Kraków Meeting of the Central Committee of the Rsdlp and Party Workers

took place between Dec. 26, 1912, and Jan. 1, 1913 (Jan. 8–14, 1913). To ensure secrecy it was called the February Meeting. Among its participants were members of the Central Committee of the RSDLP—V. I. Lenin, J. V. Stalin, G. E. Zinov’ev, and R. V. Malinovskii (who was later denounced as a provocateur); Bolshevik deputies to the Fourth State Duma—G. I. Petrovskii, A. E. Badaev, and N. R. Shagov; and party workers—N. K. Krupskaia, L. B. Kamenev, V. N. Lobova, E. F. Rozmirovich, A. A. Troianovskii, and S. P. Medvedev, who represented the St. Petersburg, Moscow, Southern, Urals, and Caucasus organizations. The meeting was called by Lenin. The participants discussed the party’s tasks during the revolutionary upsurge in the country, the building of an illegal organization, the Social Democratic group in the Duma, the party press, the insurance campaign, party unity and the attitude toward liquidationism, and the national Social Democratic organizations. Lenin gave two reports, prepared all the resolutions, and wrote the “Notification” concerning the work of the meeting on behalf of the Central Committee. Lenin’s report “The Revolutionary Upsurge, the Strikes, and the Party’s Tasks” occupied the central place at the meeting. This resolution stressed the great significance of the proletariat’s unfolding strike movement, through which the proletariat had become the predominant force in the general struggle against tsarism, and noted that the support of strikes and demonstrations was one of the principal tasks of the party. In the resolution adopted on the basis of Lenin’s second report, “On The Attitude Toward Liquidationism and on Unity,” it was emphasized that the party ought to strive for unity in its ranks not through negotiations with the liquidators and Trotskyites but through the unification of Social Democratic workers from below, in factory committees and district groups, provided that they recognized the illegal organizations of the RSDLP. The participants in the meeting called for the unification of local groups, the creation of illegal party committees in factories and plants, and the formation of leading centers through a combination of elections from the regional party cells and co-optation (modeled after the St. Petersburg committee). In order to establish a permanent link between the Central Committee and local Social Democratic groups, a system of authorized persons was to be established from among the workers who headed the local organizations. In considering the question of the Social Democratic group in the Fourth Duma, the participants in the meeting noted the successful work of the deputies, emphasizing at the same time the necessity of establishing the party’s control over the group and of subordinating it to the Central Committee. On the question of national Social Democratic organizations, the participants called on workers to combat all manifestations of a nationalist spirit and expressed confidence that the revolutionary upsurge which had begun would unite Social Democratic workers in various localities into single RSDLP organizations without distinction between the nationalities. The meeting pointed out the necessity of utilizing the insurance campaign initiated by the tsarist government to defend proletarian interests and promote revolutionary propaganda. The decisions taken at the meeting determined the party’s tasks at a time of new revolutionary upsurge.