To the future historian of our party, the kind of party activity which in the everyday language of Russian revolutionaries was called “technical work” (tekhnika) will be as much an object of careful study as the history of party tactics, of party organisation, or of the struggle of ideas within the party. Well-organised “technical work” gave a revolutionary organisation enormous advantages and greatly increased its weight and political importance. Thus the Bund, for example, once impressed people not by the purity and Social-Democratic consistency of its programme, nor by the soundness of its tactics, which in fact limped badly when it came to forming a united front between Jewish and Russian proletarians against the common enemy, nor by the brilliance of its literary output, but chiefly by its rather well-organised “technical work”, together with a comparatively high level of organisational practice.
Competition in organising technical work was one of the most essential elements in relations between the parties. Whoever came out the winner had, other things being equal, the better chance of becoming the master of minds on the revolutionary street. That is why none of the underground organisations, our Bolshevik one included, spared any effort or sacrifice to raise “its own technical work” to the proper level. The government, for its part, did not underestimate the importance of the free printed word either, and persecuted with particular cruelty those caught “red-handed” in underground printing or in carrying illegal literature.
The present collection contains far from all the material relating to the technical work of our revolutionary underground. Perhaps, as articles and documents on the subject accumulate, Istpart will publish more than one further collection of the same kind. For the time being the reader is offered a whole series of vivid eyewitness accounts of the heroic work once carried out by our underground workers in secret printing presses and in organising transport. Some of the articles printed here have appeared before, but Istpart thought it necessary not to confine itself to a mere bibliographical reference, and to reprint them in this collection, the more so as many of them have been substantially revised by their authors. This seemed all the more necessary because all the articles printed here complement one another and form, as it were, a single bouquet, united by a single theme.
The editors thought it not out of place to give room in the collection to some brief biographical or autobiographical sketches as well. They reckon that the reader will take great interest not only in the facts and events that characterise the work of the underground press or of party transport, but also in the people who stood close to this work, who were its soul, and who have kindly shared with the reader their vivid recollections of pages of our revolutionary romance that they knew at first hand.
For publishing reasons the present collection is issued in two volumes. The first is devoted to the general organisation of Bolshevik technical work in Russia and abroad, and in particular to the work of transport; in the second the centre of gravity lies in depicting the underground printing business.