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

272V. I. LENINin print in July 1909,* and since then even the most unconcernedand uninformed Social-Democrats have becomeconvinced of this fact. The famous “platform” was drawnup abroad by eight intellectuals and seven worker-students.The part played by these workers, who hastily gave theirsignatures to the slogans of “proletarian philosophy” andrecognition of otzovism as a “legitimate shade of opinion”is too obvious to deserve any further comment. We havehere a clear-cut case of the formation of a faction by a groupof literati abroad, who indeed behave like “khans” (Voinov’s114 expression in the Vperyod symposium), for theythemselves are conscious of their despotism, concealingfrom the public what is most dear to them, i.e., the bourgeoisphilosophy of Machism and otzovism. The Vperyodistscry out against “leaders abroad” and at the same time forman organisation which in actual fact is a mere adjunct to ahandful of literati abroad; they cry out against factionand themselves secretly create a new, petty, lifeless andsectarianly empirio-monistic faction. The political sourceof all this hypocrisy is that the real leaders of the factionfind it impossible to come out openly and directly in favourof the things that are really dear to them.We shall confine ourselves to two particularly glaringexamples of hypocrisy. On page 53 of the symposium,Rabochy Ar. declares that the Bureau of the Central Committeein Russia “is not doing a damned thing” (these wordsof course are ascribed to a “Leninist” worker who is allegedto have agitated the “Vperyodist” in this strain. Oh, thenaïve cunning of “Rabochy Ar.”!) and that the Vperyodist(again with the “Leninist” and, of course, on his instigation)proposed that the “Moscow organisation be declared independentof the Russian Central Committee and no longersubordinate to its instructions”.Beginning with January 1910 the Bureau of the RussianCentral Committee worked hard to restore the centralorganisation in spite of the opposition both of the Golosistliquidators (the famous Mikhail, Roman and Yuri incident)and of the Vperyodists (who at this time were buildingtheir own little faction from abroad against the Central* See present edition, Vol. 15, pp. 450-51.—Ed.