4th Congress

Fourth (unification) congress of the RSDLP. April (April-May) 1906.

The IV Congress of the RSDLP occupies a special place among the congresses of our party. It went down in the history of the party as "Unity". It formally united two parts of the party - the Bolshevik and the Menshevik, into which the Russian Social Democracy was split. At the congress, the Mensheviks gained a numerical superiority, and this determined the nature of the congress decisions on a number of issues of the first Russian revolution.

The Bolsheviks, led by Lenin, waged an irreconcilable struggle at the congress against the opportunism of the Mensheviks, for a clear revolutionary line, for an ideologically sustained Marxist party.

The IV (Unity) Congress of the RSDLP took place in the spring of 1906 in an atmosphere of a gradual and imperceptible decline in the October-December revolutionary wave. The congress was preceded by a bitter struggle between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks on all questions of the first revolution in Russia. The burning questions of the day that were put forward by the revolution: about the role of the proletariat in the bourgeois-democratic revolution, about the attitude towards the peasantry, towards the liberal bourgeoisie, about an armed uprising, about a provisional revolutionary government - were questions of a fierce struggle within Russian Social Democracy. Two lines - the revolutionary-Marxist line of the proletariat, which resolutely fought against tsarism, and the line of the liberal bourgeoisie, which led to the fragmentation of the forces of the revolutionary proletariat for the sake of reconciling the bourgeoisie with tsarism - took shape more and more vividly, more and more prominently.

“The Bolsheviks deliberately helped the proletariat to follow the first line, to fight with selfless courage and to lead the peasantry. The Mensheviks constantly slipped to the second line, corrupting the proletariat by adapting its movement to the liberals”.

The December armed uprising in Moscow and a number of other cities and regions of Russia was the highest point in the development of the revolution of 1905-1907. After the defeat of the armed uprising in the country, a turn towards the gradual decline of the revolution began. The autocracy passed from a long defense to an offensive against the revolution. Punitive expeditions raged in Moscow, Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Transcaucasia, Siberia. One province after another was declared martial law. There were mass shootings of unarmed workers and peasants. A wave of nationalist persecution was raging across the country.

Despite the onset of reaction, the revolution, however, was not yet suppressed. The economic and political situation in the country created the preconditions for its further rise. Without weakening the revolutionary onslaught, the proletariat continued to struggle as before. Every now and then there were numerous strikes, demonstrations, stopping the industrial life of the largest regions of Russia. The strike movement captured not only the central regions of the country, but also the remote ones - the North, the Middle Volga region, the Southern Urals, and others. Rallies and demonstrations have become commonplace in the most remote places in Russia. According to official data, in 1906 over a million workers took part in strikes.

The peasant movement assumed enormous proportions. In February 1906, it covered the Yekaterinoslav, Kherson, Saratov, Penza, and Mogilev provinces and then expanded throughout the country. Rising spontaneously to fight the landowners, the peasants demanded land, political freedom, and a constituent assembly. The strike struggle of agricultural workers assumed considerable proportions, along with the action of the peasants. In 1906, up to 2 million agricultural workers took part in strikes in rural areas.

In the army and navy, the revolutionary movement also continued, which by the summer of 1906 took the form of major military uprisings in different regions of Russia: an uprising in the Svea-Borg fortress, in Kronstadt, an uprising on the Pamyat Azov cruiser, in Revel, etc. Returning from front, from Manchuria, the soldiers carried with them discontent, infected the villages with them, exacerbated the revolutionary ferment in the country.

Political and economic strikes by workers, peasant uprisings, and movement among the troops indicated a possible growth of a new upsurge in the revolution. The course of revolutionary events spoke of a growing movement. Judging by the revolutionary situation in the country, it was still impossible to think about the retreat of the revolution. Only later, a year later, it became clear that the revolution was on the decline.

“The turn in the development of the struggle begins with the defeat of the December uprising,” wrote Lenin, characterizing the situation and determining the time and pace of the onset of reaction. - The counter-revolution goes on the offensive step by step as the mass struggle weakened. In the era of the first Duma, this struggle was expressed very, very impressively in the strengthening of the peasant movement, in the widespread defeat of the nests of the feudal landlords, in a whole series of soldier uprisings. And the reaction then came slowly, not daring to immediately carry out a coup d'etat. Only after the suppression of the Sveaborg and Kronstadt uprisings of July 1906 did it become bolder, instituted a military field regime, began to take away the right to vote in parts ... finally, finally surrounded the Second Duma with a police siege and overthrew the entire notorious constitution”.

