Mensheviks

The Mensheviks (sometimes called Menshevists Russian: меньшевик) were a faction of the Russian socialist movement that emerged in 1904 after a dispute in the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party between Vladimir Lenin and Julius Martov, leading to the party splitting into two factions, one being the Mensheviks and the other being the Bolsheviks. The dispute originated at the Second Congress of that party, ostensibly over minor issues of party organization. Martov's supporters, who were in the minority in a crucial vote on the question of party membership, came to be called "Mensheviks", derived from the Russian word меньшинство (men'shinstvo, "minority"), whereas Lenin's adherents were known as "Bolsheviks", from большинство (bol'shinstvo, "majority").

The Mensheviks subscribed to an Orthodox Marxist view of social and economic development, believing that socialism could not be achieved in Russia due to its backward economic conditions, and that Russia would first have to experience a bourgeois revolution and go through a capitalist stage of development before socialism was technically possible and before the working class could develop the necessary consciousness for a socialist revolution. Thus, the Mensheviks were opposed to the Bolshevik idea of a Vanguard party and pursuit of socialist revolution in Russia.

Neither side held a consistent majority over the course of the congress. The split proved to be long-standing and had to do both with pragmatic issues based in history, such as the failed revolution of 1905, and theoretical issues of class leadership, class alliances, and interpretations of historical materialism. While both factions believed that a "bourgeois democratic" revolution was necessary, the Mensheviks generally tended to be more moderate and were more positive towards the liberal opposition and the dominant peasant-based Socialist Revolutionary party.

Split

At the 2nd Congress of the RSDLP in August 1903, Lenin and Martov disagreed, first about which persons should be in the editorial committee of the party newspaper Iskra, and then about the definition of a "party member" in the future party statute. While the difference in the definitions was very small, with Lenin's being slightly more exclusive (Lenin's formulation required the party member to be a member of one of the party's organizations, whereas Martov's only stated that he should work under the guidance of a party organization), it was indicative of what became an essential difference between the philosophies of the two emerging factions: Lenin argued for a small party of professional 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). However after seven delegates stormed out of the Congress â€" five of them representatives of the Jewish Bund who left in protest about their own federalist proposal being defeated â€" Lenin's supporters won a slight majority, which was reflected in the composition of the Central Committee and the other central Party organs elected at the Congress. That 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).) Despite the outcome of the congress, the following years saw the Mensheviks gathering considerable support among regular Social Democrats and effectively building up a parallel party organization.

1903â€"1917

In 1906, at the 4th Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, a reunification was formally achieved. In contrast to the Second Congress, the Mensheviks were in the majority from start to finish; yet, Martov's definition of a party member, which had prevailed at the First Congress, was replaced by Lenin's. On the other hand, numerous disagreements regarding alliances and strategy emerged. The two factions kept their separate structures and continued to operate separately.

Just as before, both factions believed that Russia was not developed to a point at which socialism was possible and believed that the revolution for which they fought to overthrow the Tsarist regime would be a bourgeois 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 liberal "bourgeois" democratic parties such as the Constitutional Democrats, because these would be the "natural" leaders of a bourgeois revolution.

In contrast, the Bolsheviks didn't believe that the Constitutional Democrats were capable of sufficiently radical struggle and tended to advocate alliances with peasant representatives and other radical socialist parties such as the Socialist Revolutionaries. In the event of a revolution, this was meant to lead to a dictatorship 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".

In 1912, the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party went through its final split, with the Bolsheviks constituting the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (Bolsheviks) and the Mensheviks the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (Mensheviks).

The Menshevik faction split further in 1914 at the beginning of World War I. Most Mensheviks opposed the war, but a vocal minority supported it in terms of "national defense".

1917 Revolution

After the overthrow of the Romanov dynasty by the February Revolution in 1917, the Menshevik leadership led by Irakli Tsereteli demanded that the government pursue a "fair peace without annexations", but in the meantime supported the war effort under the slogan of "defense of the revolution". Along with the other major Russian socialist party, the Socialist Revolutionaries (эсеры), the Mensheviks led the emerging network of Soviets, notably the Petrograd Soviet in the capital, throughout most of 1917.

With the collapse of the monarchy, 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 leaders Lev Kamenev, Joseph Stalin and Matvei Muranov returned to Petrograd from Siberian 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 deputy Grigory Zinoviev returned to Russia from their Swiss exile on April 3, 1917 and re-asserted control of the Bolshevik party by late April 1917, taking it in a more radical, anti-war direction. They called for an immediate revolution and the transfer of all power to the Soviets, which made any re-unification impossible.

In Marchâ€"April 1917 the Menshevik leadership conditionally supported the newly formed liberal Russian Provisional Government. After the collapse of the first Provisional Government on May 2, 1917 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 May 4, 1917 (Old Style). 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 May 9, but the Right wing prevailed 44â€"11. From that point on, the Mensheviks had at least one representative in the Provisional Government until it was overthrown by the Bolsheviks during the October Revolution of 1917.

