Prague Party Conference

The failure of the attempt to secure unity convinced Lenin of the need for a clean break. He began to press for a new conference of all genuine revolutionary elements in Russia. In February 1910, Lenin wrote that the conference should be called ?first of all, immediately and at all costs?. The Bolsheviks and the Pro-Party Mensheviks collaborated in the setting up of the Russian Organising Commission. It is a characteristic fact that Plekhanov no longer took part in the work. The burden of his Menshevik mistakes had prevented him, at the crucial moment, from making a final organisational break with the Liquidators. In a letter to Maxim Gorky, Lenin wrote: ?Plekhanov is hedging, he always acts that way?it?s like a disease?before things break.?

Related Topics:
Lenin - 1910

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The Prague Conference (the minutes of which have not been published) was a decisive turning-point. It was held under extremely difficult underground conditions. The position inside Russia was still too dangerous to allow the holding of a Conference there. Preparations for the Conference were hindered by arrests, although local conferences were held in November 1911. Finally, the conference was held in Prague. The preparations were made by Piatnitsky and Dzerzhinsky with the help of the Czech Social Democrats. Lenin wrote to the latter stressing the need for absolute clandestinity. On 19 October 1911 he wrote to Anton Nemec: ?No-one, no organisation must know about this.? Despite all these precautions some of the delegates were arrested on the way to the conference, every detail of which was known to the Okhrana.

Related Topics:
Prague - 19 October - 1911

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The conference opened on the 5 January 1912 and lasted 12 days. The truth of the matter was that the attendance at the Prague Conference seemed to be an unpromising beginning. There were a mere 14 voting delegates, all but two of them Bolsheviks. The Letts, the Bund, the Polish and Lithuanian and the Caucasian Social Democrats, the Vperyod group, Plekhanov and also Trotsky?s Pravda were all sent letters of invitation but did not attend. Plekhanov also stayed away, alleging ill-health. These tendencies either opposed the convening of the conference, or at least entertained grave doubts about such a decisive break. Even now, conciliatory tendencies were still strong in the camp of Bolshevism. Differences and doubts surfaced at the conference, particularly, but by no means exclusively, on the part of the Pro-Party Mensheviks. Y.D. Zevin (who later joined the Bolsheviks and was one of the 26 Baku commissars murdered by the British) caused some controversy, by defending the line given to him by Plekhanov. Plekhanov, as Lenin had feared, was already getting cold feet. At the opening session, Zevin read a prepared statement to the effect that he was taking part in this conference ?only to the degree that it is not an all-Party conference but the conference of only part of the party?.

Related Topics:
5 January - 1912

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

A number of Russian delegates, including Lenin?s trusted agent Ordzhonikidze, insisted on issuing invitations to the conference to the national Social Democratic parties and the editors of the party organs of the Vperyodists, Trotsky, and the Party Mensheviks. But all of them refused to attend. ?I was against the invitation,? Lenin wrote later, ?but the delegates invited the Vperyod group and Trotsky and Plekhanov.? That was not all. At least four even wanted to invite the editors (Martov, Dan) of Golos Sotsial-Demokrata, the Mensheviks? main newspaper, in open opposition to Lenin?s resolve to exclude the ?Liquidators? formally from the party. There were other expressions of disconformity. Several delegates criticised Sotsial-Demokrat for publishing articles unintelligible to ordinary workers. The underlying suspicion on the part of those delegates working inside Russia towards the émigré leaders surfaced in the demand, presented by Goloshchekin, Ordzhonikidze and Spandarian, that the Bolsheviks? émigré organisations should be dissolved. Ordzhonikidze stated that the exile organisations were ?null and void?, and even called into question the unity with Plekhanov?s group. Spandaryan went further, calling for the dissolving of all exile groups: ?Let those who wish to work ? join us in Russia?. Here again we see a manifestation of the narrowness of the Party ?practicos?. Once again, Lenin had to correct the views of these people. ?Some say: we must wage war on the émigrés. But we must understand what it is we are fighting against. While the Stolypin regime remains in Russia, there will always be people in exile. But these exiles are linked by a thousand threads to Russia and you are not going to sever these threads, try how you may.?

