View source for One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

{{Short description|1904 book by Vladimir Lenin}}
{{for|the Bruce Lee Band album|One Step Forward. Two Steps Back.}}
{{Italic title}}
[[File:One Step Forward, Two Steps Back (1904).jpg|thumb|right|200px|Cover of 1904 edition]]
'''''One Step Forward, Two Steps Back: The Crisis in Our Party''''' ({{Langx|ru|Шаг вперёд, два шага назад (Кризис в нашей партии)|Shag vperyod, dva shaga nazad (Krizis v nashey partii)}}) is a work written by [[Vladimir Lenin]] and published on May 6/19, 1904. In it Lenin defends his role in the [[2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party]], held in Brussels and London from July 30 to August 23, 1903. Lenin examines the circumstances that resulted in a split within the party between a [[Bolshevik]] ("majority") faction, led by himself, and a [[Menshevik]] ("minority") faction, led by [[Julius Martov]].<ref>Christopher Read (2005) ''Lenin''. London, Routledge: 68-74</ref>
== Synopsis ==
Written in 1904 in response to controversies within the Social Democratic Labour Party's Second Congress regarding the status of party membership and organization, Lenin frames this conflicting factionalism within the Party in terms of [[dialectics]]. According to Lenin, there are two conflicting factions within the party: "the revolutionaries", which consists of the majority of party members (the Bolsheviks) and "the opportunists", which are the minority (the Mensheviks).<ref>{{cite book |last1=Lenin |first1=Vladimir |title=The Lenin Anthology |url=https://archive.org/details/leninanthology00leni |url-access=registration |date=1975 |publisher=Norton |location=United States of America |pages=[https://archive.org/details/leninanthology00leni/page/115 115–120] }}</ref>
== Response ==
[[Rosa Luxemburg]], a [[Marxist]] living in Germany at the time, responded to the article in ''[[Organizational Questions of the Russian Social Democracy]]'' (1904). She criticized Lenin's attitude towards [[democratic centralism]] and wrote about the role of "[[revolutionary spontaneity|spontaneity]]" among the working class. However, different authors make varying claims about her precise attitude towards Lenin, the Bolshevik faction and the revolutionary situation in Russia.<ref>{{cite book|title=Rosa Luxemburg in Action: For Revolution and Democracy|publisher=[[Taylor & Francis]]|last=O'Kane|first=Rosemary H. T.|year=2014|isbn=9781317693376|pages=43–45}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal|title=Rosa Luxemburg and V. I. Lenin: The Opposite Poles of Revolutionary Socialism|journal=[[The Antioch Review]]|last=Wolfe|first=Bertram|author-link=Bertram Wolfe|volume=21|issue=2|year=1961|pages=216–219|doi=10.2307/4610334}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|title=Creolizing Rosa Luxemburg|last=Kelley|first=Robin D. G.|editor-last=Cornell|editor-first=Drucilla|editor-last2=Gordon|editor-first2=Jane Anna|pages=96, 104}}</ref>
== See also ==
* [[Vladimir Lenin bibliography]]
== References ==
{{reflist}}
==External links==
* ''[http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1904/onestep/ One Step Forward, Two Steps Back: The Crisis in Our Party]''&nbsp;by [[Vladimir Lenin]] at the [[Marxists Internet Archive]]
{{Works of Lenin}}
{{Authority control}}
[[Category:1904 non-fiction books]]
[[Category:Works by Vladimir Lenin]]
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