and their neglect of the duty of a revolutionist carefully to conceal from the eyes of the world the relationships and contacts he has, which he is establishing or trying to establish. Naturally, we absolutely refuse once for all to compete with such people on the field of "democracy."
As for the reader who is not enlightened on all party affairs, the only way in which we can fulfil our duty to him is to tell him, not about what is and what is im Werden[1] but about a particle of what has taken place and what it is permissible to tell him in view of its being an event of the past.
The Bund hints that we are "pretenders";[2] the League abroad accuses us of attempting to obliterate all traces of the party. Gentlemen, you will get complete satisfaction when we relate to the public four facts concerning the past.
First fact.[3] The members of one of the Leagues of Struggle, who took a direct part in the formation of our party, and in sending a delegate to the party congress which established the party, came to an agreement with one of the members of the Iskra group about the foundation of a special workers' library in order to satisfy the needs of the whole of the movement. The attempt to publish a library failed, and the pamphlets written for it: The Tasks of Russian Social-Democrats, and The New Factory Act,[4] by a roundabout way, and through the medium of third parties, found their way abroad, and were there published.
Second fact. The members of the Central Committee of the Bund came to one of the members of the Iskra group with the proposal to organise what the Bund then described as a "literary laboratory." In making the proposal, they stated that unless this was done, the movement would retrogress very much. The result of these negotiations was the appearance of the pamphlet, The Cause of Labour in Russia.[5]
- ↑ What is in the process of becoming.—Ed.
- ↑ Iskra, No. 8. The reply of the Central Committee of the Bund to our article on the national question.
- ↑ We deliberately refrain from relating these facts in the order in which they occurred.
- ↑ See V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. II.—Ed.
- ↑ The author of this pamphlet asks me to state that this pamphlet, like the one he wrote previously, was sent to the League on the assumption editors of its publications were the Emancipation of Labour group (owing to certain circumstances, he could not then—February, 1899—know about the change in the editorship). This pamphlet will be republished by the League at an early date.
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