The initial point of disagreement was the Mensheviks' support for a broad party membership, as opposed to Lenin's support for a smaller party of professional revolutionaries. The Bolsheviks gained a majority on the Central Committee in 1903, although the power of the two factions fluctuated in the following years. Mensheviks were associated withGeorgi Plekhanov's position that abourgeois-democratic revolution and period of capitalism would need to occur before the conditions for a socialist revolution emerged. Some Mensheviks, notablyAlexander Potresov, called for the party to suspend illegal revolutionary work to focus more on trade union work (legal since 1906) and elections to theDuma; this was condemned by Lenin.
At the2nd Congress of the RSDLP in August 1903,Julius Martov andVladimir Lenin disagreed, firstly, with regard to which persons should be in the editorial committee ofIskra, the Party newspaper; secondly, in regards to the definition of a "party member" in the future Party statute:[1]
Lenin's formulation required the party member to be a member of one of the Party's organizations
Martov's only stated that he should work under the guidance of a Party organization.
Although the difference in definitions was small, with Lenin's being more exclusive, it was indicative of what became an essential difference between the philosophies of the two emerging factions: Lenin argued for a small party ofprofessional revolutionaries with a large fringe of non-party sympathizers and supporters, whereas Martov believed it was better to have a large party of activists with broad representation.
Martov's proposal was accepted by the majority of the delegates (28 votes to 23).[1] However, after seven delegates stormed out of the Congress—five of whom were representatives of theJewish Bund who left in protest about their ownfederalist proposal being defeated[1]—Lenin's supporters won a slight majority, which was reflected in the composition of theCentral Committee and the other central party organs elected at the Congress. This was also the reason behind the naming of the factions. It was later hypothesized that Lenin had purposely offended some of the delegates in order to have them leave the meeting in protest, giving him a majority. However, Bolsheviks and Mensheviks were united in voting against the Bundist proposal, which lost 41 to 5.[2] Despite the outcome of the Congress, the following years saw the Mensheviks gathering considerable support among regularsocial democrats and effectively building up a parallel party organization.
At the4th Congress of the RSDLP in 1906, a reunification was formally achieved.[3] In contrast to the 2nd Congress, the Mensheviks were in the majority from start to finish, yet Martov's definition of a party member, which had prevailed at the 1st Congress, was replaced by Lenin's. On the other hand, numerous disagreements about alliances and strategy emerged. The two factions kept their separate structures and continued to operate separately.
As before, both factions believed that Russia was not developed enough to makesocialism possible and that therefore the revolution which they planned, aiming to overthrow theTsarist regime, would be abourgeois-democratic revolution. Both believed that the working class had to contribute to this revolution. However, after 1905 the Mensheviks were more inclined to work with the liberalbourgeois democratic parties such as theConstitutional Democrats because these would be the "natural" leaders of a bourgeois revolution. In contrast, the Bolsheviks believed that the Constitutional Democrats were not capable of sufficiently radical struggle and tended to advocate alliances with peasant representatives and other radical socialist parties such as theSocialist Revolutionaries. In the event of a revolution, this was meant to lead to adictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry, which would carry the bourgeois revolution to the end. The Mensheviks came to argue for predominantly legal methods and trade union work, while the Bolsheviks favoured armed violence.
Some Mensheviks left the party after the defeat of 1905 and joined legal opposition organisations. After a while, Lenin's patience wore out with their compromising and, in 1908, he called these Mensheviks "liquidationists".
After the overthrow of theRomanov dynasty by theFebruary Revolution in 1917, the Menshevik leadership led byIrakli Tsereteli demanded that the government pursue a "fair peace withoutannexations", but in the meantime supported the war effort under the slogan of "defense of the revolution". Along with the other major Russian socialist party, theSocialist Revolutionaries (also known asэсеры,esery), the Mensheviks led the network ofsoviets, notably thePetrograd Soviet in the capital, throughout most of 1917.
With the monarchy gone, many social democrats viewed previous tactical differences between the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks as a thing of the past and a number of local party organizations were merged. When Bolshevik leadersLev Kamenev,Vladimir Lenin,Leon Trotsky,Joseph Stalin, andMatvei Muranov returned to Petrograd fromSiberian exile in early March 1917 and assumed the leadership of the Bolshevik Party, they began exploring the idea of a complete re-unification of Bolsheviks and Mensheviks at the national level, which Menshevik leaders were willing to consider. However, Lenin and his deputyGrigory Zinoviev returned to Russia from exile inSwitzerland on 3 April and re-asserted control of the Bolshevik Party by late April 1917, taking it in a more radical direction. They called for an immediate revolution and transfer of all power to the soviets, which made any re-unification impossible.
