V. I.

Lenin
A LETTER TO THE COMRADES
(WITH REFERENCE TO THE FORTHCOMING PUBLICATION
OF THE ORGAN OF THE PARTY MAJORITY)

Written on November 29 Published according to

(December 12), 1904 the leaflet text

Published in leaflet form

in December 1904

From V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, 4th English Edition,

Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1965
Second Edition

Vol. 7, pp. 523-28.

Translated by Abraham Fineberg and by Naomi Jochel

Edited by Clemens Dutt

Prepared © for the Internet by David J. Romagnolo,

djr@marx2mao.org (April 2002)

page 523

A LETTER TO THE COMRADES

(WITH REFERENCE TO THE FORTHCOMING PUBLICATION
OF THE ORGAN OF THE PARTY MAJORITY)

Dear Comrades,
 Today, at a meeting of a close circle of Bolsheviks abroad, a final decision was taken
on a question that in principle has long been decided: the publication of a Party periodical
that will uphold and develop the principles of the majority against the organisational and
tactical discord brought into the Party by the minority, and will serve the needs of the
positive work of the organisations in Russia, against whom such a bitter fight is now
being carried on by minority agents practically all over the country -- a fight that terribly
disorganises the Party at this vital historical juncture, and one that is carried on
throughout by the most shameless splitting methods and tactics, amid hypocritical
deploring of the split by the so-called Central Organ of the Party. We have done
everything in our power to steer the struggle into a Party channel; ever since January we
have been fighting for a congress, as the only worthy Party way to end this impossible
situation. By now it is perfectly clear that the activities of the Central Committee
following its desertion to the minority consist almost entirely in desperately resisting a
congress, and that the Council is resorting to the most outrageous and unpardonable tricks
to put off convening it. The Council is directly sabotaging a congress; whoever has stillto
be convinced of that after its latest decisions, printed in the supplement to Nos. 73-74 of
Iskra, will see it from Orlovsky's pamphlet The Council Against the Party,[162] which we
published the other day. It is perfectly clear now that unless they unite and resist our so-
called central institutions, the

page 524

majority will not be able to uphold their position, to uphold the party spirit in its struggle
against the circle spirit. Union of the Bolsheviks in Russia has long been put forward by
them as an urgent need. Recall the tremendous sympathetic response to the programmatic
resolution of the twenty two[*] (programmatic for our struggle within the Party); recall the
proclamation of the nineteen, issued in printed form by the Moscow Committee (October
1904);lastly, nearly all Party committees are aware that a number of private conferences
of majority committees have lately been held, and in part are still being held,[163] and that
the most vigorous and definite efforts are being made to solidly unite the majority
committees for resistance to the overweening Bonapartists on the Council, Central Organ,
and Central Committee.

We hope that these efforts (or rather steps) will be made generally known in the very
near future, when the results will allow of a definite statement of what has already been
achieved. It need hardly be said that the majority would have been quite unable to
conduct their self-defence without a publishing house of their own. As you may already
know from our Party literature, the new Central Committee simply ejected our pamphlets
(and even the covers of pamphlets already set up) from the Party printing office, thus
turning the latter into the printing office of a circle, and refused the direct request of the
majority members abroad and of committees in Russia -- the Riga Committee, for
instance -- to have majority literature delivered to Russia. It became quite evident that
falsification of Party opinion was a systematic tactic of the new Central Committee. We
found ourselves faced unavoidably with the necessity of expanding our publishing
activities and setting up our own transport arrangements. The committees that had broken
off comradely relations with the editorial board of the Central Organ (see Dan's
admission in his account of the Geneva meeting of September 2, 1904[164] -- an interesting
pamphlet) could not and cannot do without a periodical organ. A party without an organ,
an organ without a party! This tragic formulation put forward by the majority as