In contrast to the Mensheviks, who in every possible way sought to introduce the revolutionary movement into a "legal" framework adapted to police conditions and called on the masses to peaceful parliamentary work, the Bolsheviks with the same decisiveness raised the question of preparing for a new revolutionary outburst. Lenin calls the Menshevik position of curtailing the revolution shortsightedness, "subservience to the situation of the moment." In a number of articles, Lenin emphasizes the great significance of the October-December period of the struggle, which roused the gigantic masses of the people to participate in historical creativity. Lenin called for taking into account the experience of the armed uprising and preparing for a new offensive in a more organized manner.

In connection with the tasks of preparing the forces for a new revolutionary battle, the Bolsheviks pose and solve the major tactical problems of the revolution. In contrast to the Menshevik, bourgeois-reformist position of adaptation to the liberals, the Bolsheviks come out with a revolutionary tactic, calculated for a new upsurge, of an active boycott of the First State Duma. The position of an active boycott of the Duma was not a simple exclusion from the elections, did not mean the self-elimination of the proletariat from the arena of political struggle. She set the task of widespread use of all election meetings for social democratic agitation and the organization of forces for an armed uprising. “To use meetings,” Lenin wrote, explaining the tactics of an active boycott, “means to penetrate them both legally (by signing up in the voter lists) and illegally, to lay out the entire program and all the views of the socialists, to show all the falsity and falsity of the Duma, to call for struggle for the constituent assembly ".

The Mensheviks opposed the boycott of the Duma. They threw out at first the half-hearted slogan: "to participate in the elections of delegates and electors, but not to elect to the Duma", and somewhat later spoke out for participation in the Duma. The Mensheviks viewed the Duma as a "nationwide political center" capable of rallying the people around itself. Allowing participation in the Duma, the Mensheviks did not at all raise the question of the need to combat "constitutional illusions"; they supported in the people a deceptive belief in the possibility of fulfilling the revolutionary demands of Social Democracy by peaceful means, with the help of the Duma.

Elections to the Duma in accordance with the December I law, which ensured the tremendous predominance of landlords and capitalists in the Duma, began in March 1906. They took place in an atmosphere of police terror, punitive expeditions, mass arrests and executions. By violence, police reprisals, all revolutionary elements were virtually removed from the elections.

In articles, brochures, leaflets during this time, Lenin denounced the Duma as a gross forgery of the people's representation, as a special police deception of the people. Lenin explains the need to boycott the Duma by the fact that by participating in the elections, in an atmosphere of a possible upsurge of the revolution, the party will involuntarily support the people's faith in the Duma and thereby weaken the strength of its struggle against counterfeiting the people's representation; on the other hand, participation in elections in a police situation, in the absence of freedom of agitation, will be reduced to exsanguinating the working class, or to supporting the Cadets, to a bloc with the Cadet party, and, consequently, to abandoning the revolutionary tasks of the proletariat. The Bolsheviks cruelly ridicule the Menshevik position on the constitutional parliamentary path of development, the desire of the Mensheviks to reach an agreement with the bourgeoisie and their readiness to make concessions to the autocracy. The boycott of the Duma was for the Bolsheviks the most decisive means of struggle arising from the direct revolutionary movement of the masses, the slogan of the struggle to concentrate and generalize the scattered and partial uprisings and strikes of the period of 1906, the slogan of an attack on the old government. "The revolutionary socialist movement," taught Lenin, "must be the first to take the path of the most decisive and most direct struggle and the last to take more roundabout methods of struggle."

