Democrat Organisation; and 3. To the "League" as mediators in negotiations for reconciliation. It is true that when a speaker related these facts at the "Unity" Congress last year, a member of the Management Committee of the "League" declared that their rejection of the offer was due entirely to the fact that the League was dissatisfied with the composition of the Initiators' group. While I consider it my duty to quote this explanation I cannot, however, refrain from observing that the explanation is an unsatisfactory one; knowing that two organisations had agreed to enter into negotiations, the "League" could have approached them through other intermediaries, or directly.
In the spring of 1901 both Zarya [No. 1, April] and Iskra [No. 4, May] entered into open polemics with Rabocheye Dyelo. Iskra particularly attacked the "historical turn" taken by Rabocheye Dyelo which, in its April supplement, and consequently after the spring events, revealed instability in regard to terror, and the calls for "blood," with which many had been carried away at the time. Notwithstanding these polemics, the "League" agreed to the resumption of negotiations for reconciliation through the mediation of a new group of "conciliators." A preliminary conference of representatives of the three organisations named above took place in June at which a draft agreement was drawn up on the basis of a detailed "agreement on principles" that was published by the "League" in the pamphlet Two Congresses and by the League in the pamphlet entitled Documents of the Unity Congress.[1]
The contents of this agreement on principles (or as it is more frequently named, the Resolutions of the June Conference), clearly shows that we put forward as an absolute condition for unity the most emphatic repudiation of all manifestations of opportunism generally and of Russian opportunism in particular. Paragraph 1 reads: "We repudiate every attempt to introduce opportunism into the proletarian class struggle—attempts which are expressed in so-called Economism, Bernsteinism, Millerandism, etc." "The sphere of Social-Democratic activities include … intellectual struggle against all opponents of revolutionary Marxism" [ 4, C]; "In every
- ↑ The "League," in quotation marks, is the section of the League of Russian Social-Democrats Abroad that supported Rabocheye Dyelo, and the League, without quotation marks, is that section which supported Iskra. In the Russian text the former is described as the "Soyus," which means League, an the latter as "Liga," and in this way the two sections were distinguished from one another.—Ed.
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