* See pp. 454-61 of this volume. --Ed. [Transcriber's Note: See Lenin's "To the Party". -- DJR]

page 525

far back as August inexorably decreed the one solution -- the starting of our own organ.
The young literary forces that have been coming abroad to uphold the vital cause of the
majority of the comrades in Russia need a field for their energies. A number of Party
writers in Russia likewise call insistently for an organ. In starting this organ, which will
probably be called Vperyod, we are acting in full agreement with the mass of the
Bolsheviks in Russia, and in full harmony with our conduct in the Party struggle. We are
resorting to this weapon after a whole year spent in trying every, absolutely every way
that is simpler, more economical for the Party, more perfectly in accordance with the
interests of the working-class movement. We are by no means abandoning the struggle
for a congress; on the contrary, we want to extend, co-ordinate, and support this struggle,
want to help the committees to decide the new question now facing them -- that of
arranging a congress with out the Council and Central Committee, and against the wishes
of the Council and Central Committee -- a question that requires the fullest and most
serious discussion. We openly champion views and aims that have long since been stated,
in a number of pamphlets, before the whole Party. We are fighting and will continue to
fight for the consistent revolutionary line, against discord and wabbling in matters of both
organisation and tactics (see the monstrously muddled letter of the new Iskra to the Party
organisations, printed for Party members only and concealed from the eyes of the
world[165]). The announcement about the new organ will probably appear in a week or so,
and the first issue somewhere between January 1 and 10, New Style. The editorial board
will include all the majority writers that have so far come to the fore (Ryadovoy,
Galyorka, Lenin, Orlovsky, who contributed regularly to Iskra from its 46th to 51st issue,
when it was conducted by Lenin and Plekhanov, and also very valuable younger forces).
The body practically directing and organising the complex business of distribution,
agencies, etc., etc., will be formed (has already been formed in part)[166] through direct
assignment of definite functions to definite comrades by a number of Russian committees
(the Odessa, Ekaterinoslav, and Nikolayev committees! the four Caucasian committees,
and several

page 526

northern ones, more particulars of which you will receive shortly). We now appeal to all
comrades to give us all the support they can. We shall conduct the organ on the
understanding that it is the organ of the movement in Russia, not of any émigré circle.
This requires, first and foremost, the most vigorous "literary " support, or rather literary
participation, from Russia. I have put the word "literary" in italics and inverted commas
in order to draw attention from the first to its special sense and caution against a
misconception that is very common and highly detrimental to the work. It is a
misconception that writers and only writers (in the professional sense of the term) can
success fully contribute to a publication; on the contrary, it will be vital and alive only if
for five leading and regularly contributing writers there are five hundred or five thousand
contributors who are not writers. One of the shortcomings of the old Iskra, one which I
always tried to rid it of (and which has grown to monstrous proportions in the new Iskra )
was that too little was done for it from Russia. We always used to print everything,
practically without exception, that we received from Russia. A really live organ should
print only a tenth of what it receives, using the rest as material for the information and
guidance of the journalists. We must have as many Party workers as possible correspond
with us, correspond in the ordinary, not the journalistic sense of the term.

Isolation from Russia, the engulfing atmosphere of the accursed émigré slough, weighs
so heavily on one here that living contact with Russia is our only salvation. Let all
remember that who want in fact, and not just in word, to consider (and to make ) our
organ the organ of the entire "majority", the organ of the mass of Russian comrades. Let
everyone who regards this organ as his own and who is conscious of the duties of a
Social-Democratic Party member abandon once and for all the bourgeois habit of
thinking and acting as is customary towards legally published papers -- the habit of
feeling: it is their business to write and ours to read. All Social-Democrats must work for
the Social-Democratic paper. We ask everyone to contribute, and especially the workers.
Give the workers the widest opportunity to write for our paper, to write about positively
everything, to

