[Classics] What is to be done?

Correction to What Is to Be Done?

The Initiators’ Group of whom I speak in the pamphlet What Is to Be Done?, 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 Union Abroad at the end of 1900; the others left in 1901, only after becoming convinced that it was impossible to obtain the Union’s consent to a conference with the Iskra organisation abroad and the revolutionary Sotsial-Demokrat organisation, which the Initiators’ Group had proposed. The Administrative Committee of the Union Abroad at first rejected this proposal, contending that the persons comprising the Initiators’ Group were “not competent” to act as mediators, and it expressed the desire to enter into direct contact with the Iskra organisation abroad. Soon thereafter, however, the Administrative Committee of the Union Abroad informed the Initiators’ Group that following the appearance of the first number of Iskra containing the report of the split in the Union, it had altered its decision and no longer desired to maintain relations with Iskra. After this, how can one explain the statement made by a member of the Administrative Committee of the Union Abroad that the latter’s rejection of a conference was called forth entirely by its dissatisfaction with the composition of the Initiators’ Group? It is true that it is equally difficult to explain why the Administrative Committee of the Union Abroad agreed to a conference in June of last year, still remained in force and Iskra’s ‘negative’ attitude to the Union Abroad was still more strongly expressed in the first issue of Zarya, and in No. 4 of Iskra, both of which appeared prior to the June Conference.

V.I. Lenin

Iskra, No. 9, 1 April, 1902

Published according to the Iskra text