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

85A SHAMEFUL FIASCOThe reader will remember the short but instructive historyof the “Party” school in X.—. Here it is. After a year’sinternal strife the Bolshevik faction categorically dissociateditself from the “new” trends—otzovism, ultimatumismand god-building. The Bolshevik Conference passeda special resolution declaring the school in X.—to be thecentre of a new faction consisting of the supporters of thesetrends.* The leaders abroad of the new faction built on thesethree monster bases split off from the Bolsheviks organisationally.Being endowed with unusual political courage andunshakable belief in their creed, the heroes of the new factiondid not venture to come out with visor up in their ownnewspaper, etc. They chose instead the simple expedientof deceiving the Party and our faction: they formed a schoolabroad which they called a “Party” school and carefullyconcealed its true ideological complexion. After a numberof efforts they managed to collect some thirteen workers inthis mock-Party school and a group consisting of Maximov,Alexinsky, Lyadov and Lunacharsky set to work “teaching”them. Throughout, this clique not only concealed the factthat the “school” was the centre of a new faction but strenuouslyinsisted that the “school” was not connected withany faction but was a general Party undertaking. Maximov,Alexinsky, Lyadov and Co. in the role of “non-factional”comrades!*** See present edition, Vol. 15, pp. 450-51.—Ed.** Incidentally let Comrade Trotsky read the workers’ lettersinserted elsewhere in this issue and decide whether it is not time hekept his promise to go and teach in the “school” at X.—(if one of thereports of the “school” is correct in saying that such a promise wasgiven). Perhaps this is the opportune moment to come on the “fieldof battle” holding an olive branch of peace and a cruse of “non-factional”unction.