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

NOTES OF A PUBLICIST253I thought to myself: “abwarten!” “wait and see”. Just wait,gentlemen of Golos, you are reckoning “without your host”.The point is not that the plenum offered the opportunityof taking part in the agreement to everyone, and not onlyto the “strong” factions, strong because of their ideologicaland political position. The point is, will your “host”, i.e.,the groups of independent-legalists, allow this opportunityto become a reality?Some months have elapsed, and only the blind can failto see now that, in reality, it is precisely the “agreementbetween the strong factions” that constitutes Party unityand drives it forward “despite all obstacles”. That is howit should be, that is the only way it can be in view of thereal relationship of forces in the Party. No doubt, in thenear future, either all the leading organs of the Party willbe formally reconstructed in such a way as to express thisagreement, or the life of the Party and the progress of itsunity will proceed for a time irrespective of its leadingorgans.No doubt, at first sight, it may seem strange to call thepro-party Mensheviks a “strong faction”, for at the presentmoment—at any rate abroad—the Golosists are apparentlystronger. However, we Social-Democrats judge strength notby the statements of the emigrant groups, not by the way theMenshevik writers group themselves, but from the standpointas to which position is objectively correct, and whichis condemned by the logic of the political situation to subordinationto the “independents” from 1898 to 1900, theRabocheye Dyelo-ists were stronger than the Iskrists bothabroad and in Russia, yet they did not constitute a “strongfaction”.Now that the Golosists have mobilised all their forcesagainst Plekhanov and brought out all their slop-pails topour on him—including Mr. Potresov and the recollectionsof how Martov was “offended” in 1901-03 (sic!)—the impotenceof the Golosists becomes particularly obvious.Axelrod and Co. were hopelessly behind the times politicallywhen they published abroad, in April, a symposiumof personal abuse against Plekhanov, while in Russia NashaZarya in its February issue and Vozrozhdeniye in its Marchissue had already shifted the question to a completely differ-