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

AN OPEN LETTER TO ALL PRO-PARTY SOCIAL-DEMOCRATS339with those who do not want to be reconciled with theParty.The liquidators and otzovists have an excellent understandingof conciliatory phrase-mongering and make excellentuse of it against the Party. The hero of such phrases,Trotsky, has quite naturally become the hero and swornadvocate of the liquidators and otzovists, with whom heagrees on nothing theoretically but in everything practically.Favoured with the assistance of this advocate, both theliquidators and the otzovists have thoroughly mastered thetactics that consists of incessantly vowing and swearingthat they are pro-Party. This is repeated by Golos and theplatform of the Vperyod group, while they continue in factto disrupt the Party and carry out all activities in an anti-Party spirit. Formal and verbal “conciliation” has becomea weapon of the Golos liquidators and Vperyodists.It goes without saying that we, as representatives of theBolshevik trend, cannot play this role of dupes. Havingwaited a whole year, having done everything possible throughthe pages of the Central Organ to make clear the anti-Party character of the Vperyodists, Golosists and Trotsky,we cannot assume responsibility before the Party for institutionswhich occupy themselves with “invitations” to theliquidators and formal correspondence on “business” raisedby the Vperyodists. We want not squabbles but work.We desire to work jointly with those who want to workin the Party spirit, and have actually proved their abilityto do so, i.e., in the first place with the pro-Party Mensheviksand the really non-factional Social-Democrats. We donot desire to be responsible for squabbles with those whodo not want to work jointly with the Party, but want towork with Mr. Potresov and the otzovists.The state of affairs in Russia is such that intensified andharmonious work is urgently required of the Party organisationsabroad. The three-year period of the golden daysof the counter-revolution (1908-10) is evidently coming toa close and being replaced by a period of incipient upsurge.The summer strikes of the current year and the demonstrationson the occasion of Tolstoy’s death are a clear indicationof this. The Party’s organisational work in Russia has