Starover’s resolution will be misconstrued: the student movement and Osvobozhdeniye{2} are not the same thing at all. It would be harmful to take the same attitude to both. Struve’s name is too Well known and the Workers also know him. Comrade Starover thinks that a definite directive should be issued; I believe we need to define a principled and tactical attitude.
| Vtoroi ocherednoi syezd R.S.D.R.P. Polny tekst protokolov, Central Committee publication, Geneva, 1904 | |
| Printed from the text of the book |
{1} The Congress adopted two resolutions on the question of the attitude to the liberals: the first was motioned by Potresov (Starover), the second, by Lenin, Plekhanov and 13 other delegates (for Plekhanov’s draft with Lenin’s amendment see Lenin Miscellany VI, pp. 177–78).
Lenin subsequently wrote: “The views of the old Iskra were much better expressed in Plekhanov’s resolution, which emphasised the anti-revolutionary and anti-proletarian character of the liberal Osvobozhdeniye, than in the confused resolution tabled by Starover, which, on the one hand, aimed (quite inopportunely) at an ‘agreement’ with the liberals, and, on the other, stipulated for it conditions that were manifestly unreal, being altogether impossible for the liberals to fulfil” (see present edition, Vol. 7, p. 500). p. 96
{2} Osvobozhdeniye (Emancipation)—a fortnightly journal published abroad from June 18 (July 1), 1902 to October 5 (18), 1905, under the editorship of P. B. Struve. It was the organ of the Russian liberal bourgeoisie and expounded the ideas of moderate-monarchist liberalism. In 1903 the Osvobozhdeniye League formed round the journal (officially it came into existence in January 1904). The League existed until October 1905. The followers of Osvobozhdeniye and the Zemstvo constitutionalists made up the core of the Constitutional-Democratic (Cadet) Party—the principal bourgeois party in Russia, which was formed in October 1905. p. 96
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