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A Tactical Platform for the Unity Congress of the R.S.D.L.P.
Draft Resolutions for the Unity Congress of the R.S.D.L.P.[*]

V. I. Lenin



  • The Present Stage of the Democratic Revolution
  • Armed Uprising
  • Fighting Guerrilla Operations
  • The Provisional Revolutionary Government and Local Organs of Revolutionary Authority
  • Soviets of Workers' Deputies
  • Attitude Towards the Bourgeois Parties
  • Attitude Towards the National Social-Democratic Parties
  • The Trade Unions
  • Attitude Towards the State Duma
  • Principles of Party Organisation

    • The eleven* resolutions herewith submitted to the reader have been drawn up by a group consisting of the former editors of, and contributors to, Proletary, and of several Party members engaged in practical work, who all share the same views. These are not finished resolutions, but rough drafts, the object of which is to give as complete an idea as possible of the sum-total of views on tactics held by a certain section of the Party, and to facilitate the systematic dis cussion that is now being started in all our Party circles and organisations on the invitation of the Joint Central Committee.

    The resolutions on tactics fit in with the Congress agenda[1] that was proposed in the leaflet of the Joint Central Commit tee. But members of the Party are by no means obliged to confine themselves to this agenda. With a view to making a complete exposition of all opinions on tactics, we felt bound to add two questions that do not appear in the agenda proposed by the Joint Central Committee, namely, “The present stage of the democratic revolution” and “The class tasks of the proletariat in the present stage of the democratic revolution”. Unless these questions are cleared up, the more specific questions of tactics cannot be discussed. We there fore propose that the Congress should include in its agenda the following general question: “The present stage of the democratic revolution and the class tasks of the proletariat”.

    As for the agrarian programme, and the attitude to be adopted towards the peasant movement, a special pamphlet is needed.[2] Moreover, the Joint Central Committee has appointed a special committee to draw up a report on this question[3] for the Congress.

    In publishing these rough drafts, we invite all Party members to discuss, amend and supplement them. Written re ports and drafts may be sent through our Party organisations to the St. Petersburg Committee of the R.S.D.L.P. to be delivered to the group which drew up the resolutions.



    Notes

    [*] The Bolsheviks' tactical platform for the Unity Congress of the R.S.D.L.P was drawn up in the latter half of February 1906. All the draft resolutions making up the platform, except the one headed "The Class Tasks of the Proletariat at the Present Stage of the Democratic Revolution", were written by Lenin. The platform was discussed in preliminary form at meetings of Party leaders in Kuokkala, Finland, where Lenin lived for a while.

    Early in March the platform was discussed in Moscow, at a meeting of members of the Moscow Committee, a group of agitators and propagandists, the literary group, the Moscow Bureau of the Central Committee, members of the District Committee [Okruzhnoi/окружной=district] and other Party functionaries, with Lenin participating, and then, in the middle of March, at a conference in St. Petersburg, with Lenin presiding. On March 20 (April 2), the platform appeared in Partiiniye Izvestia, No. 2, and was also published in leaflet form by the Joint Central Committee and the St. Petersburg Joint Committee of the R.S.D.L.P.

    [1] The reference is to the leaflet “To the Party”, issued by the Joint C. C. R.S.D.L.P. in February 1906. It dealt with questions relating to the convocation of the Fourth (Unity) Congress.

    [2] See pp. 165-195 of this volume.—Ed.

    [3] In view of differences over the agrarian question, which became particularly marked on the eve of the Fourth (Unity) Congress of the R.S.D.L.P., the Joint Central Committee appointed a special committee including Lenin to present the issue to the Congress. The committee reduced all the different views on the agrarian question that had found expression among the Social-Democrats to four basic types of draft and submitted them to the Congress. Most of the committee members adopted the point of view of Lenin, whose draft was therefore submitted to the Congress as that of the committee majority. The draft was approved together with the tactical platform in March 1906, at the Bolshevik meetings preceding the Congress.


    Published: Published in Partiiniye Izvestia, No. 2, March 20, 1906.
    Published according to the newspaper text.
    Source: Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1965, Moscow, Volume 10, pages 147-164.

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