Iskra

이스크라

The all-Russian underground newspaper of the RSDLP. Founded abroad in December 1900 on Lenin's initiative, it was run by a six-member board (Lenin, Plekhanov, Martov, Akselrod, Zasulich, Potresov) with Krupskaya as editorial secretary managing the network inside Russia. Carrying the epigraph 'From a spark a flame will flare up' and distributed through smuggling routes, its agent network became the backbone of party-building: the national newspaper as 'collective propagandist, agitator and organizer' that Lenin theorized in What Is to Be Done? was Iskra itself. After the split at the Second Congress in 1903 Lenin resigned from the board, dividing the 'old Iskra' (through issue 51) from the Menshevik-led 'new Iskra' that ran until 1905.