isaac-deutscher-the-prophet-armed-trotsky-1879-1921

THE PROPHET ARMED
time being: he would stay abroad for the forthcoming congress
of the party. 1
In July 1903 the congress was at last convened in Brussels.
This was actually to be the foundation assembly-the so-called
first congress of 1898 had been a meeting at Minsk of eight
people only, who were soon arrested, and had left nothing
behind except a stirring Manifesto, written by Peter Struve.
Only now, in 1903, had the network of clandestine organizations
become close enough, and the contacts of Iskra with it
solid enough, for everybody to feel that the time had come to
form a regular party with a well-defined constitution and an
elected leadership. It was taken for granted that that leadership
would remain with the Iskra team, which alone had supplied
the organizations with a political idea and alone had coordinated
their activities. For the whole team the congress was
a solemn occasion. To the veterans it was the materialization of
a dream long cherished in prisons, and in places of deportation
and exile.
It was also taken for granted that the Iskra men would appear
at the congress as a single body, bound by solidarity in ideas, in
achievement, and in the aspiration to leadership. Before the
congress there was some discord over the drafting of a programme,
but this was easily settled. Opposition was expected
from two groups: from the Economists, who would fight a
rearguard skirmish against the triumphant advance of revolutionary
politics; and from the Jewish Bund, claiming for itself
a special status within the party. These two groups were in a
minority, and all Iskra men were united against them. Just
before the opening of the congress the editors of Iskra began to
wrangle over the manner in which the leading bodies of the
party should be set up; but this seemed a minor detail of
organization.
At the beginning of July forty-four delegates with voting
rights, and fourteen with consultative voice, met at the Socialist
Maison du Peuple in Brussels. Trotsky arrived from Geneva to
represent, together with another delegate, the Siberian Social
Den.ocratic Workers' Union. 2 Seated in a drab warehouse in the
1
N. Krupskaya, MemoriM of Lenin, p. 60; Lenin, Sochinenya, vol. xxxiv, p. 114.
' In My Life he describes humorously how he and Dr. Ulyanov, Lenin's younger