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mocracy. (Between 1900 and 1903 "Iskra" [the Spark], which later became known as the "old Iskra," expressed the revolutionary policy of the left wing of Social Democracy, whereas after 1903 "Iskra" was conducted by the Mensheviks.) At about this time Comrade Lenin's remarkable pamphlet "What is to be Done?" (1902) appeared, which played a notable part in the history of the construction and development of the Russian Communist Party. In this pamphlet Comrade Lenin delivered crushing blows to the opportunistic tendency in the Russian Social Democracy—the so-called economists, who appeared in the middle of the ’90’s. The "economists," who were kindred to the "legal Marxists," were typical opportunists, akin to the West European revisionists. They gave way to the spontaneity of the labor movement and actually reduced it to mere trade unionism. They denied the necessity for a centralized Social Democratic Party and argued that organizations for the protection of the economic interests of the workers (benefit societies, strike funds, etc.) were sufficient. In "Iskra" and the pamphlet "What is to be Done?" Lenin was the first to give a profoundly reasoned argument in favor of the plan of organization of so-called "professional revolutionaries" which he had put forward already in 1901. We reproduce several chapters of this pamphlet devoted to the question of organization in the present book.

The organizational forms which the Social Democratic organizations in Russia assumed at that time can be seen from Lenin's "Letter to a Com-