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

185PARTY UNITY ABROADA base of operations abroad is necessary and inevitablefor a party which is working in conditions like ours. Everyonewho reflects on the position of the Party will admit thisis so. However pessimistic the comrades in Russia feel about“abroad” it will be far from disserviceable to them to knowwhat is going on here, particularly after the recent plenarysession.Has unity been achieved abroad? No. And for a verysimple reason: one of the sides—the Golosists—showsabsolutely no desire to respond to the unanimous appeal ofthe Central Committee to put an end to the split abroad.The factional Golos, contrary to the unanimous decision ofthe Central Committee, did not close down, although at theplenum one of its editors, Comrade Martov, officially declared(see the minutes of the plenum) that he would try to getit stopped temporarily at any rate.* Before the CentralCommittee Bureau Abroad had time to take any stepstowards unity the four editors of Golos (two of themmembers of the editorial board of the Central Organ!!) issueda manifesto with a thinly veiled injunction not to aim atunity. The foreign C.B.G.A. (“Central Bureau of GroupsAbroad”, which was elected in Basle one-and-a-half yearsago at a factional Congress of Mensheviks) did the same.* Here is the text of the statement:“Comrade Martov declares that although he cannot speak officiallyfor the editorial board of Golos Sotsial-Demokrata, he can sayfor himself personally that there will be no obstacles in the editorialboard of “Golos Sotsial-Demokrata” to stopping “Golos” temporarilyafter the next issue (for a couple of months or even longer) as an experimentpending the results of the work of the new editorial boardof the Central Organ.”