Founded by Lenin in the autumn of 1895, the league united some twenty Marxist workers' study circles in St. Petersburg. The work of the League of Struggle was organised on principles of centralism and strict discipline. The groups were headed by the Central Group under Lenin's direction.

On December 1895, the tsarist government dealt the League a heavy blow: during the night of December 8 a considerable number of League members were arrested, Lenin among them; the first issue of Rabocheye Dyelo which was ready to go to press, was seized.

While in prison, Lenin continued to guide the work of the League. He sent from prison letters and leaflets written in cipher and wrote the pamphlet On Strikes (the manuscript has not been found), and "Draft and Explanation of a Programme for the Social-Democratic Party".

The significance of the League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class lay, to use Lenins' expression, in its being the germ of a revolutionary party that took its support from the working class and led the class struggle of the proletariat.

The old members of the League who had escaped arrest took part in preparing and holding the First Congress of the RSDLP and in drawing up the Manifesto to that Congress. However, the long absence of the founding members of the League of Struggle, Lenin above all, who were in exile in Siberia, and the path of the party took a different direction. In the latter half of 1898 the control of the League fell into the hand of most avowed Economists-the Rabochaya Mysl.

Works Cited

• Marxists.org [1]