"Bolshevism has existed as a current of political thought and as a political party since 1903." These Leninist words, reproduced in hall 3, Express the essence of the exposition, which tells about the emergence in Russia of the revolutionary party of the working class, about the II Congress of the RSDLP.
V. I. Lenin waited with deep excitement for the beginning of the Congress and carefully prepared for it. He drafted the Charter of the party, wrote a plan of the report to the Congress on the activities of the organization "Sparks" and other materials. V. I. Lenin developed the regulations and the order of the day of the Congress, draft resolutions: on demonstrations, on work among the peasantry, on work in the army, on the attitude to the students.
The second Congress opened on 17 July 1903 in Brussels. The first meeting was held in a warehouse on one of the working outskirts of the Belgian capital. But because of police harassment, the Convention was moved to London. 26 organizations sent delegates to the Congress. Their composition was heterogeneous. Along with the successive proletarian revolutionaries, "economists," centrists, and other representatives of opportunism took part in the work. This determined the acuteness and tension of the struggle that unfolded at the Congress on many issues.
Lenin actively participated in the Congress. He was elected Vice-Chairman of the Congress, as well as a member of the program, Charter and mandate commissions. The minutes recorded more than one hundred and thirty of his speeches and comments.
The Congress approved the draft Programme of the party worked out by the editors of Iskra, which consistently continued the revolutionary line of Marx and Engels ' teachings. For the first time in the history of the international labour movement, after the deaths of Marx and Engels, a revolutionary programme was adopted in which the struggle for the dictatorship of the proletariat was put forward as the main task of the working class. The adopted Program emphasized the role of the proletariat-the leader of all workers and exploited in the struggle for democracy and socialism, defined the role of the peasantry as an ally of the working class.
In the manuscript of the first paragraph of the draft Charter of the party, Lenin demanded that each of its members take an active part in the revolutionary struggle and submit to a single party discipline. One of the notes made By Lenin during the discussion of the Charter of the party at the Congress (a copy of the record is on the stand), reads: "the Separation of the chattering from the working: it is better not to call 10 working members than 1 chattering name." The first paragraph of the Charter, in Lenin's formulation, closed access to the party to non-proletarian, unstable, opportunistic elements and thus opened the way for the creation of a strong, organized and disciplined party of the Russian proletariat. So he provoked furious attacks by opportunists.
In the election of the Central governing bodies of the party - the Central Committee and the editorial Board of the Central Body - supporters of Lenin received a majority of votes. It was from then on that they were called " Bolsheviks, "and their opponents, the opportunists who remained in the minority,"Mensheviks."
The struggle at the Congress was decisive and open. V. I. Lenin a few years later cited his conversation at the Congress with one delegate who held a centrist position. "What a heavy atmosphere prevails at our Congress!"he complained to me. "This bitter fighting, this agitation one against the other, this sharp controversy, this unfriendly attitude!.."What a beautiful thing is our Congress! I answered him. - "Open, free struggle. Views expressed. Shades outlined. Groups have emerged. Hands up. Decision made. Stage is passed. Go! - that's what I understand. This is life. This is not like endless, tedious intellectual verbiage, which ends not because people have decided the question, but simply because they are tired of talking..."Comrade from the "center" looked at me with puzzled eyes and shrugged his shoulders. We spoke different languages."
The second Congress of the party ended with the complete victory of the revolutionary trend and became a turning point in the world labour movement. At the Congress wascreated proletarian party of a new type, able to raise the working class and all the working people of Russia to overthrow the power of the landlords and capitalists, to build socialism.
After the completion of the II Congress of the RSDLP (August 10, 1903), Lenin and his associates visited the grave of Karl Marx in the Highgate cemetery.
The second Congress of the RSDLP attracted great attention from the social democratic parties of Western Europe. Many press organs, such as the social democratic Newspapers justice and Forverts, informed their readers in detail about this important event in the revolutionary movement of the Russian proletariat and positively assessed the work carried out by the Congress.
Having been defeated at the Congress, the Mensheviks made every effort to thwart its decisions and to disorganize the work of the party. They managed to take over the Central Organ of the party - the newspaper "Iskra", the Central Committee, publishing, transport links, party finances. They tried to extend their opportunistic influence to local party organizations, most of which supported Lenin and the Bolsheviks. In these circumstances, the Bolsheviks were faced with the acute task of exposing the actions of the Mensheviks, hostile parties.
This task was fulfilled By V. I. Lenin in his book " one Step forward, two steps back (crisis in our party)". It was published in Geneva in may 1904. In His work, Lenin debunked the opportunism of the Mensheviks. He showed that the division of the RSDLP into "majority" and "minority" is a direct and inevitable continuation of the division of the social Democrats into revolutionaries and opportunists, which has long existed in other parties. V. I. Lenin further developed the Marxist doctrine of the party as the leading organization of the proletariat, without which it is impossible to win the socialist revolution and build a Communist society. The organizational principles of Bolshevism developed in the book, the firm norms of party life and the principles of party leadership became the law for all subsequent activities of the party.
In exile, Lenin, as always, worked hard. In Geneva, in 1903-1904, he made frequent use of the University's public library.
The fierce struggle with the Mensheviks could not but affect the health of Lenin. His nerves were strained to the limit, he suffered from insomnia, worried. Extreme fatigue forced him to temporarily postpone all business. Together with N. K. Krupskaya, he rested for a week in Lausanne, and then, putting on backpacks, they went to the mountains, roamed the wild paths, climbing into the wilderness. After traveling in the mountains, Lenin And Krupskaya briefly settled in a remote village near lake Lac de Bray (near Lausanne). With great pleasure Vladimir Ilyich worked in the garden, helping the owner of the house. physical labor on the air was for him the best leisure. Here he met with his party comrades and discussed with them a plan for further work.
In August 1904, in the town of Carouge - a suburb of Geneva - under the leadership of Lenin held a meeting of 22 Bolsheviks, which was adopted written by him appeal "to the party" with a call to fight for the immediate convening of the third Congress of the RSDLP, which was to bring the party out of the crisis caused by the divisive, disorganizing activities of the Mensheviks.
A major role in the struggle against opportunism of the Mensheviks, for the preparation of the third party Congress played a newspaper created By Lenin "Forward", revived the revolutionary traditions of Lenin's" Iskra "(since N 52," Iskra " passed into the hands of the Mensheviks, who opened on its pages a vicious campaign against Lenin, against the Bolsheviks). The first issue of the newspaper "Forward" was published in Geneva. In early December 1904, Vladimir Ilyich made a speech in Paris and some cities in Switzerland with an essay on the internal party situation in the RSDLP. The money raised from these performances went to the publication of the newspaper.