What Is To Be Done? (Lenin, 1935)/Correction

by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

CORRECTION TO WHAT IS TO BE DONE

The Group of Initiators, to whom I referred in the pamphlet What Is To Be Done?,^[1] have asked me to make the following correction to my description of the part they played in the attempt to reconcile the Social-Democratic organisations abroad:

 

Of the three members of this group only one left the "League" at the end of 1900; the others left in 1901, only after they had become convinced that it was impossible to obtain the "League's" consent to a conference with the foreign organisations of Iskra and the Revolutionary Social-Democrat Organisation, which is what the Group of Initiators had proposed. First of all, the Managing Committee of the "League" rejected the proposal for a conference on the ground that the persons making up the Group of Initiators were not "competent" to act as mediators and for that reason it at that time expressed the desire to enter into direct contact with the Iskra organisation abroad. Soon after, however, the Managing Committee of the "League" informed the Group of Initiators that after the appearance of the first number of Iskra containing the report of the split in the "League," it had altered its decision and no longer desired to have communication with Iskra. After this, how can one explain the statement made by a member of the Managing Committee of the "League" that the "League's" rejection of a conference was called forth entirely by its dissatisfaction with the composition of the Group of Initiators? It is true that it is equally difficult to explain why the Managing Committee of the "League" agreed to a conference in June last; for the remarks contained in the first issue of Iskra still remained in force and Iskra's "hostility" to the "League" was still more strongly expressed in the first volume of Zarya and in No. 4 of Iskra, both of which appeared prior to the June conference.

 

Iskra, No. 18, April 1, 1902.

 

THE END

1. See p. 169.—Ed.