‘The most important thing is to prove that only we are the party… Unless they accept our conditions, there will be no rapprochement’. Alternatively, ‘agree to nothing, walk out, promise to submit the “counter-proposals” of our dear comrades to our own congress’ which will complete the task of building an all-Bolshevik Social Democratic Party. With these uncompromising words of wisdom Lenin sent Inessa Armand off to do battle with G. V. Plekhanov, L. D. Trotsky, P. B. Aksel'rod and I. O. Martov at the ‘Unity’ Conference which the International Socialist Bureau (ISB) called in a last vain attempt to unify the factious groups of Russian Social Democracy. The 28 delegates who attended this three-day meeting in Brussels were impressed neither by Armand's reluctant presentation nor by Lenin's vitriolic arguments. Indeed, Bolshevik conduct in Brussels served only to unify the disparate non-Bolshevik groups and to ensure them the firm support of Karl Kautsky, Emile Vandervelde, Camille Huysmans and the other influential leaders of the Socialist (Second) International. As a result of the conference, the Tenth Congress of the International, scheduled to convene in Vienna on 23 August 1914, very likely would have witnessed the expulsion of the Bolsheviks from the European socialist movement. The outbreak of the First World War, however, saved Lenin this indignity. It also served for many years to obscure from historical scrutiny the events which transpired in Brussels and the potential consequences of the Bolshevik defeat.