In March–April 1917, the Menshevik leadership conditionally supported the newly formed liberalRussian Provisional Government. After the collapse of the first Provisional Government on 2 May over the issue of annexations, Tsereteli convinced the Mensheviks to strengthen the government for the sake of "saving the revolution" and enter a socialist-liberal coalition with Socialist Revolutionaries and liberal Constitutional Democrats, which they did on 17 May. With Martov's return from European exile in early May, the left-wing of the party challenged the party's majority led by Tsereteli at the first post-revolutionary party conference on 9 May, but the right wing prevailed 44–11. From then on, the Mensheviks had at least one representative in theProvisional Government until it was overthrown by the Bolsheviks during theOctober Revolution.
With Mensheviks and Bolsheviks diverging, Mensheviks and non-factional social democrats returning from exile in Europe and United States in spring-summer of 1917 were forced to take sides. Some re-joined the Mensheviks. Others, likeAlexandra Kollontai, joined the Bolsheviks. A significant number, includingLeon Trotsky andAdolf Joffe, joined the non-factional Petrograd-based anti-war group calledMezhraiontsy, which merged with the Bolsheviks in August 1917. A small yet influential group of social democrats associated withMaxim Gorky's newspaperNovaya Zhizn (New Life) refused to join either party.
The 1917 split in the party crippled the Mensheviks' popularity and they received 3.2% of the vote during theRussian Constituent Assembly election in November 1917 compared to the Bolsheviks' 23% and the Socialist Revolutionaries' 37%. The Mensheviks got just 3.3% of the national vote, but in the Transcaucasus they got 30.2%. 41.7% of their support came from the Transcaucasus and inGeorgia, about 75% voted for them.[4] The right-wing of the Menshevik Party supported actions against the Bolsheviks while the left-wing, the majority of the Mensheviks at that point, supported the left in the ensuingRussian Civil War. However, Martov's leftist Menshevik faction refused to break with the right-wing of the party, resulting in their press being sometimes banned and only intermittently available.
The Mensheviks opposedwar communism and in 1919 suggested an alternative programme.[5] DuringWorld War I, some anti-war Mensheviks had formed a group called Menshevik-Internationalists. They were active around the newspaperNovaya Zhizn and took part in theMezhraiontsy formation. After July 1917 events in Russia, they broke with the Menshevik majority that supported continued war with Germany. TheMensheviks-Internationalists became the hub of theRussian Social Democratic Workers' Party (ofInternationalists). Starting in 1920, right-wing Mensheviks-Internationalists emigrated, some of them pursuinganti-Bolshevik activities.[6]
Menshevism was finally made illegal after theKronstadt uprising of 1921. A number of prominent Mensheviks emigrated thereafter. Martov went to Germany, where he established the paperSocialist Messenger. He died in 1923. In 1931, theMenshevik Trial was conducted by Stalin, an early part of theGreat Purge. TheMessenger moved with the Menshevik center from Berlin to Paris in 1933 and then in 1939 to New York City, where it was published until 1965.[7]
^Johnpoll, Bernard K. 1967.The Politics of Futility; The General Jewish Workers Bund of Poland, 1917–1943. Ithaca, NY:Cornell University Press. pp. 30–31.
Broido, Vera. 1987.Lenin and the Mensheviks: The Persecution of Socialists Under Bolshevism. Boulder, CO:Westview Press.
Brovkin, Vladimir. 1983. "The Mensheviks' Political Comeback: The Elections to the Provincial City Soviets in Spring 1918."Russian Review 42(1):1–50.JSTOR129453.
—— 1987.The Mensheviks After October: Socialist Opposition and the Rise of the Bolshevik Dictatorship. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
—— 1991.Dear Comrades: Menshevik Reports on the Bolshevik Revolution and the Civil War. Hoover Press.
Galili, Ziva. 1989.The Menshevik Leaders in the Russian Revolution: Social Realities and Political Strategies. Princeton, NJ:Princeton University Press.