The struggle of the Bolsheviks for the October-December path of development, for a new revolutionary upsurge in the first half of 1906, the struggle against constitutional illusions, the boycott of the Bulygin and Witte Dumas were a struggle for the hegemony of the proletariat in the bourgeois-democratic revolution, for the completion of the bourgeois-democratic revolution ... The boycott of the Witte Duma brought, of course, many valuable results; it played a major role in the development of the class consciousness of the proletariat, it significantly undermined the authority of the Duma, weakened faith in the Duma, and dealt a blow to constitutional illusions among a certain section of the population. The Bolshevik boycott tactics were accepted and supported by the most advanced elements of the proletariat. The main task of the boycott - to disrupt the convocation of the Duma - was not achieved, however: in this respect, too, the boycott of the First Duma in 1906 was unsuccessful. The revolutionary movement was insufficient to sweep away the Duma and overthrow the autocracy.

Subsequently, Lenin, returning to the lessons of the boycott of 1906, noted that the boycott of the First Duma in the conditions of the beginning of the decline of the revolution was a mistake, albeit a small one, easily fixable.

In connection with the preparation of forces for a new revolutionary explosion, Lenin raised and decided the question of strengthening the revolutionary Social Democratic Party. The unification of all Social Democratic workers into one centralized, real Marxist party was the most urgent task of the revolution. The striving for unification, for coordinated actions in revolutionary actions was especially pronounced among the lower classes, among the workers. Local party organizations, under the pressure of the need for unity of action, began by gravity to unite both parts of the party. But Lenin thought of uniting with the Mensheviks only on condition that the ideological and organizational independence of the Bolsheviks was preserved, provided that both parts of the party were clearly delimited. The tactics of rapprochement with the Mensheviks did not represent for Lenin any diplomatic maneuver or concession to the Mensheviks. The question for him was about the struggle for the masses, about the conquest of the workers, the question was about the practical implementation of the idea of the hegemony of the proletariat in the revolution.

“A merger is necessary,” wrote Lenin in one of the articles devoted to the preparations for the Unification Party Congress. - The merger must be supported. In the interests of merging, it is necessary to fight the Mensheviks over tactics within the framework of the partnership, trying to convince all party members, reducing the polemics to a business-like presentation of the arguments for and against, to clarifying the position of the proletariat and its class tasks. But the merger does not in the least oblige us to gloss over tactical differences or to present our tactics inconsistently and not in pure form. Nothing like this. The ideological struggle for tactics, which we recognize as correct, must be waged openly, directly and resolutely to the end ... ".

The need to convene a Unity Congress was also dictated by other considerations. On the territory of Russia, in addition to the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, national Social Democratic parties existed and operated separately: The Social Democrats of Poland and Lithuania, the Latvian Social Democratic Labor Party and the Bund. The interests of the revolution, the interests of the struggle against tsarism demanded rallying, uniting the efforts of the workers of all nationalities of Russia.

The IV (Unity) Congress did not lead to a real alliance with the Mensheviks. The struggle that preceded the congress, which became especially acute during the revolutionary storm of 1905, unfolded with exceptional clarity at the Fourth Congress.

Before the congress, VI Lenin worked out the Bolshevik platform — the draft congress resolutions on all questions of the revolution. Lenin wanted the workers to clearly see the positions of the Bolsheviks. The Mensheviks advanced their tactical platform for the congress. On these platforms, mainly when discussing the question of attitude towards the State Duma, elections to the congress took place. The campaign to discuss both platforms and elect delegates to the convention lasted for about two months. As a result, its overwhelming majority of party organizations spoke out in favor of the Bolshevik platform. The Bolshevik platform was approved and only Bolshevik organizations were sent to the congress: Botkin, Vladimir, Voronezh, Elizavetgradskaya, Dvinskaya, Ivanovo-Voznesenskaya, Kineshemskaya, Kostromskaya, Kursk, Minsk, Perm, Tagil, Tver, Ufa, Rizhskaya, Yaroslavl, Finland military. A larger number of Bolshevik delegates were sent by the party organizations of the largest industrial centers of Russia: Moscow (9 Bolsheviks and 4 Mensheviks), Baku (2 Bolsheviks and 1 Menshevik).

The Bolshevik tactics of an active boycott of the Duma were supported by the party committees: Saratov, Kazan, Irkutsk, Krasnoyarsk, Odessa, Kharkov, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod Joint Committee of the RSDLP, Joint Committee of Libavian Social Democratic Organizations, Caucasian Union of RSDLP, Tashkent and Vyazemsk Social Democratic Groups. Almost unanimously, the national social democratic organizations - Polish, Latvian, and Jewish - spoke out in favor of the boycott tactics.

