Collected Works of V. I. Lenin - Vol. 16 - From Marx to Mao

148V. I. LENINDemocratic activity among the masses. Pointing out theresemblance between this organisational task and that solvedby our German comrades at the time of the Anti-SocialistLaw, we spoke about an “unfortunate deviation from persistentproletarian work” in the shape of rejecting Social-Democratic activity in the Duma or refraining from frankand open criticism of the policy of our Duma group, in theshape of rejecting or belittling the illegal Social-DemocraticParty, of attempts to replace it by an amorphous legal organisation,to curtail our revolutionary slogans, and so forth.By taking this backward glance we can more correctlyappraise the significance of the recently held plenary sessionof the Central Committee of our Party. 76 The text of themost important resolutions adopted by the plenary sessionwill be found elsewhere in this issue. Their significance isthat they are a big step towards actual unity of the Party,towards the union of all Party forces, towards unanimousrecognition of those basic propositions on the tactics of theParty and its organisation that decide the path of Social-Democracy in our difficult period. This path was correctlyindicated a year ago and it is now being taken by the wholeParty, all factions of which have become convinced of itscorrectness. The past year was a year of new factional divisions,of new factional struggle, a year in which the dangerof a break-down of the Party was accentuated. But the conditionsof work in the localities, the difficult position ofthe Social-Democratic organisation, the urgent tasks of theeconomic and political struggle of the proletariat, impelledall the factions to unite the Social-Democratic forces. Themore powerful, insolent and rampant the counter-revolutionbecame, the more widely foul renegacy and repudiation ofthe revolution spread among the liberal and petty-bourgeoisdemocratic strata, the more powerfully were all Social-Democrats drawn towards the Party. It is highly characteristicthat in the second half of 1909, under the influence ofthis whole combination of circumstances, such widely divergentmembers of our Party as the Menshevik ComradePlekhanov, on the one hand, and the Vperyod group (a groupofBolsheviks who had departed from orthodox Bolshevism),on the other, pronounced in favour of the Party principle.In August 1909 the former came out vigorously against a