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

15THE LIQUIDATORS EXPOSEDOur readers know, of course, that during the past yearour Party has had to concern itself with the so-calledliquidationist trend in Social-Democracy. The liquidatorsare those most undaunted opportunists who have begun toadvocate the view that an illegal Social-Democratic Partyis unnecessary in Russia today, that the R.S.D.L.P. isunnecessary. Our readers are also aware that the Bolshevikswaged and carried through a struggle against this liquidationisttrend, carried it through at least to such an extentthat at the All-Russian Party Conference in December 1908 1liquidationism was condemned in the most decisive and irrevocablemanner against the votes of the Mensheviks and part2of the Bundists’ (the other part of the Bundists came outagainst liquidationism).However, the official organ of the Menshevik faction,Golos Sotsial-Demokrata, 3 not only did not admit that itwas liquidationist but, on the contrary, assumed an unusually“proud and noble” pose and denied that it was in any wayinvolved in liquidationism. The facts convicted them. ButGolos Sotsial-Demokrata grandly ignored the facts. Therecent issue, No. 9, of Plekhanov’s Dnevnik Sotsial-Demokrata,4 (August 1909) is extremely valuable because in it one ofthe leaders of Menshevism completely exposes liquidationism.This is not the only significance of Dnevnik but it ison this aspect of the matter that we must dwell first of all.No. 45 of Proletary 5 published a letter from Mensheviksof Vyborg District (in St. Petersburg) protesting againstthe Menshevik liquidators. This letter is reprinted in GolosNo. 14 (May 1909) and the editors remark: “The editorialboard of Proletary pretends to have seen in the letter of theVyborg comrades a step away from the newspaper GolosSotsial-Demokrata....”