Written: Written later than October 5, 1904
Published:
First published in 1930.
Sent from Geneva to Odessa.
Printed from the original.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
1974,
Moscow,
Volume 34,
page 257.
Translated: Clemens Dutt
Transcription\Markup:
D. Moros
Public Domain:
Lenin Internet Archive
(2005).
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
In reply to your resolution on the desirability of an Organising Committee of the Majority being set up, we hasten to inform you that we entirely agree with your idea. We should prefer only to call the group not an Organising Committee, but a Bureau of the Majority Committees. We do not consider it possible for us to appoint the B.M.C. ourselves, and are restricting ourselves to recommending comrades Martyn, Demon and K., Baron, Sergei Petrovich, Felix and Lebedev, who (as you know) have actually begun the work of uniting the Majority committees. We think that, given the direct support of several committees, these comrades could act as a special group uniting the activities of supporters of the Majority.
(Participants of the Meeting of the 22[2])
[1] Three conferences of local Bolshevik committees—the Southern, Caucasian and Northern conferences—were held in September–December 1904. (1) The Southern Regional Conference (three committees: those of Odessa, Ekaterinoslav and Nikolayev) was held in September 1904. The conference declared in favour of convening the Third Congress of the Party and proposed that an Organising Committee for convening the congress be set up, consisting of R. S. Zemlyachka, M. N. Lyadov and A. Bogdanov. The conference instructed Lenin to constitute the full Organising Committee.
(2) The Regional Conference of the Caucasian Union Committee (four committees: those of Baku, Batum, Tiflis and Imeretia and Mingrelia) was held in November 1904 in Tiflis. The conference declared in favour of immediately convening the Third Congress of the Party and elected a bureau to make preparations for the congress.
(3) The Northern Regional Conference (six committees: those of St. Petersburg, Moscow, Tver, Riga, Northern and Nizhni-Novgorod) was held in December 1904. The conference passed a vote of non-confidence in the Party’s central bodies seized by the Mensheviks, declared strongly in favour of convening the Third Congress of the Party, and set up a special bureau for organising the congress.
[2] This refers to the meeting held in the neigbourhood of Geneva on Lenin’s initiative during the early part of August 1904. The meeting was attended by 19 members of the R.S.D.L.P., including Lenin, Krupskaya, Olminsky, Lyadov, and Lepeshinsky. The initial variant of the appeal “To the Party”, written by Lenin, was adopted ^^(see Vol. 7 of this edition)^^. Shortly afterwards three more Bolsheviks added their votes to the decisions of this meeting, and the appeal “To the Party” was issued on behalf of 22 Bolsheviks.
The appeal became the Bolsheviks’ programme of struggle for convening the Third Congress of the Party.
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