Page:Lenin - What Is To Be Done - tr. Joe Fineberg (1929).pdf/38

 some light on circumstances of the rise and growth of two diverging Russian Social-Democratic tendencies among the comrades working in St. Petersburg. In the beginning of 1897, just prior to their banishment, A. A. Vaneyev and several of his comrades attended a private meeting at which the "old" and "young" members of the League of the Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class were gathered. The conversation centred chiefly around the question of organisation, and particularly around the "rules for a workers' benefit club," which, in their final form, were published in Listok Rabotnika—[Workers' Leaflet] Nos. 9–10, p. 46. Sharp differences were immediately revealed between the "old" members (the "Decembrists," as the St. Petersburg Social-Democrats jestingly called them) and several of the "young" members (who subsequently took an active part in the work of Rabochaya Mysl), the divergences were very great and a very heated discussion ensued. The "young" members defended the main principles of the rules in the form in which they were published. The "old" members said that this was not what was wanted: That first of all it was necessary to consolidate the League of the Struggle into an organisation of revolutionaries which should have control of all the various workers benefit clubs, students' propaganda circles, etc. It goes without saying that the controversialists had no suspicion at that time that these disagreements were the beginning of a wide divergence; on the contrary they regarded them as being of an isolated and nature. But this fact shows that Economism did not arise and spread in Russia without a fight on the part of the "old" Social-Democrats (the Economists of to-day are apt to forget this). And if this struggle has not left "documentary" traces behind it, it is solely because the membership of the circles working at that time underwent such constant change that no continuity was established and, consequently, differences were not recorded in any documents.

The appearance of Rabochaya Mysl brought Economism to the light of day, but not all at once. We must picture to ourselves concretely the conditions of the work and the short-livedness of the majority of the Russian circles (and only those who have experienced this can have any exact idea of it), in order to understand how much there was accidental in the successes and fail of the new tendency in various towns, and why for a long neither the advocates nor the opponents of this "new" tendency could make up their minds, indeed they had no opportunity to