In the winter of 1894-95, at a meeting in Petersburg of representatives of Social Democratic groups from various parts of Russia, a resolution was passed in favour of a more popular literature for workers to be published abroad. Lenin and EI Sponti from the Moscow Workers’ Union were made responsible for negotiating this question with Plekhanov’s Group for the Emancipation of Labour. In the spring of 1895, first Sponti and then Lenin went to Switzerland to establish contact with the Group. The impact caused among the émigrés by this breakthrough is conveyed in the correspondence of Plekhanov and Axelrod:

The arrival of E.I. Sponti and then, to a much greater degree, of V.I. Lenin (Ulyanov), were a great event in the life of the Group for the Emancipation of Labour; they were practically the first Social Democrats who had arrived abroad with a request from those who were carrying out the active work of the Social Democratic circles for business-like negotiations with the Group. (Perepiska GV Plekhanova i PB Aksel’roda, p. 127.)

Up until this moment, the members of the exiled Emancipation of Labour Group had been reduced to the role of onlookers and commentators on the great struggles taking place in Russia. The experience of past failures with people coming from the interior had also made them wary. But the newcomers soon convinced them that there now existed a real basis for the spread of Marxist ideas in Russia. The forces of the young generation joined hands with the exiled veterans. The two emissaries returned to Russia with a commitment on the part of the Group to begin the publication of a Marxist journal, Rabotnik (The Worker), while a more popular paper would be published in the interior with the title of Rabocheye Dyelo (The Workers’ Cause). The future of Russian Marxism seemed assured.

However, shortly after Lenin’s return to Russia disaster struck. On the night of 19 December, as the first issue of Rabocheye Dyelo was being prepared for the printers, the police carried out a large-scale raid that carried off most of the leaders. When arrested, Lenin calmly denied that he was a Social Democrat, and when asked why he had illegal literature on him, shrugged his shoulders and said he must have picked it up in the flat of somebody whose name he had forgotten. In a courageous attempt to deceive the police into thinking they had arrested the wrong people, the remaining leaders, with Martov at their head, issued a mimeographed proclamation to the workers: “The League of Struggle… will carry on its work. The police have failed. The workers’ movement will not be smashed by arrests and exile: the strikes and struggles will not end until the complete liberation of the working class from the capitalist yoke is achieved.” (Istoriya KPSS, vol. 1, p. 228.) The ruse failed, and on 5 January, 1896, Martov and the others were arrested.

While in prison, Lenin made plans for a major theoretical work, The Development of Capitalism in Russia, and even managed to maintain correspondence with the organisation by the skilful use of crude but effective clandestine methods. Messages were written in milk between the lines of books which would show up in yellowish brown when held up to a candle. He made an ‘inkwell’ out of bread and would pop it in his mouth when a guard approached. “Today I have eaten six inkwells,” he wrote. One proclamation, To the Tsar’s Government, written in this way, was hectographed and distributed in hundreds of copies. The police went frantically looking for the author, never dreaming that he was already the guest of His Majesty. Despite everything, Lenin preserved his sense of humour, writing to his mother: “I’m in a far better position than most of the citizens of Russia. They can never find me.” (Quoted in R. Payne, The Life and Death of Lenin, p. 112.) Some of the prisoners fared less well. One of the leaders of the Petersburg League, Vaneyev, who was arrested with Lenin, caught tuberculosis – still the scourge of Russian jails today – and never recovered. Another went insane.

The arrests of the ‘veterans’ had an extremely serious effect on the immediate development of the organisation. By removing from the scene the most experienced and politically developed cadres, the leadership fell into the hands of younger people, some of whom were completely raw. The average age of the ‘old-timers’ was actually around 24 or 25. Lenin’s party name was Starik (the Old Man). He was 26! The youngsters who now occupied leading positions were 20 or less. They were enthusiastic and dedicated, but politically untutored. The difference soon made itself felt. The striking success of the agitation movement exercised a powerful influence upon the minds of the youth and the intelligentsia, which was moving away from the discredited ideas of Narodnism and individual terrorism. New recruits entered the movement. But the general theoretical level was lowered. The battle against the old narrow, propaganda-circle mentality had been won. But in their eagerness to extend the mass influence of the Social Democracy through the vehicle of economic agitation, a section of the more impressionable students was inclined to present the issue in a one-sided way. In 1895-96 there appeared in Petersburg a group in the Technological Institute led by the talented and energetic medical student KM Takhtarev which began to argue that the Social Democrats should not see themselves as ‘leading’ the workers but only as ‘serving’ them by helping out in strikes.

Such was the growth in the influence of the Marxists, that the arrested leaders were very quickly replaced. But the quality of the leadership had suffered a severe blow. The tendency led by the student Takhtarev swiftly gained the ascendancy over the ‘old timers’, who everywhere were pushed to one side. The practical successes of agitation seduced these ‘activists’ seeking an easy way out of the complex problem of building a revolutionary party. At first, almost imperceptibly, they began to adapt themselves to the prejudices of the most backward layers of the working class, arguing that political ideas were too difficult for the masses, and that, anyway, politics was of no concern to the workers interested in improving their economic conditions.