The struggle was especially acute in the largest and most influential organization, the Petersburg one. The United Central Committee of the RSDLP proposed that the Bolshevik and Menshevik platforms be discussed at all workers' circles, with the obligatory participation of speakers from both sides. The discussion ended with the platform voting. After that, elections were held for a city-wide conference and the calculation of one delegate per 30 voting members of the party.

Despite the police obstacles, in St. Petersburg, in 3 days, about 4 thousand workers - members of the organization were gathered and interviewed, in addition, over 120 discussion meetings were held on the issue of two tactics, which were attended and then participated in the vote by over 2000 people. that is, two-thirds of the members of the party organization. 1,168 party members supported the boycott, 926 were against.

Despite the enormous successes of the Bolshevik platform in Petersburg, the Mensheviks succeeded in gaining an insignificant predominance at the congress from the Petersburg organization. Out of the total number of 11 delegates with a decisive vote from St. Petersburg, 5 Bolsheviks and 6 Mensheviks attended the congress; with an advisory - 2 Bolsheviks. The Menshevik majority at the congress succeeded in culling the decisive vote of the Bolshevik Molodenkov (A.A. Gapeev) sent by the student organization of St. Petersburg.

The congress met from April 10 (23) to April 25 (May 8) 1906. It was attended by 112 delegates with a decisive vote, 22 with an advisory vote, and 12 representatives of national social democratic organizations (social democracy of Poland and Lithuania, Latvian social democracy, Bund, representatives of the Ukrainian, Finnish, and Bulgarian Social-Democratic workers' parties). According to factional affiliation, of the decisive votes, approximately 62 belonged to the Mensheviks and 46 to the Bolsheviks. A small number of decisive votes were held by the conciliators (the so-called "center"), who were sided with the Mensheviks on fundamental issues.

The somewhat unexpected fact of the predominance of the Mensheviks at the congress, after the enormous successes of the Bolsheviks in discussing and voting on tactical platforms in a number of areas, was due to the fact that many Bolshevik organizations were defeated during and after the December uprising and were unable to send delegates to the congress.

The Mensheviks, on the other hand, sent their delegates mainly from small craft centers and non-industrial areas, where there were no mass demonstrations. In addition, the Mensheviks in the "days of freedom" generally grew up, expanding their organizations to include a petty-bourgeois intelligentsia, which had nothing in common with revolutionary Marxism. The Menshevik majority at the congress was achieved mainly by the "Caucasian" votes, the proportion of which was far from equal to that of the representatives of industrial Russia.

The Menshevik organization of Tiflis, for example, sent to the congress with decisive votes 10 Menshevik delegates (out of a total of 11 delegates), that is, almost as many as the largest proletarian organization, the Petersburg one, had at the congress.

The artificially inflated number of the Menshevik delegation in Tiflis aroused the indignation of the Tiflis workers. In their protest, sent to the congress signed by 200 people and read out at the 20th meeting, the workers reported that the Tiflis Mensheviks, when compiling the list of party members, did not comply with the requirements of the RSDLP charter: they included completely random persons who had no idea of the party on the list. with the sole purpose of "getting more congress mandates."

The number obtained in this way was transferred by the Mensheviks at the congress, giving them the opportunity to come to an agreement and prejudge the decisions of the congress.

The Fourth Congress was called the Unity Congress, but the predominance of the Mensheviks at the Congress determined the nature of most of its decisions. The indecision and half-heartedness of its opportunist majority ran through all the resolutions of the Congress.

