Until the First Party Congress met at the end of 1905, the SRs had lacked an official programme enjoying the general acceptance of the membership as a whole. The main points of the party programme had, however, been developed in a series of theoretical articles in the SR press, and in May 1904 a draft programme, compiled by the editorial board on the basis of an earlier version which had been circulated to local party committees for discussion and comment, was published in No. 46 of Revolyutsionnaya Rossiya. The return of the scattered émigrés to Russia in the course of 1905 enabled a party congress to be convened for the first time at the end of that year – not in Russia itself, but just across the border in the comparative safety of Finland. The delegates met in the ‘Tourist’ hotel in Imatra, which belonged to a member of the Finnish Party of Active Resistance, a body sympathetic to the SRs. The sessions of the congress were held in the dining room of this wooden building, which stood on a snowy slope beside the waterfall which made Imatra famous as a beauty spot. There were 95 delegates, representing 51 party organisations. For many of the delegates, this was their first meeting with the leaders of the party, and with some of the veterans of Populism. According to Zenzinov, the mood was cordial, and even festive.