Lenin Collected Works:
Volume 7

Preface by Progress Publishers

This seventh volume of Lenin's works covers the period from September 1903 to December 1904.

The major item in it is his book, One Step Forward, Two Steps Back, which elaborated the organisational principles of the Bolshevik Party.

Many of the works in the present volume—the “Account of the Second Congress of the R.S.D.L.P.", the article “One Step Forward, Two Steps Back. Reply by N. Lenin to Rosa Luxemburg”, the speeches at the Congress of the League of Russian Revolutionary Social-Democracy Abroad and the sessions of the Party Council, and the resolutions moved there, the draft appeal “To the Party”, and the pamphlet “The Zemstvo Campaign and Iskra's Plan"—are directed against the Mensheviks' opportunism in organisational and tactical questions and against their splitting activities.

The letters included in this volume—"Letter to the Members of the Central Committee”, “To Five Members of the Central Committee”, “Letter to Central Committee Agents and Committee Members of the R.S.D.L.P. Siding with the Second Party Congress Majority” and the “Letter to Glebov (V. A. Noskov)"—illustrate Lenin's fight against the conciliators.

"What We Are Working For”, “To the Party”, “A Letter to the Comrades”, and the “Announcement of the Formation of an Organising Committee and the Convening of the Third Regular Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party” show how Lenin directed the preparations for the Third Party Congress and the establishment of the Bureau of Majority Committees and the Bolshevik newspaper Vperyod.

The following documents published in this volume are included in the Collected Works for the first time: the “Statement Concerning Martov's Report”, the letter “To the Editorial Board of the Central Organ of the R.S.D.L.P." concerning Lenin's resignation from the editorial board of Iskra, the draft resolution moved in the Party Council on the convening of the Third Party Congress, and Lenin's fourth speech there on the publication of Party literature, and the “Announcement of the Formation of a Bureau of Majority Committees”.