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

242V. I. LENINI refuse to enter into any negotiations about any concessions,since the Party is obliged now to break with theseindependents, to fight against them resolutely as full-fledgedliquidators. And I can speak with confidence not only formyself but for all the pro-Party Bolsheviks. The pro-PartyMensheviks, through Plekhanov and others, have expressedthemselves clearly enough in the same spirit; and sincethis is the state of affairs in the Party, the “conciliator”-diplomats à la Trotsky and Yonov will either have to abandontheir diplomacy or leave the Party and join the independents.In order to convince oneself that the legalists havedefinitely united into a group of independent socialists, onehas only to review the events after the plenum, to appraisethem in essence, and not merely from the standpoint ofthe petty history of “conflicts”, to which Yonov wronglyconfines himself.1) Mikhail, Roman and Yuri declare that the CentralCommittee (plenum) resolutions and the very existence ofthe Central Committee are harmful. About two monthshave elapsed since this fact was published and it has notbeen refuted. It is obvious that it is true.*2) Sixteen Russian Mensheviks, including at least twoof the three mentioned above, and a number of the mostprominent Menshevik writers (Cherevanin, Koltsov, etc.),published in Golos, with the approval of the editors, apurely liquidationist manifesto, justifying the Mensheviks’withdrawal from the Party.3) The Menshevik legally published magazine, NashaZarya, publishes a programmatic article by Mr. Potresov inwhich it is bluntly stated that “the Party, as an integraland organised hierarchy of institutions, does not exist”(No. 2, p. 61), that it is impossible to wind up “what inreality no longer exist” as an organised whole” (ibid.).Among the contributors to this journal are Cherevanin,* Number 21 of Golos Sotsial-Demokrata has just appeared. Onpage 16, Martov and Dan confirm the correctness of this fact, whenthey speak of the “refusal of three comrades [??] to join the CentralCommittee”. Moreover, as usual, they try to hide by wild abuse of“Tyszka-Lenin” the fact that the group of Mikhail and Co. has finallyturned into a group of independents.