The main issue around which a fierce struggle unfolded at the congress was the question of revising the agrarian program. The speakers on this most important, fundamental issue were from the Bolsheviks V.I. Lenin, from the Mensheviks - John (P. Maslov). The Bolshevik draft agrarian program was substantiated by V. I. Lenin for the congress in the work "Revision of the agrarian program of the workers' party", distributed to the delegates of the congress. The essence of Lenin's agrarian program in the bourgeois-democratic revolution was reduced to the demand for the confiscation of landlords, church, monastic, and other lands and, in the event of a decisive victory of the revolution, to the nationalization of the entire land. Lenin's agrarian program was built with the expectation of bringing the bourgeois-democratic revolution to the end, its development into a socialist revolution. It strengthened the alliance of the proletariat with the peasantry as a necessary condition for the victory of the revolution and facilitated the transition to the socialist revolution for the proletariat in alliance with the rural poor. The Bolsheviks, SI Gusev, AV Lunacharsky, and others spoke out for the Leninist program of nationalizing the land at the congress.

P. Maslov's Menshevik project demanded the "alienation" of large land plots and their municipalization. Under this program, the landowners' lands were not at the disposal of the peasant committees, but in the hands of the municipalities, from which the peasants had to rent land, each according to their own strength. Thus, the solution of the land question according to the Menshevik program depended not on the peasants themselves - by seizing the landowners' lands - but on the bureaucratic bodies of local self-government. The Menshevik program eliminated the peasants from resolving the land problem; it was not designed to completely abolish landlord ownership. Instead of calling for revolutionary action, the Menshevik agrarian program sowed illusions about the possibility of resolving the agrarian question peacefully, while maintaining the reactionary central government; Instead of the idea of an alliance between the working class and the peasantry, the Mensheviks essentially pursued a policy of agreement between the peasants and the landlords. This was the political harm of the Menshevik agrarian program.

In addition to the main reports on the agrarian question, GV Plekhanov, who defended P. Maslov's project with some amendments, and Schmidt (P. Rumyantsev), who defended nationalization in the spirit of Lenin's "Option A" (see this edition, pp. 490 and 515) and S. A. Borisov.

Borisov's program was closest to Lenin's, but instead of demanding the nationalization of the land, it put forward the division of the confiscated land into the personal property of the peasantry. The mistake of the divisionists was that they proceeded from the proposition of a long break between the bourgeois democratic and socialist revolutions. Opposing Lenin's nationalization, the divisionists did not understand, did not take into account its revolutionary role in the future, that is, did not take into account the prospects for the development of the bourgeois-democratic revolution into a socialist one, “... the supporters of division,” Lenin said, “correctly understand the peasant words about nationalization , explain them correctly, but - this is the whole point - but they do not know how to make this correct explanation a lever for changing the world, a tool for further movement forward. It is not about imposing nationalization on the peasants instead of partition ... The point is that a socialist, mercilessly exposing the peasant's petty-bourgeois illusions about "God's land", must be able to show the peasant the way forward”.

At the congress Borisov's program was defended by I. V. Stalin, Matveev (V. A. Bazarov-Rudnev), Sakarelov (N. Sakvarelidze) and other Bolsheviks.

Criticizing the partition program, Lenin noted that it was erroneous, but not harmful. In order not to split the votes against the Mensheviks, Lenin voted at the congress together with the divisionists.

After an intense struggle, the congress, by an insignificant majority of votes, approved the Menshevik agrarian program for the municipalization of the land, with a number of amendments adopted under pressure from the Bolsheviks. The Bolsheviks managed to achieve the inclusion in the program adopted by the congress, the demand for the confiscation of the landlord's land, instead of "alienation" - the periodical Menshevik program. At the insistence of the Bolsheviks, a clause on the nationalization of waters and forests was included in the program. In addition, the congress acknowledged that if municipalisation was not possible, the party would speak out in favor of dividing the land taken from the landlords between the peasants. In the tactical resolution on the agrarian question, the congress inserted a clause on the independent organization of the agricultural proletariat. This point, as well as the general part of the program, were taken entirely from Lenin's draft agrarian program. “Instead of the original Maslov program,” Lenin ironically said, “we got, as they joked at the congress, a “castrated” program”.

