MARXIST INTERNET ARCHIVE | Lenin Biography
For a Marxist Party of a New Type
(1900-1904)
Lenin's childhood and Youth
The Beginning of Revolutionary Activity (1870-1900)
Second Congress of the RSDLP (1903). The Beginning of the Bolshevik Party
First Russian Revolution (1905 - 1907)V.I.Lenin. 1900.
Among the exhibit items are materials from the First Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP). The Congress, held in Minsk in 1898, did not succeed in joining the separate Social-Democratic organisations into one united party. V. I. Lenin devoted himself entirely to the task of forming a party. On the display-stands are photostats of the articles, "Our Programme", "Our Immediate Tasks", and "An Urgent Question", in which he substantiated a concrete plan for founding a Marxist party of a new type. As the first step in completing this task he considered the organisation of an illegal all-Russia political newspaper.
Lenin's period of exile ended in January 1900. The tsarist government forbade him to live in the country's capital or in the industrial centres of Russia, and he decided to settle close to St. Petersburg in the city of Pskov. En route from Shushenskoye Lenin visited a number of cities in Russia in order to agree upon the support of the future illegal newspaper with local Social-Democrats. In Pskov he held a conference in which declaration of the editors of the future newspaper written by him was discussed. Having paved the way in Russia, V.I. Lenin went abroad in July of that same year in order to publish the newspaper. It was almost impossible at that time to do this in Russia due to police persecution. The newspaper's first issue, entitled Iskra (The Spark), was printed in December 1900. Lenin directed the newspaper until November 1903, and then Iskra fell into the hands of the Mensheviks, and an open struggle against the Bolshevik Party, against Lenin, was begun on its pages.
See also:other historical documents and photos at the Defend Lenin mausoleum! site.
The diagrams, photographs and schemes located to the left of the hall's entrance portray the growth of the revolutionary climate in Russia: worker's political strikes, mass demonstrations by peasants, and student gatherings in various cities throughout Russia.
Various issues of Iskra are featured on the central display. Among them is an original of the first issue, now yellowed with time, that contains Lenin's leading article, "The Urgent Tasks of Our Movement" (in all, nearly 60 articles and notices by Lenin were published in Iskra. Here is some brief information: "In three years the pnntshop of Iskra published 56 books, pamphlets and leaflets. In the 44 issues of the newspaper Iskra, printed before the Second Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party, the correspondence of nearly 500 workers was published."
The editors of Iskra and the house in which Lenin lived from 1900 to 1901 in Munich are displayed in the photographs. Various means of transporting Iskra to Russia from abroad are also on exhibit: a suitcase with a double bottom, a specially cut vest and children's blocks, Iskra had its own underground and printing-presses in Russia. Among the exhibit items are the photographs of one printing-press in Kishinev and a model of another from Baku called "Nina".
V. I. Lenin's book What Is to Be Done (1902).
On the wall opposite the entrance to this room is the first publication of V. I. Lenin's book What Is to Be Done (1902) and its translations into various languages.
In this work V.I.Lenin exposed international opportunism and its manifestation in Russia, which came to be known as "economism", and laid the basis for his teachings on a new type of a Marxist party as the leading and directing force in the development of society, and closely substantiated a plan for the organised building of a militant, revolutionary party. "Give us an organisation of revolutionaries, and we will overturn Russia!" wrote Lenin.
London's library.
Exact copy of the printing-press in Leipzig where the first issue of the Iskra was printed.
During his period of emigration V. I. Lenin presented reports and essays in Paris, Lausanne, Geneva, Berne, Zurich, London and Liege.
The photographs showing the places where Vladimir llyich lived and worked from 1900 to 1905 can be. seen here.
An exact copy of the printing-press in Leipzig where the first issue of the Iskra was printed is on display between the first and second exposition halls. The printing-press was presented as a gift to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union by the Central Committee of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany in 1967.
Second Congress of the RSDLP (1903) The Beginning of the Bolshevik Party
