Published:
Source: Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1974, Moscow, Volume 17, pages 451-486.
Translated: Dora Cox
Transcription\Markup: R. Cymbala
Public Domain: Lenin Internet Archive (2004). 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.
[1] The Sixth (Prague) All-Russia Conference of the R.S.D.L.P. worked from January 5 to January 17 (18–30), 1912 in Prague, and actually assumed the character of a Party congress. More than 20 Party organisations were represented at the Conference as well as representatives of the editorial boards of the Central Organ Sotsial-Demokrat and of Rabochaya Gazeta, of the Committee of the R.S.D.L.P. Organisation Abroad, and the group of the C.C. of the R.S.D.L.P. arranging underground transport and travel facilities and known as “the transport group”. Apart from two pro-Party Mensheviks, the delegates were all Bolsheviks. Among the delegates were G. K. Orjonikidze, representing the Tiflis organisation, S. S. Spandaryan from Baku, Y. P. Onufriyev from St. Petersburg, F. I. Goloshchokin from Moscow. The Committee of the Organisation Abroad was represented by N. A. Semashko, and the transport group of the C.C. by I. A. Pyatnitsky.
V. I. Lenin represented the Editorial Board of the Central Organ.
Lenin was the leading figure at the Conference. Opening the Conference, he defined the terms of reference, spoke on the current situation and the tasks of the Party, the work of the International Socialist Bureau, made, some informative reports and took part in the discussions on the work of the Central Organ, on the tasks of Social-Democracy in the struggle against the famine, on the organisational question, on the work of the Party Organisation Abroad, and on a number of other questions. It was Lenin who drafted the resolutions on the major questions on the conference agenda.
Lenin’s speech and the conference resolution on “The Tasks of the Party in the Present Situation” contained a profound analysis of the political situation within the country, reflected the growing revolutionary mood of the people. The Conference emphasised that, as before, the conquest of power by the proletariat, acting as the leader of the peasantry, still remained the chief task of the democratic revolution in Russia.
One of the cardinal problems confronting the Conference was that of ridding the Party of the opportunists. The resolutions adopt ed on “Liquidationism and the Group of Liquidators”, on “The Party Organisation Abroad” were of tremendous theoretical and practical significance. The liquidators were grouped around two legal magazines, Nasha Zarya and Dyelo Zhizni. The Conference declared “that by its conduct the Nasha Zarya and Dyelo Zhizni group had definitely placed itself outside the Party”. The liquidators were expelled from the R.S.D.L.P. The Conference condemned the activities of the anti-Party groups abroad—the Menshevik Golos group, the Vperyod and Trotsky groups, and recognised the absolute necessity for a single Party organisation abroad, conducting its work under the supervision and guidance of the C.C., and pointed out that Party groups abroad “which refuse to submit to the Russian centre of Social-Democratic activity, i.e., to the Central Committee, and which cause disorganisation by communicating with Russia independently and ignoring the Central Committee, have no right to use the name of the R.S.D.L.P.” These resolutions considerably strengthened the unity of the Marxist party in Russia.
A major part of the Conference deliberations was taken up with the question of participation in the election campaign to the Fourth Duma. The Conference stressed that the main Party task in the elections, and of the Social-Democratic group in the Duma itself, was socialist class propaganda and the organisation of the working class. The main election slogans put forward by the Conference were the basic demands of the Party’s minimum programme: a democratic republic, the eight-hour day, confiscation of all landed estates.
The Conference adopted a resolution on “The Character and Organisational Forms of Party Work”, adopted Lenin’s draft on changes in the organisational Rules of the Party, approved the newspaper Sotsial-Demokrat as the Party Central Organ, elected a Party Central Committee and set up the Bureau of the C.C. in Russia.
The Prague Conference of the R.S.D.L.P. played an outstanding role in building the Bolshevik Party, a party of a new type. It summed up a whole historical period of struggle by the Bolsheviks against the Mensheviks, and consolidated the victory of the Bolsheviks. The Menshevik-liquidators were driven out of the Party. Local Party organisations rallied still closer round the Party on the basis of conference decisions. The Conference strengthened the Party as an all-Russia organisation and defined its political line and tactics in the conditions of a new revolutionary upsurge. Free of opportunists, the Bolshevik Party led the new powerful upsurge of the revolutionary struggle of the masses. The Prague Conference was of great international significance. It showed the revolutionary elements of the parties of the Second International how to conduct a decisive struggle against opportunism by carrying the struggle to a complete organisational break with the opportunists.
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