Comrade Martov, quoting from the interview I gave L’Humanite (signed Étienne Avenard),[1] has interpreted several passages incorrectly.
The interview said that the C.C. (its Menshevik part, of course) secretly and stealthily gave information to the Cadets. This statement of mine has now been confirmed by the discussions at the Congress. It has transpired at this Congress that, as far back as November 1906, Dan went privately to Milyukov and “took tea” with him, Nabokov, and leaders of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and the Popular Socialists. Dan did not consider it necessary to report this either to the C.C. or to the St. Petersburg Committee.
It was this meeting with the Cadets, which was not reported either to the C.C. or to the St. Petersburg Committee, that constituted secretly and stealthily giving information to the Cadets.
Further, the interview states that the Mensheviks did not reject the Cadets’ disgraceful proposal to give the workers’ seats to the Mensheviks in exchange for Menshevik assistance to the Cadets. Comrade Martov points out that the Mensheviks rejected this verbally. I assert that the Mensheviks’ deeds contradicted their verbal rejection; (1) verbally the Mensheviks promised to give all the seats to the worker curia. Actually, when all the workers’ delegates, in a body, called on the Mensheviks (by a majority of 220-230 votes against 10-20) to abandon their “covert support” of the Cadets, the Mensheviks refused to obey them; (2) after January 25, after the conclusion of the Left bloc, the Mensheviks stated in print the condition on which they would assist it—freedom of action for the Menshevik electors at the second stage of the elections. Objectively, this condition could mean only one thing—their readiness to support the Cadets against the Social-Democrats at the second stage.
N. Lenin
[1] See pp. 145-51 of this volume.—Ed.
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