IV
PROBLEMS IN TACTICS
On April 17, 1917, I was called upon to report on tactical problems at a meeting of Bolsheviki in Petrograd. The meeting consisted of delegates to the All-Russian Congress of Workmen's and Soldiers' Soviets, who were about to depart and therefore could not allow me to postpone my discussion. At the close of the meeting the chairman, Comrade Zinoviev, suggested in the name of the whole assembly that I repeat my report immediately at the meeting of Bolshevik and Menshevik delegates, who wished to consider the question of unifying the Russian Social-Democratic Workers' Party.
I there read the "theses" which were published in Pravda on April 20 The theses and my report created discord among the Bolsheviki themselves and the staff of Pravda. After a number of consultations, we unanimously concluded that it would be expedient to openly discuss our differences, thus providing material for the All-Russian Congress of our party (Russian Social-Democratic Workers' Party, united with the Central Committee) which was to meet in Petrograd on May 3.
Complying with this decision I published the following, making no pretension to studying the question on all sides, but wishing only to point out the principal arguments, especially those essential for the practical problems of the working class movement.
I
An Estimate of the Moment
Marxism demands of us, the most exact, objective analysis of the relations of classes and the concrete peculiarties of each historic moment. We, the Bolsheviki, have always tried to be true to this demand, absolutely necessary from the standpoint of any scientific interpretation of poitics.
"Our teachings are not a dogma, but a guide to action"—so said Marx and Engels, who always scorned mere learning and the repetition of "formulæ" capable only of formulating general propositions, which necessarily vary in accord with the variations in the economic bases of the political and all other aspects of the historical process.
By means of this objective and precise analysis of facts must the party of the revolutionary proletariat be guided now in the solution of the problems and the forms of its activity.
In my first "Letter from Abroad" ("The First Stage of the
