“The most serious blunder Iskra committed in this connection,” writes B. Krichevsky (Rabocheye Dyelo, No. 10, p. 30), charging us with a tendency to “convert theory into a lifeless doctrine by isolating it from practice”, “was its ‘plan’ for a general party organisation” (viz., the article entitled ‘Where to Begin?’). Martynov echoes this idea in declaring that “Iskra’s tendency to belittle the significance of the forward march of the drab everyday struggle in comparison with the propaganda of brilliant and completed ideas… was crowned with the plan for the organisation of a party which it sets forth in the article entitled ‘Where to Begin?’ in issue No. 4.” (ibid., p. 61.) Finally, L. Nadezhdin has of late joined in the chorus of indignation against this ‘plan’ (the quotation marks were meant to express sarcasm). In his pamphlet, which we have just received, entitled The Eve of the Revolution (published by the ‘Revolutionary-Socialist Group’ Svoboda, whose acquaintance we have made), he declares (p. 126): “To speak now of an organisation held together by an all-Russia newspaper means propagating armchair ideas and armchair work” and represents a manifestation of “bookishness”, etc.
That our terrorist turns out to be in agreement with the champions of the “forward march of the drab everyday struggle” is not surprising, since we have traced the roots of this intimacy between them in the chapters on politics and organisation. But we must draw attention here to the fact that Nadezhdin is the only one who has conscientiously tried to grasp the train of thought in an article he disliked and has made an attempt to reply to the point, whereas Rabocheye Dyelo, has said nothing that is material to the subject, but has tried merely to confuse the question by a series of unseemly, demagogic sallies. Unpleasant though the task may be, we must first spend some time in cleansing this Augean stable.