The congress approved the Menshevik resolutions on the State Duma (support for it was recognized as necessary), on an armed uprising, and adopted a half-hearted decision on partisan actions. The resolution on the armed uprising persistently called for opposition to all attempts to involve the proletariat in an armed conflict. It, like the speeches of the Mensheviks at the congress on the question of the armed uprising, was imbued with the spirit of opportunism and reactionaryism. Without discussion, the congress passed a compromise resolution on trade unions, which recognized the necessary assistance to the party in organizing unions, and a resolution on the attitude towards the peasant movement. Among the latest issues at the congress, the issue of unification with the social democracy of Poland and Lithuania and with the Latvian social democracy, which became part of the RSDLP as territorial organizations, working among the proletariat of all nationalities of the region, was resolved. The congress also adopted the draft conditions for unification with the Bund, but in a special resolution it decisively opposed the organization of the proletariat by nationality. At the congress, on the initiative of the Ukrainian Social Democratic Labor Party, the question of uniting with the USDLP was raised, but an agreement with it did not take place due to its petty-bourgeois nationalist character. The workers of the Ukraine united and fought in the all-Russian organizations of the RSDLP, educated in the spirit of class struggle and proletarian internationalism.

The association with national social democratic organizations was of great importance for the unity of the party ranks. It helped, in the words of V. I. Lenin, "to erase the last traces of the circle movement” and to increase the strength of the proletariat of all the peoples of Russia.

The unification made it possible for the Bolsheviks to exercise ideological influence on broad strata of workers of all nationalities, ensured international education and close rallying of the truly revolutionary forces of the proletariat. It made it easier to expose and isolate opportunist, chauvinist, and nationalist elements among the Social Democrats. By the decision to unite with national social-democratic organizations, the congress demonstrated the triumph of the principles of proletarian internationalism, proclaimed by Lenin and consolidated by the Second Congress of the RSDLP.

The congress finished its work with the adoption of a new party charter. The first paragraph of the charter was approved in the formulation of Lenin, which he defended at the Second Party Congress and adopted by the Third Congress. The Mensheviks were afraid to alienate the workers, to be left without the masses, so they were forced to agree with the Lenin formulation of the first paragraph of the charter. The Central Committee, elected at the IV Congress, included 3 Bolsheviks and 7 Mensheviks. The editorial board of the Central Organ was composed of only Mensheviks.

Organizationally uniting with the Mensheviks, the Bolsheviks reserved the right to fight ideologically against the Mensheviks, the right to fight against the confusion of different parts of the party, two different ideologies.

The congress showed with exceptional clarity that the Mensheviks were reformist in solving the problems of the bourgeois-democratic revolution and the question of the role of classes in it, clearly demonstrating their position of turning the proletariat into the "tail" of the liberal-monarchist bourgeoisie. By the semi-Cadet agrarian program, by the resolution on the State Duma, on the armed uprising, the Mensheviks were clearly sliding towards liquidationism, towards revising the revolutionary tactics of the proletariat.

Having formally liquidated the split, the congress, of course, strengthened the unity of action of the Party organizations for the time being, but it did not and could not lead to real unification. The struggle that preceded the congress between the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks developed at the congress with particular acuteness. Therefore, according to Lenin, the great ideological matter of the congress was not unification, but a clear and definite demarcation of the right and left wings of the Social Democracy.

The struggle at the congress revealed to the party masses the content and depth of the fundamental differences between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks. The materials of the congress made it possible for party members and class-conscious workers to sort out ideological differences, to understand Lenin's revolutionary line more clearly and deeper, and to feel the opportunism of the Mensheviks. A sharp ideological demarcation helped the firmly united, revolutionary core of the Bolsheviks in the struggle for the party and for the broad proletarian masses, and at the same time for the hegemony of the proletariat in the revolutionary movement.

VI Lenin attached great importance to the study of the materials of the Congress. In May 1906, Lenin wrote for the St. Petersburg workers a "Report on the Unity Congress of the RSDLP", in which he called on all party members and class-conscious workers to independently study the documentary material of the congress.

“The Unity Congress,” wrote Lenin, “provided a mass of business-like, documentary material for determining — an exact and indisputable definition of what we agree on and where we disagree, exactly how much we disagree. It is necessary to study this documentary material, it is necessary to know the facts that accurately show the content and dimensions of the disagreements, it is necessary to wean from the old kruzhkovshchina habit - to present outcries, terrible words, formidable accusations instead of a business analysis of such and such, which manifested itself in such and such -that question of disagreement ".

