opinion is essential. Moreover, I insist mote strongly than ever on the plan for a national political newspaper, the more so because of the weakness of the arguments that were levelled against it, and because the question that I put in the article "Where to Begin" as to how we can set to work simultaneously, all over the country, to establish the organisation we require was never really answered. Finally, in the concluding part of this pamphlet I hope to prove that we did all we could to avoid a rupture with the Economists, but the rupture proved inevitable; that Rabocheye Dyelo acquired special, "historical," if you will, significance not so much because it expressed consistent Economism, but because it fully and strikingly expressed the confusion and vacillation that mark a whole period in the history of Russian Social-Democracy, and that therefore, the polemics with Rabocheye Dyelo, which at first sight may seem excessively detailed, also acquires significance; for we can make no progress until we have completely liquidated this period.
February, 1902.
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