With the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks clearly diverging, Russian Mensheviks and non-factional social democrats returning from European and American exile in spring-summer of 1917 were forced to take sides. Some re-joined the Mensheviks. Some, like Alexandra Kollontai, joined the Bolsheviks directly. A significant number, including Leon Trotsky and Adolf Joffe, joined the non-factional Petrograd-based anti-war group called Mezhraiontsy, which merged with the Bolsheviks in August 1917. A small but influential group of social democrats associated with Maxim Gorky's newspaper Novaya Zhizn (New Life) refused to join either party.

After the 1917 Revolution

This split in the party crippled the Mensheviks' popularity, and they received 3.2% of the vote during the Russian Constituent Assembly election in November 1917 compared to the Bolsheviks' 25% and the Socialist Revolutionaries' 57%. 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. In Georgia c. 75% voted for them. 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 ensuing Russian Civil War. However, Martov's leftist Menshevik faction refused to break with the right wing of the party with the result that their press was sometimes banned and only intermittently available.

The Mensheviks opposed war communism, and in 1919 suggested an alternative programme. The Programme is interesting in that after the civil war was over, a large number of the proposals were incorporated into the Bolsheviks' New Economic Policy.

During World War I, some anti-war Mensheviks had formed a group called Menshevik-Internationalists (меньшевики-интернационалисты). They opposed war and 'social chauvinism', were active around the newspaper Novaya Zhizn and took part in the Mezhraiontsy formation. After July 1917 events in Russia, they broke with Menshevik majority that supported war. The Mensheviks-Internationalists became the hub of the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party (of Internationalists) (РСÐ"РП (интернационалистов)). In 1920, right-wing Mensheviks-Internationalists emigrated, some of them pursued anti-Bolshevik activities.

The Democratic Republic of Georgia was a stronghold of the Mensheviks. In parliamentary elections held on February 14, 1919 they won 81.5% of the votes, and the Menshevik leader Noe Zhordania became Prime Minister.

Prominent members of Georgian Menshevik Party were Noe Ramishvili, Evgeni Gegechkori, Akaki Chkhenkeli, Nikolay Chkheidze and Alexandre Lomtatidze. After the occupation of GDR by the Bolsheviks in 1921, many Georgian Mensheviks led by Zhordania fled to Leuville-sur-Orge, France where they set up, in a small castle, the Government of the Democratic Republic of Georgia in Exile. In 1930, Ramishvili was assassinated by a Soviet spy in Paris.

Menshevism was finally made illegal after the Kronstadt Uprising of 1921. A number of prominent Mensheviks emigrated thereafter. Martov, who was suffering from ill health at this time, went to Germany, where he died in 1923. However, before his death, he established the paper Socialist Messenger. The Socialist Messenger would move along with the Menshevik centre from Berlin to Paris in 1933 and then in 1939 to New York City, where it was to be published until the early 1970s.

Further reading

• Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago. New York, NY: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1973.
• Abraham Ascher (ed.), The Mensheviks in the Russian Revolution. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1976.
• John D. Basil, The Mensheviks in the Revolution of 1917. Columbus, OH: Slavica Publishers, 1983.
• A.M. Bourguina, Russian Social Democracy: The Menshevik Movement: A Bibliography. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, 1968.
• Vera Broido, Lenin and the Mensheviks: The Persecution of Socialists Under Bolshevism. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1987.
• Vladimir Brovkin, "The Mensheviks' Political Comeback: The Elections to the Provincial City Soviets in Spring 1918," Russian Review, vol. 42, no. 1 (Jan. 1983), pp. 1-50. In JSTOR.
• Vladimir N. Brovkin, The Mensheviks After October: Socialist Opposition and the Rise of the Bolshevik Dictatorship. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987.
• Ziva Galili, The Menshevik Leaders in the Russian Revolution: Social Realities and Political Strategies. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989.
• Leopold H. Haimson (ed.), The Mensheviks : From the Revolution of 1917 to the Second World War. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974.
• Leopold H. Haimson, The Making of Three Russian Revolutionaries: Voices from the Menshevik Past. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
• André Liebich, From the Other Shore: Russian Social Democracy after 1921. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997.
• Vladir Brovkin. Dear Comrades: Menshevik Reports on the Bolshevik Revolution and the Civil War. Hoover Press, Mar 1, 1991.

References and notes

See also

• Orthodox Marxism
• Russian Social Democratic Labour Party
• Bolshevik
• Anti-Leninism

External articles

• "Menshevik Party", "Menshevik Internationalists". Glossary of Organisations: Me. marxists.org:glossary:/m/e.
• The Bolshevik-Menshevik Split | History Today. historytoday.com