Page:Lenin - What Is To Be Done - tr. Joe Fineberg (1929).pdf/145



" most serious blunder Iskra made in this connection," writes B. Krichevsky [Rabocheye Dyelo, No. 10, p. 30], accusing us of betraying a tendency to "convert theory into a lifeless doctrine by isolating it from practice"—"was in promoting its 'plan' for general party organisation" [i. e., the article entitled "Where to Begin"] and Martynov echoes this idea by declaring that Iskra's tendency to belittle the march of the drab, every-day struggle in comparison with the propaganda of brilliant and complete ideas … was crowned by the plan for the organisation of a party that it advances in an article in No. 4, entitled "Where to Begin?" [ibid., p. 61]. Finally, L. Nadezhdin has recently joined in the chorus of indignation against the "plan" (the quotation marks were meant to express sarcasm). In a pamphlet we have just received written by him, entitled The Eve of Revolution (published by the Revolutionary Socialist group, Svoboda, whose acquaintance we have already made), he declares that: "To speak now of an organisation to be linked up with an All-Russian newspaper means to propagate armchair ideas and armchair work" [p. 126], that it is a manifestation of "literariness," etc.

It does not surprise us that our terrorist agrees with the champions of the "forward march of the drab, every-day struggle," because we have already traced the roots of this intimacy between them in the chapters on politics and organisation. But we must here draw attention to the fact that L. Nadezhdin is the only one who has conscientiously tried to understand the ideas expressed in an article he disagrees with, and has made an attempt to reply to it, whereas Rabocheye Dyelo has said nothing that is material to the subject, but has tried only to confuse the question by a whole series of inappropriate, demagogic sallies. Unpleasant though the task may he, we must spend a little time on cleaning this Augean stable.

We shall quote a bouquet of the expletives and exclamations that Rabocheye Dyelo hurled at us. "A newspaper cannot create a party