The Third Congress of the R.S.D.L.P.

The Third Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party, gathered by the Bolshevik wing of the party, was held in London, from April 25 to May 10, 1905. The Mensheviks refused to send delegates to this congress and instead held their meeting in Geneva. The Congress was attended by 38 delegates, of whom 24 had the right to vote and other 14 only had the right to speak. The delegates with voting rights in the Congress represented 21 local committees of the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party, the Central Committee, and the Party Council (Central Committee’s representatives on the Council). Lenin attended the Congress as a representative of the Odessa Committee and was elected chairman of the Congress.

The Congress evaluated fundamental issues of the revolution that was unfolding in Russia and defined the tasks of the proletariat and its party. Lenin prepared draft resolutions on all the main issues discussed at the Congress, made a Draft Resolution on the Participation of the Social-Democrats in a Provisional Revolutionary Government and a Draft Resolution on the Support of the Peasant Movement, and made speeches on Question of the Armed Uprising, Attitude Towards the Government’s Tactics on the Eve of the Revolution, Question of the Relations Between Workers and Intellectuals within the Social-Democratic Organizations, the Party Rules, Report on the Work of the Central Committee, so forth.

The Congress formulated a strategic plan for the party in the bourgeois-democratic revolution which put forward the ideas: The unfolding revolution in Russia was pronounced to be a bourgeois-democratic revolution in which the proletariat was the dominant force and driving spirit, with the peasantry as its ally. In the first stage of the revolution the proletariat, allied with the entire peasantry, was to neutralize the vacillations of the bourgeoisie and fight for a democratic republic, with a view to the possible transformation of the bourgeois-democratic revolution into a socialist revolution. From this strategic plan, the Congress laid down the strategic line of the party and proposed the organization of an armed uprising as the main and urgent task of the party. The Congress emphasized that it was only through a successful uprising that a provisional revolutionary government could come into being—the organ of the revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry; as the Congress pointed out, the provisional government would need to work toward implementation of the economic and political goals formulated in the Minimum Program of the R.S.D.L.P.. and to prepare the conditions for the transition to the socialist revolution.

The Congress adopted Party’s new organizational rules of which first paragraph was worded in accordance with Lenin’s formulation at the Second Congress of the R.S.D.L.P.; the rights of the Central Committee and local committees were precisely defined; the Party’s two-centric system was abolished. The Central Committee, headed by Lenin, was elected by the Congress as the single directing center of the R.S.D.L.P..

The Congress condemned the actions of the Mensheviks and their opportunism on organizational and tactical issues. Since the newspaper Iskra had fallen into the hands of the Mensheviks and carried out an opportunist line, the Third Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party entrusted the Central Committee with the creation of a new central organ, the newspaper Proletary, of which Lenin was nominated as editor. The Congress elected the Central Committee headed by Lenin and attended by A.A. Bogdanov, L.B. Krasin, A. M. Stopani, and A.I. Rykov.