1910 was the period of the most complete degeneration of the movement and of the most widespread flood of conciliatory tendencies. In January, a plenum of the Central Committee was held in Paris, at which the Conciliators gained a very unstable victory. It was decided to restore the Central Committee in Russia with the participation of the Liquidators. Nogin and Germanov were Bolshevik Conciliators. The revival of the ‘Russian’ collegium – that is, of the one acting illegally in Russia – was Nogin’s task.
– Leon Trotsky, Stalin
The prevailing conditions of reaction, and the appalling difficulties faced by all Social Democrats, understandably encouraged those elements who favoured unity at any price. Out of these moves towards unity came the idea of a special Plenum to kick out the Liquidators and otzovists and establish unity between the Bolsheviks and non-Liquidator Mensheviks. But Lenin was unimpressed by all these attempts at unity. He wrote sarcastically that Trotsky was in a bloc with people “with whom he agrees on nothing theoretically but in everything practically”. (LCW, An Open Letter to All Pro-Party Social Democrats, vol. 16, p. 339.) What Lenin meant was that, while Trotsky was politically at odds with the Liquidators and otzovists, he nevertheless continued to argue in favour of conciliation and unity, and thus found himself in an unprincipled bloc. Lenin saw no point in participating in a Plenum of elements who stood for mutually exclusive political positions. But he no longer carried a majority in the Bolshevik camp on this question. The violence of the discussions among the Bolshevik leaders was later hinted at by Lenin in a letter to Gorky: “Three weeks of agony, all nerves were on edge, the devil to pay…” (LCW, Letter to Maxim Gorky, 11 April, 1910, vol. 34, p. 420.) But Lenin’s protests were in vain. Outvoted within the Bolshevik faction, he was compelled reluctantly to go along with the Plenum.
In January 1910, for the last time, the leading representatives of the different tendencies of the RSDLP met together in an attempt to patch up their differences. The Plenum took place in Paris from 2 to 23 January, 1910. The leaders of all the factions were present, except Plekhanov, who declined to attend, pleading illness. The absence of the Pro-Party Mensheviks was a further blow to Lenin, since his preference was for unity with Plekhanov’s group. Given the extremely heterogeneous nature of such a gathering, the outcome was a foregone conclusion. In order to secure genuine unity, it is not enough to proclaim it. Unless there is principled agreement on the fundamental questions, such an attempt usually only succeeds in uniting three groups into ten! The differences separating the different groups were too great to be overcome by resolutions piously proclaiming the need for unity. That is why Lenin opposed the convening of such a gathering. Far from ‘resolving’ the issues, this explosive mixture of inflammable elements inevitably led to an immediate blow-up. At Lenin’s insistence, the Plenum passed a resolution condemning both liquidationism and otzovism as bourgeois influences within the Party. Subsequently, however, the supporters of these trends insisted on watering this down. The question arose of calling a Party Conference to try to resolve the problems. Lenin insisted that the largest number of workers from illegal party organisations be invited to this. On this basis, the Bolsheviks agreed to support the idea. The Plenum also agreed to grant Trotsky’s Pravda a monthly subsidy and to place Kamenev on its editorial board as the representative of the Central Committee.
There was a row over money. The Mensheviks caused a scandal over funds belonging to the Bolsheviks, which had been obtained by the controversial method of ‘expropriations’. Still more controversial was a large sum of money left to the Party by millionaire industrialist Savva Morozov. At the time of the Plenum, for once, the Bolsheviks had plenty of money thanks to a nephew of Morozov, Nikolai Schmidt, who was murdered in a tsarist prison after the December defeat. Before he died, Nikolai got word to his friends outside that he was leaving all his property to the Bolsheviks. In addition, his younger sister Elizaveta Schmidt decided to donate her share of the inheritance to the Bolsheviks. But as she was not yet of age, a fictitious marriage had to be organised with a member of one of the party’s fighting squads who had somehow managed to keep on a legal footing. By this means the Bolsheviks managed to obtain the money immediately. That is why Lenin could write confidently that Proletary was now able to pay for delegates to the Plenum. The Mensheviks were incensed when they discovered the situation, and raised hell. This was the cause of the kind of hysterical and acrimonious dispute which so often poisoned the atmosphere of émigré circles.
A heavy price was, in fact, paid by the Bolsheviks for the sake of unity. Against Lenin’s protest, they agreed to cease publication of their central organ, Proletary. More painful still, the Bolshevik group’s funds were handed over to a committee of trustees established by the Socialist International. The matter of the Schmidt inheritance was ‘resolved’ when the disputed funds were handed over for temporary safekeeping to this commission, which was composed of Mehring, Klara Zetkin, and Kautsky. Lenin was, to put it mildly, unhappy about this and insisted on the right to get this back if the Mensheviks did not likewise wind up Golos Sotsial-Demokrata and disband their factional centre. Future developments would prove him right. Finally, the remaining 500 rouble notes left over from the Tiflis expropriation were burned.
It is not correct, as is frequently done, to attribute the failure of the attempt at unity to Lenin’s intransigence. As a matter of fact, at this stage, the main obstacle to unity were the Mensheviks. The Bolsheviks had already expelled the otzovists, so they had no trouble in voting for that. A very different situation existed in the camp of Menshevism, where liquidationism reigned supreme. How could they expel the Liquidators? It would have supposed an act of self-immolation, which not one of them was prepared to contemplate. Thus, when both factions agreed to disband their factional apparatus and merge, the Bolsheviks actually loyally carried out the decision, but the Mensheviks did not. Martov later admitted that they only agreed because the Mensheviks were too weak to risk an immediate split. (See J. Martov, Spasiteli ili Uprazdniteli?, p. 16.)
At the end of the meeting, in a hollow gesture, Lenin and Plekhanov were unanimously elected as delegates to the forthcoming Congress of the Socialist International. The Bolshevik conciliators had achieved their objective. Kamenev was sent by the Bolsheviks to Vienna to represent them on Trotsky’s Pravda, which was granted a regular subsidy of 150 roubles from the Central Committee. But Lenin remained unconvinced. His judgement on the January Plenum was that it marked a partial retreat by the Bolsheviks for the sake of unity. But its decisions were contradictory and could not be carried out. The Mensheviks did not dissolve their centre and continued to publish the Golos. The agreement to repay the Bolshevik funds in such a case turned out to be a dead letter. The money placed in the care of Kautsky’s committee remained in Germany, where, after the outbreak of war, it was eventually impounded by the Treasury and used to pay for the Kaiser’s war effort.