Published:
First published In German and Russian in 1905.
Sent to Berlin.
Printed from the original.
Translated from the German.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
1974,
Moscow,
Volume 34,
page 295.
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
Geneva, February 8, 1905
On the very day you wrote to me [2]we were preparing a letter to Comrade Hermann Greulich,[1] in which we explained how and why the split in the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party has now become an accomplished fact. We shall send a copy of this letter to the Executive Committee of the German Social-Democratic Party.
The Third Congress of our Party will be convened by the Russian Bureau of the Majority Committees. The Vperyod editorial board and the Bureau are only provisional central bodies. At the present time, neither I nor any of the editors, contributors or supporters of Vperyod known to me can assume the responsibility of taking any new, important steps binding on the whole Party without a Party Congress decision. [3]Thus, your proposal can be submitted only to this Party Congress.
Please excuse my poor German.
With Social-Democratic greetings,
N. Lenin
[1] “A Brief Outline of the Split in the R.S.D.L.P.”(see present edition, Vol. 8).—Ed.
[2] In his letter of February 3, 1905, August Bebel notified Lenin that in order to liquidate the split in the R.S.D.L.P. the Executive Committee of the German Social-Democratic Party had instructed him to preside at a court of arbitration in which representatives of the Bolsheviks (Vperyod) and the Mensheviks (Iskra) were to be included. Bebel asked the Bolsheviks to confirm their readiness, in the event of their agreeing to a court of arbitration and election of their representatives to such a court, to accept the court’s award. It was stipulated that the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks were to cease all polemics from the moment they submitted to the court.
[3] Bebel’s proposal was reported in Vperyod No. 8, for February 28 (15), 1905, in a note to the editors’ comment following the text of the announcement of the Bureau of the Majority Committees concerning the convocation of the Third Congress of the Party.
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