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

However, despite this foot-dragging by part of the Bolshevik committee-men, the main goal was realised. The Prague Conference marked the final parting of the ways between Bolshevism and Menshevism. As the Mensheviks boycotted the Conference, the preparations went ahead for a purely Bolshevik Conference?in other words, a formal split had occurred. Lenin, in any case, had made his mind up; the moment for temporising had past. It was necessary to carry out a radical separation of the revolutionary wing from opportunism, and he was not to be swayed by pressure from the conciliators now. The final resolution stated that the Liquidator group around the St Petersburg periodicals Nasha Zarya and Dyelo Zhizni ?has once and for all placed itself outside the party?. Nasha Zarya and Dyelo Zhizni were the organs of the extreme right wing of Menshevism (Potresov and co.). It also stated that the foreign exile groups could not use the name of the RSDLP.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Plekhanov now felt uncomfortable at being left alone with the Bolsheviks, but the Rubicon had now been crossed and the reservations of the Pro-Party Mensheviks were to no avail. There was no going back now. Although they were the best of all the left Mensheviks, and undoubtedly sincere and devoted to the cause of the working class, they proved to be vacillating and uncertain allies, who would draw back at the decisive moment. This was a centrist current?that is to say, a tendency standing half-way between left reformism and genuine Marxism. Their conduct was absolutely typical of all centrist currents at all times, everywhere. But Lenin was by now in no mood for compromise and their proposals were rejected. Despite the uncompromising tone of the proceedings, however, he understood that the Prague conference was not the end of the story, but the beginning of a fight to win over the majority of the working class, and also all other elements of the Party who could be won.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

On the question of organisation, Lenin once again stressed the need to open up the Party, to form broad organisations capable of taking in the mass of workers newly aroused to political life in the new situation. A commission was set up to work out an organisational resolution. The forms of the party must adapt to changing circumstances. There was a pressing need to involve more people in the work, to give them responsibilities. Until now, the small number of activists in the underground cells had become accustomed to doing everything themselves. Now there needed to be a greater delegation of responsibilities, greater participation and greater initiative on the part of Social Democratic workers in the factories, the trade unions and all other organisations where the Party was present. These broader organisations should assume a greater role in the work of the Party. The composition of branch committees should be rotated to reduce the risk of repression. It was also necessary to wrest control of legal organisations from the liberals. This was the essential characteristic of Leninism, which is the polar opposite of all kinds of sectarianism. The proclamation of an independent party was not intended as an empty gesture or formality, but the first step to organising the work of the revolutionaries in the mass organisations, where they were obliged to engage in a struggle to tear the masses away from bourgeois liberal and opportunist leaderships. The conference stressed the role of the party press as an organiser, designating Rabochaya Gazeta (The Workers? Gazette) as the official party organ.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

An important part of the Prague conference was to work out a concrete program of action to build the Party. Lenin attached great importance to the area reports which put flesh and blood on the bare bones of his perspectives. A key element in winning the majority of the workers to Bolshevism was the work of the Duma fraction. Bolshevik electoral tactics were outlined by Lenin at the Conference. They were based, on the one hand, on opposition to the tsarist monarchy and the bourgeois-landlord parties which stood behind it. On the other hand, it was necessary to expose the liberals and remain completely independent from them. The Duma fraction must strive for a fighting agreement only with the representatives of the revolutionary petty bourgeoisie (the peasantry)?the Trudoviks and SRs. The Party was to put up its own candidates in all areas, but, under certain conditions, it was permissible to reach partial agreements with ?other groups?, including the Liquidators. The conference resolution explained that:

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

?The party must wage a merciless war against the tsarist autocracy and the parties of landlords and capitalists that support it, persistently exposing at the same time the counter-revolutionary views and false democracy of the bourgeois liberals (with the Cadet party at their head). Special attention should be paid in the election campaign to maintaining the independence of the party of the proletariat from all the non-proletarian parties, to revealing the petty bourgeois nature of the pseudo-socialism of the democratic groups (mainly the Trudoviks, the Narodniks, and the Socialist-Revolutionaries), and to exposing the harm done to the cause of democracy by their vacillations on questions of mass revolutionary struggle.?

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~