Page:Lenin - What Is To Be Done - tr. Joe Fineberg (1929).pdf/171



remains for us to describe the organisational tactics Iskra adopted towards Rabocheye Dyelo. These tactics have been already fully expressed in Iskra, No. 1, in an article entitled "The Split in the League of Russian Social-Democrats Abroad." From the outset we adopted the point-of-view that the real League of Russian Social-Democrats Abroad, which at the first congress of our party was recognised as the party's representative abroad, had split into two organisations;—that the question of the party's representation remains an open one and that the settlement reached at the International Congress at Paris by the election of two members to represent Russia on the International Socialist Bureau, one from each of the two sections of the divided League, was only a temporary and conditional settlement. We declared that on essentials Rabocheye Dyelo was wrong; in principle we emphatically took the side of the Emancipation of Labour group, but at the same time we refused to enter into the details of the split and noted the services rendered by the League in the sphere of purely practical work.

Consequently, ours was, to a certain extent, a waiting policy; we made a concession to the opinion prevailing among the majority of the Russian Social-Democrats that the most determined opponents of Economism could work hand in hand with the "League" because, it was said, the "League" has frequently declared its agreement in principle with the Emancipation of Labour group and that it did not claim an independent position on fundamental questions of theory and tactics. The correctness of the position we took up has been proved indirectly by the fact that almost simultaneously with the publication of the first number of Iskra [December, 1900] three members separated from the League and formed the so-called "Group of Initiators" and offered their services: 1. To the foreign section of the Iskra organisation; 2. To the Revolutionary Social