirist M. Saltykov-Shcbedrin.    [p.189]