Lenin Collected Works:
Volume 12

Preface by Progress Publishers

Volume Twelve contains Lenin's writings for the period January-June 1907.

A number of the works included in this volume deal with the revolutionary tactics of the R.S.D.L.P. at the time of the Second State Duma election campaign—the defence of the Left bloc and the struggle against the Menshevik policy of collaboration with the Constitutional-Democrats (the Cadets). Among these writings are: “The Social-Democratic Election Campaign in St. Petersburg”, “How To Vote in the St. Petersburg Elections (Who Benefits from the Fables About the Black-Hundred Danger?)", “The Second Duma and the Second Revolutionary Wave”, “On the Tactics of Opportunism”, “The Bolsheviks and the Petty Bourgeoisie”, 'The Elections to the Duma and the Tactics of the Russian Social-Democrats”, “The Imminent Dissolution of the Duma and Questions of Tactics”, and others.

There are also documents and articles by Lenin on preparations for the Fifth Congress of the R.S.D.L.P. and the reports and speeches he made at the Congress—"Draft Resolutions for the Fifth Congress of the R.S.D.L.P.", the articles “The Platform of Revolutionary Social-Democracy”, “Report to the Fifth Congress of the R.S.D.L.P. on the St. Petersburg Split and the Institution of the Party Tribunal Ensuing Therefrom”, “Speech on the Attitude Towards Bourgeois Parties”, and other speeches.

Lenin's “Report to the Conference of the St. Petersburg Organisation on the Question of the Duma Campaign and Duma Tactics”, and the articles “What the Splitters Have To Say About the Coming Split”, “Reorganisation and the End of the Split in St. Petersburg”, provide a picture of his struggle for an ideological consolidation of the St. Peters burg organisation of the R.S.D.L.P. on Bolshevik principles.

Lenin's “Preface to the Russian Translation of Karl Marx's Letters to Dr. Kugelmann” and his “Preface to the Russian Translation of Letters by Johannes Becker, Joseph Dietzgen, Frederick Engels, Karl Marx, and Others to Fried- rich Sorge and Others”, show the theoretical and political significance of the Marx and Engels correspondence, part of which was first published in a Russian translation in 1907.

This volume also contains two of Lenin's articles on the agrarian question—"Draft for a Speech on the Agrarian Question in the Second State Duma” and “The Agrarian Question and the Forces of the Revolution”.

The articles “On the Report of the Moscow District of St. Petersburg Concerning the Elections to the Second Duma”, “A Note on the Resolution of the Estonian Social- Democrats”, “The First Important Step”, to be found in this volume, are included in V. I. Lenin's Collected Works for the first time. In the last-named article Lenin criticises the opportunist behaviour of the Menshevik deputies to the Second Duma.