The minutes of the IV (Unity) Congress of the RSDLP were first published in 1907 in Moscow in the processing of an editorial commission elected by the congress, consisting of two Bolsheviks - Orlovsky (V. Borovsky) and Panov (I. Teodorovich) and two Mensheviks - Katrina (S. Zavadsky) and Negoreva (N. Iordansky). In the event of disagreements in approving and editing the minutes, the congress gave the commission the right to appeal to the delegates of the congress who were in St. Petersburg at the time of editing the minutes. As a result, the minutes of the congress, in the editing of which the Mensheviks took part, suffered from significant shortcomings: they did not have records of a number of reports and speeches at the congress, in particular, they did not have Lenin's reports on the agrarian question, on the present day and the class tasks of the proletariat and his final words on the issue of attitude to the State Duma.

Later, the minutes of the IV (Unity) Congress were republished by Istpart (1926) and the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute under the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) (1934). In this issue the minutes are printed according to the text of the 1907 edition. As in the 1934 edition, the minutes are preceded by V. I. Lenin's "Report on the Unification Congress of the RSDLP", which illuminates the picture of the work of the congress and the struggle of the Bolsheviks at the congress with the opportunist trend within the RSDLP - the Mensheviks ...

For convenience and orientation of the reader, the text of the minutes of this edition, in contrast to the edition of 1907, includes a Bolshevik draft resolution on the State Duma, written by V. I. Lenin (see this edition, pp. 245-246).

In square brackets in the text, there is a transcript of the nicknames and pseudonyms of each identified speaker and speaker when he first appeared at this meeting. Individual passages of the text that are not clear in editorial terms were specified in square brackets or specified in footnotes, signed, in contrast to the notes of the protocol committee of the congress, with the signature: Ed. Obvious misprints found in the text of the protocols have been corrected without reservations.

The documents cited in the "Appendices" section of the protocols of the 1907 edition (the resolutions adopted by the congress - on the attitude towards the peasant movement, the State Duma, the armed uprising, partisan actions, the trade unions, the attitude towards the bourgeois parties, the organizational charter, and the letter K. Kautsky Congress), in the present edition, as in the 1934 edition, have been significantly supplemented and rearranged as follows:

The section "Materials of the Congress" includes resolutions proposed by the Bolsheviks at the Congress (II), draft Bolshevik resolutions for the Congress (I) and resolutions (V) adopted by the Congress. In the same section, instead of Lenin's speech on the agrarian question, which was absent in the text of the minutes, is printed his brochure "Revision of the agrarian program of the workers' party" (III) and Lenin's "Appeal to the party of delegates to the Unification Congress belonging to the former Bolshevik faction" (IV). This also included a somewhat revised list of congress delegates (VII), placed in the 1907 edition at the beginning of the text, and the order of the day of the congress (VI).

Subsection (V) "Resolutions and Resolutions" adopted by the Congress, in this edition, in comparison with all previous ones, x ^ is supplemented with "Greetings from V. I. Lenin on behalf of the RSDLP to Polish Social Democracy" merging with the RSDLP and ^ • ^ "Statement of the delegates of the LSDLP" in connection with the merger. ^ ~~ The section "Appendices; - includes materials related to the unification and convocation of the congress (I), the draft agrarian commission for the congress (II), draft Menshevik resolutions submitted to the congress (III) and introduced at the congress (JV), tactical the resolutions of the national social-democratic organizations adopted on the eve of the congress (V), K. Kautsky's letter to the congress (VL) and the notification of the Central Committee of the RSDLP about the congress (VII).

The subsection of the Menshevik resolutions submitted to the congress has been supplemented in this edition with the draft "On Trade Unions." The preface of the editorial committee elected by the congress (pp. 3-4) is given, as in the 1907 edition, at the beginning of the text of the minutes.

The minutes are equipped with a scientific reference apparatus: notes at the end of the text, indexes of names, social democratic organizations, periodicals and literary works and sources mentioned in the text.

The edition was prepared for publication by R. I. Markova; the index was compiled by KN Uryvaeva, indexes of the periodical press, social democratic organizations and literary works and sources - by 3. S. Nikolaevskaya; edition editors - N.I. Shatagin, M.D. Stuchebnikova.

Institute of Marxism-Leninism under the Central Committee of the CPSU