V. I.   Lenin

The Third Congress of the R.S.D.L.P.

April 12 (25)-April 27 (May 10), 1905

1. Whereas the revolutionary movement in Russia has already to a certain degree shaken and disorganised the autocratic government, which has been compelled to tolerate the comparatively extensive exercise of freedom of political action by the classes inimical to it;

2. Whereas this freedom of political action is mostly, almost exclusively, enjoyed by the bourgeois classes, which thereby strengthen their existing economic and political domination over the working class and increase the danger that the proletariat may be transformed into a mere append age of bourgeois democracy; and

3. Whereas there is developing (breaking through, coining to light) among increasingly wider masses of the workers the urge towards independent open action in the political arena, even though (on occasions of lesser importance) with out the participation of the Social-Democrats;— Therefore, the Third Congress of the R.S.D.L.P. calls the attention of all Party organisations to the fact that it is necessary

a) to make use of each and every case of open political action on the part of the educated spheres and the people, whether in the press, in associations, or at meetings, for the purpose of contraposing the independent class demands of the proletariat to the general democratic demands, so as to develop its class-consciousness and to organise it in the course of such actions into an independent socialist force;

b) to make use of all legal and semi-legal channels for creating workers’ societies, associations, and organisations,   and to put forward every effort towards securing (in what ever way) the predominance of Social-Democratic influence in such associations and to convert them into bases for the future openly functioning Social-Democratic working-class party in Russia;

c) to take the necessary steps to ensure that our Party organisations, while maintaining and developing their underground machinery, will proceed at once to the preparation of expedient forms of transition, wherever and whenever possible, to open Social-Democratic activity, even to the point of clashes with the armed forces of the government.

Notes