History of The Communist Party of The Soviet Union - Formation of RSDLP(b)

Formation of RSDLP(b)

In January 1912, the Bolshevik fraction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party convened a 6th All-Russian Party Conference, in the absence of their Menshevik adversaries. Over twenty Party organizations were represented. In the eyes of the Bolsheviks the conference had, therefore, the significance of a regular Party congress.

In the statement of the conference which announced that the shattered central apparatus of the Party had been restored and a new Central Committee set up. "Not only have the banner of the Russian Social-Democratic Party, its program and its revolutionary traditions survived, but so has its organization, which persecution may have undermined and weakened, but could never utterly destroy"—the statement of the conference declared. Moreover, the conference declared the Mensheviks expelled from the party. Thus the RSDLP was effectively split, with the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks constituting separate political parties (Both groups would continue to use the name RSDLP. The Bolshevik party added '(bolshevik)' to their name to differentiate themselves from the Mensheviks.)

In its resolution on the reports presented by the local organizations, the conference noted that "energetic work is being conducted everywhere among the Social-Democratic workers with the object of strengthening the local illegal Social-Democratic organizations and groups." The conference noted that the most important rule of Bolshevik tactics in periods of retreat, namely, to combine illegal work with legal work within the various legally existing workers’ societies and unions, was being observed in all the localities.

The Prague Conference elected a Bolshevik Central Committee of the Party, consisting of Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Sergo Ordzhonikidze, Yakov Sverdlov, Spandaryan, Goloshchekin and others. Stalin and Sverdlov were elected to the Central Committee in their absence, as they were in exile at the time. Among the elected alternate members of the Central Committee was Mikhail Kalinin.

For the direction of revolutionary work in Russia a practical centre (the Russian Bureau of the C.C.) was set up with Stalin at its head and including Y. Sverdlov, Spandaryan, S. Ordjonikidze, M. Kalinin and Goloshchekin.

Writing to Maxim Gorky at the beginning of 1912, on the results of the Prague Conference, Lenin said:

At last we have succeeded, in spite of the Liquidator scum, in restoring the Party and its Central Committee. I hope you will rejoice with us over the fact.

Speaking of the significance of the Prague Conference, Stalin said:

This conference was of the utmost importance in the history of our Party, for it drew a boundary line between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks and amalgamated the Bolshevik organizations all over the country into a united Bolshevik Party.

In the summer of 1912, Lenin moved from Paris to Galicia in order to be nearer to Russia. Here he presided over two conferences of members of the Central Committee and leading Party workers, one of which took place in Krakow at the end of 1912, and the other in Poronino, a small town near Krakow, in the autumn of 1913. These conferences adopted decisions on questions relating to the working-class movement: the rise in the revolutionary movement, the tasks of the Party in connection with the strikes, the strengthening of the illegal organizations, the Social-Democratic group in the Duma, the Party press, the labour insurance campaign, etc.