LENIN ON ORGANIZATION
VIII,
ON THE ROAD.
(From the “Social Democrat,” No. 2, Feb. 19, 1909).
A year of disintegration lies behind us, a year of
confusion in political ideas, for the Party a year
of pathless wandering. The Party organizations
have been steadily losing in membership, and some
of them—those with the least proletarian membership—have
 altogether fallen to pieces. The semiopen
 Party institutions have suffered defeat after
defeat. Things came to such a pass that certain
elements in the Party, surrendering to the influences
 of decay, began to ask whether it was necessary
 to preserve the old Social Democratic Party at
all, whether its cause was to be continued, whether
it was necessary to go underground, and if So, how.
And to this the extreme right elements replied by
advocating legalization at all costs, even at the
price of the direct sacrifice of the Party program,
its tactics and organization (the so-called liquidationist
 movement). The crisis was evidently not
merely one of organization, but also one of political
ideas.
The recent National Conference of the Russian
Social Democratic Labor Party brought the Party
on to the road again and was apparently the turning

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