sphere of organisational and agitational activity Social-Democracy must not for a moment forget that the immediate task of the Russian proletariat is—to overthrow the autocracy" [5, A]; "… agitation, not only on the basis of the every-day struggle between wage labour and capital" [5, B]; "… not recognising … stages of purely economic struggles and of struggles for partial political demands" [5, C]; "… we consider important for the movement criticism of the tendency which elevates primitiveness … and restrictedness of the lower forms of the movement into a principle" [5, C–D]. Even a complete outsider, who has read these resolutions at all attentively, will have realised from the very way in which they are formulated that they are directed against those who are opportunists and Economists, against those who, even for a moment, forget about the task of overthrowing the autocracy, who recognise the theory of stages, who have elevated narrowness to a principle, etc. And any one who has any acquaintance at all with the polemics conducted by the Emancipation of Labour group, Zarya and Iskra against Rabocheye Dyelo, cannot hut he convinced that these resolutions repudiate point by point the very errors into which Rabocheye Dyelo had wandered. Consequently, when one of the members of the "League" declared at the "Unity" Congress that the articles in No. 10 of Rabocheye Dyelo were prompted, not by a new "historical turn" on the part of the "League," but by the fact that the resolutions were too "abstract,"[1] this assertion was quite justly ridiculed by one of the speakers. The resolutions are not abstract in the least, he said, they are incredibly concrete: a single glance at them is sufficient to see that there is a "catch" in this.
The latter rem.ark served as the occasion for a characteristiC episode at the congress. On the one hand, B. Krichevsky seized upon the word "catch" in the belief that this was a slip of the tongue which betrayed our evil intentions ("To set a trap") and pathetically exclaimed: "A catch, for whom?" "Yes, indeed, for whom?"—Plekhanov rejoined sarcastically. "I will stimulate Comrade Plekhanov's perspicacity," replied B. Krichevsky, "I will explain to him that the trap was set for the editorial board of Rabocheye Dyelo (general laughter) "but we have not allowed ourselves to be caught!" (A remark from the left: all the worse for you!) On the other hand a member of the Borba group (the conciliators), in opposing the "League's" amendment to the resolution and wishing
- ↑ This expression is repeated in Two Congresses, p. 25.
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