page 527

write as much as they possibly can about their daily lives, interests, and work -- without
such material a Social-Democratic organ will not be worth a brass farthing and will not
deserve the name. In addition, please send us private letters, not intended as contributions
to the paper, i.e., not for publication, but by way of comradely intercourse with the
editors and to keep them informed, and not only about facts and incidents, but about the
prevailing sentiment and the everyday, "uninteresting", humdrum, routine side of the
movement. People who have not lived abroad cannot imagine how much we need such
letters (there is absolutely nothing secret about them either, and to write such an uncoded
letter once or twice a week is really something the busiest person can do). So write to us
about the discussions at the workers' study circles, the nature of these discussions, the
subjects of study, and the things the workers ask about; about the state of propaganda and
agitational work, and about contacts among the general public, in the army, and among
the youth; above all write about any dissatisfaction the workers feel with us Social-
Democrats, about the things that trouble them, about their suggestions, criticisms, etc.
Matters relating to the practical organisation of the work are particularly interesting now,
and there is no way of acquainting the editors with them except by a lively
correspondence not of a journalistic nature, but simply of a comradely kind. Of course,
not everyone has the ability or inclination to write, but . . . don't say "I can't", say "I don't
want to"; given the desire, one or two comrades who could write can be found in any
circle, any group, even the smallest, even the most minor (the minor groups are often
especially interesting, for they sometimes do the most important, though inconspicuous,
part of the work). We here have from the start placed the secretarial work on a broad
footing, drawing on the experience of the old Iskra ; and you for your part should know
that anybody, absolutely anybody who sets about it with patience and determination can
without much difficulty make sure that all his letters, or nine-tenths of them, reach their
destination. I say this on the basis of the three years' experience of the old Iskra, which
had many such an informal correspondent (often unacquainted with any of the editors)
who wrote with the utmost regularity.

page 528

The police have long been quite unequal to the task of intercepting all foreign
correspondence (they only seize a letter occasionally, if the writer has been unusually
careless); and the great bulk of the old Iskra's material always used to arrive in the most
usual way, in ordinary letters sent to our addresses. A special word of warning against the
practice of concentrating correspondence only in the hands of the committee and the
secretaries. Nothing could be more harmful than such a monopoly. Essential as unity is in
actions and decisions, in the matter of general information, of correspondence, it is quite
wrong. It very often happens that the most interesting letters are from comparative
"outsiders" (people more remote from the committees), who perceive more freshly much
that old experienced workers overlook because they are too used to it. Give every
opportunity to the younger people to write to us -- to the youth, to Party workers, to
"centralists", to organisers, and to ordinary rank-and-filers at impromptu meetings and
mass rallies.

Only given such a wide correspondence can we, by our joint efforts, make our paper a
real organ of the working class movement in Russia. We earnestly request, to have this
letter read to every kind of meeting, study circle, subgroup, etc., etc. -- as widely as
possible -- and to be informed how the workers receive this appeal. As to the idea of
publishing a separate workers' ("popular") organ and a general -- guiding -- intellectual
organ, we are very sceptical about it; we should like to see the Social-Democratic
newspaper the organ of the whole movement, to see the workers' paper and the Social-
Democratic paper fused in one. This can be achieved only if we have the most active
support of the working class.

With comradely greetings, N. Lenin

NOTES
 [162]
The Council Against the Party, by Orlovsky (V. V. Vorovsky), was issued in Geneva in November
1904 by the Bolshevik Bonch-Bruyevich and Lenin Publishing House of Social-Democratic Party
Literature. [p. 523]

[163]
Three conferences of Bolshevik local committees were held in September-December 1904: 1) the
Southern (Odessa, Ekaterinoslav, and Nikolayev committees); 2) the Caucasian (Baku, Batum, Tiflis, and
Imeretian-Mingrelian committees); and 3) the Northern (St. Petersburg, Moscow, Tver, Riga, Northern, and
Nizhni-Novgorod committees).
At Lenin's suggestion, the conferences elected a Bureau of Majority Committees for preparing and
convening the Third Party Congress, consisting of Gusev, Zemlyachka, Lyadov, Litvinov, and others. The
Bureau, of which Lenin became a member, was formally constituted in December 1904. [p. 524]

[164]
The meeting in Geneva on August 20 (September 2), 1904, was called by the Mensheviks by way of
providing support for the "July Declaration" of the Central Committee. Both Mensheviks and Bolsheviks
were invited. The Bolsheviks refused, however, to take part, and their representative withdrew after
announcing that the meeting was not competent to pass resolutions in the name of both minority and
majority. The Mensheviks were obliged to admit at this meeting that the Party committees in Russia
opposed the conciliation policy of the Central Committee and that the great majority of them had broken
off all relations with the Menshevik Iskra. [p. 524]

[165]
Lenin is referring to the letter to the Party organisations issued by the Menshevik Iskra in November
1904, a criticism of which will be found in The Zemstvo Campaign and "Iskra's" Plan (pp. 497-518 of this
volume). [p. 525]

[166]
Lenin is referring to the Bureau of Majority Committees. [p. 525]