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

NOTES OF A PUBLICIST255Not Be Done”, that he wanted to manoeuvre with the opportunistsand, by these manoeuvres, reform them. And in sodoing he resorted to the most extreme attacks on the Bolsheviks.At the end of 1904 he tried to save Axelrod, who hadobviously slipped into liberalism (“The Plan of the ZemstvoCampaign”), but did it in such a manner as to avoid sayinga single word about such gems as proclaiming demonstrationsbefore the Zemstvo members to be “the highest typeof demonstration” (in the pamphlet Letter to the CentralCommittee, published for Party members only). In thespring of 1905 Plekhanov became convinced of the hopelessnessof these “manoeuvres”, left the Mensheviks andstarted Dnevnik, advocating reunion with the Bolsheviks.Number 3 of Dnevnik (November 1905) is not Menshevikat all.Having wasted about a year and a half on manoeuvreswith the opportunists within the Party (from the end of1903 to the spring of 1905), Plekhanov, from the beginningof 1906 and during 1907, engaged in manoeuvring with theCadets. In this he went to far greater opportunist extremesthan the other Mensheviks. But when Plekhanov, whoproclaimed the tactics of “manoeuvring” at the time of theFirst Duma and after its dispersal (see Dnevnik No. 6),proposed an agreement between the revolutionary partiesfor a struggle for a constituent assembly, Proletary (No. 2of August 29, 1906, in the article, “Vacillating Tactics”)immediately pointed out that this position was not Menshevikat all.*At the London Congress in the spring of 1907, Plekhanov(according to Cherevanin’s account, already cited byme in the preface to the symposium Twelve Years) foughtthe organisational anarchism of the Mensheviks.** Hewanted a “labour congress” as a manoeuvre for the developmentof the Party and not against the Party. During thesecond half of 1907, as we learn from Martov in the “NecessarySupplement”, Plekhanov “had to expend a good dealof eloquence” to uphold the need for an illegal (i.e., Party)Menshevik organ in opposition to Axelrod (who apparently* See present edition, Vol. 11, pp. 179-83.—Ed.** See present edition, Vol. 13, pp. 94-113.—Ed.