Second Congress of the RSDLP¶
Core Argument¶
At the Second Congress of the RSDLP, the question of the Bund’s position within the party became the central and most divisive issue, determining the very organisational principles upon which the party would be built. The Congress adopted a resolution rejecting federal relations between the RSDLP and the Bund in the strongest possible terms, declaring federation “absolutely inadmissible in principle.” The resolution argued that the closest possible unity between the Jewish proletariat and the proletariat of the surrounding nationalities was essential for the struggle against chauvinism and antisemitism, and that federalism would erect harmful barriers to the organisational rapprochement of class-conscious workers. Instead, the Bund was granted the status of an autonomous component within a united, centralised party, the precise limits of its autonomy to be defined later. When the Bund delegates refused to accept this decision, a draft resolution, not ultimately submitted to the Congress, characterised their withdrawal as a major political mistake, driven by unfounded suspicions of Russian social-democrats and by the “unfortunate penetration of nationalism” into the Bund’s movement.
In his speeches, Lenin drove home the theoretical and practical case against federation. He argued that federation was not merely a practical inconvenience but a principled violation of social-democracy, one that “sanctions segregation and alienation, elevates them to a principle, to a law.” The existing fragmentation of the Russian labour movement was a weakness to be overcome, not a condition to be codified. Lenin insisted that centralism demanded the absence of any obligatory partitions between the central party body and even the most remote local groups; the central committee must have the absolute right to communicate directly with every party member. He ridiculed the Bundist leader Liber for claiming that federation meant centralism while autonomy meant decentralism, calling it a sophistry unworthy of serious debate. Autonomy, Lenin argued, meant freedom from petty interference, not freedom from central authority, and he pointed out that the Bund’s demand for such a guarantee was itself an expression of “organised distrust” towards the rest of the party. Drawing a sharp historical parallel, Lenin compared the Bundists to the British miners of Northumberland and Durham, who, having secured a privileged position for themselves through a separate deal with the coal-owners, subsequently opposed the general struggle for an eight-hour day for all workers. The lesson was clear: sectionalism, even when rooted in genuine organisational strength, could become a conservative force that undermined the unity and fighting capacity of the entire proletariat.