Correction to What Is to Be Done?¶
Core Argument¶
This brief but significant correction, published in Iskra No. 9 in April 1902, sees Lenin intervening to rectify an inaccuracy in his own pamphlet What Is to Be Done? regarding the chronology and motivations of the “Initiators’ Group” in the fractious relations among Russian Social-Democratic organisations abroad. The core narrative thrust is a precise factual adjustment: Lenin had previously implied that all three members of the Initiators’ Group left the Union Abroad at the end of 1900. The correction, supplied at the group’s request, establishes that only one left at that time; the other two departed in 1901, and only after becoming convinced that the Union Abroad would never consent to a conference with the Iskra organisation and the revolutionary Sotsial-Demokrat organisation, which the group had proposed.
The chapter then deepens into a polemical reconstruction of the Union Abroad’s manoeuvring. The Administrative Committee of the Union Abroad initially rejected the group’s mediation proposal on the grounds that the group was “not competent” to act as mediators, instead expressing a desire for direct contact with Iskra. However, after the first issue of Iskra appeared, containing a report of the split in the Union, the Administrative Committee reversed course entirely, informing the Initiators’ Group that it no longer wished to maintain relations with Iskra at all. Lenin thus exposes a contradiction: a member of the Administrative Committee later claimed that the rejection of a conference was caused solely by dissatisfaction with the composition of the Initiators’ Group. Lenin finds this explanation difficult to square with the sequence of events, particularly given that the Union Abroad did agree to a conference in June of the previous year. He points out that the conditions which supposedly made the group’s composition objectionable were still in force at that time, and that Iskra’s negative attitude toward the Union Abroad had been expressed even more strongly in the first issue of Zarya and in Iskra No. 4, both published before the June conference.
The correction draws on the immediate historical context of the bitter factional struggle within Russian Social-Democracy abroad, a struggle that formed the backdrop to Lenin’s organisational polemics. The polemic is directed against the Union Abroad and its Administrative Committee, whose shifting justifications Lenin treats as disingenuous. By publishing this correction, Lenin demonstrates a commitment to factual accuracy even in the heat of factional warfare, while simultaneously using the correction to further expose what he regards as the Union’s evasiveness and bad faith.