Mensheviks
меньшевики́ | |
 Leaders of the Menshevik Party at Norra Bantorget in Stockholm, Sweden, May 1917 (Pavel Axelrod, Julius Martov, and Alexander Martinov) | |
| Formation | 1903 |
|---|---|
| Dissolved | 1921 |
Key people |
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Parent organization | Russian Social Democratic Labour Party |
Formerly called | "softs" |
The Mensheviks (Russian: меньшевики́, mensheviki, from меньшинство, menshinstvo, 'minority')[1][2] were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) which split with Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903. The Mensheviks were led by Julius Martov and Pavel Axelrod.[3][4][5][6][7]
The initial point of disagreement was the Mensheviks' support for a broad party membership, as opposed to the Bolsheviks' support for a smaller party of professional revolutionaries. The Bolsheviks gained a majority on the Central Committee in 1903, though the power of the two factions fluctuated in the following years. Mensheviks came to be associated with the position that a
In the 1917 election to the Constituent Assembly, the Mensheviks received about 3 percent of the vote, compared to the Bolsheviks' 23 percent. Mensheviks denounced the October Revolution as a coup d'état, though broadly supported the Bolshevik government during the Russian Civil War (while being critical of war communism). Their party was made illegal after the Kronstadt rebellion in 1921.
History of the split
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1903–1906
At the
- 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 of
Martov's proposal was accepted by the majority of the delegates (28 votes to 23).
1906–1916
At the 4th Congress of the RSDLP in 1906, a reunification was formally achieved.[10] 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 make
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".
1912–1914
In 1912, the RSDLP had its final split, with the Bolsheviks constituting the
1917 revolutions
After the overthrow of the
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 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 exile in Switzerland 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 liberal Russian 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 the Provisional Government until it was overthrown by the Bolsheviks during the October 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, like
After the 1917 Revolution
The 1917 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' 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 in Georgia, about 75% voted for them.[11] 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, resulting in their press being sometimes banned and only intermittently available.
The Mensheviks opposed
The
Menshevism was finally made illegal after the Kronstadt uprising of 1921. A number of prominent Mensheviks emigrated thereafter. Martov went to Germany, where he established the paper Socialist Messenger. He died in 1923. In 1931, the Menshevik Trial was conducted by Stalin, an early part of the Great Purge. The Messenger 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.[14]
See also
- Anti-Leninism
- Bolshevik
- Centrocaspian Dictatorship
- Golos Sotsial-Demokrata
- Orthodox Marxism
- Reformist Marxism
- Russian Social Democratic Labour Party
- Transcaspian Government
References
- ^ Radziwill, Catherine. [1915] 1920. "Bulgaria Joins the Great Wars." pp. 326–332 in The Great Events of the Great War 3, edited by C. F. Horne. New York: National Alumni. p. 328.
- ^ Brovkin, Vladimir N. 1991. The Mensheviks After October. Cornell University Press.
- Revolution of 1917. Slavica Publishers.
- ^ Antonov-Saratovsky, Vladimir. 1931. The Trial of the Mensheviks: The verdict and sentence passed on the participants in the counter-revolutionary organization of the Mensheviks. Soviet Union: Centrizdai.
- Gower.
- ^ Ascher, Abraham. 1976. The Mensheviks in the Russian Revolution. Cornell University Press.
- ^ a b c Lenin, V.I (1903). Second Congress of the League of Russian Revolutionary Social-Democracy Abroad. Moscow. pp. 26–31, 92–103.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - ^ 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.
- ^ "Lenin: 1906/ucong: Statement in Support of Muratov's (Morozov's) Amendment Concerning a Parliamentary Social-Democratic Group". www.marxists.org. Retrieved 16 January 2016.
- ^ Radkey, Oliver Henry. 1950. The Election to the Russian Constituent Assembly of 1917. Harvard University Press.
- ^ O'Brien, James. 11 August 2012. "What is to be done: The Menshevik Programme July 1919." Spirit of Contradiction. Retrieved on 26 July 2013.
- S2CID 159481346.
- ^ Kowalski, Werner. 1985. Geschichte der sozialistischen arbeiter-internationale: 1923–1940. Berlin: Dtv Verlagsgesellschaft. pp. 336–37.
Further reading
- Ascher, Abraham, ed. 1976. The Mensheviks in the Russian Revolution. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
- Basil, John D. 1983. The Mensheviks in the Revolution of 1917. Columbus, OH: Slavica Publishers.
- Bourguina, A. M. 1968. Russian Social Democracy: The Menshevik Movement: A Bibliography. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace.
- 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." JSTOR 129453.
- —— 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.
- Haimson, Leopold H., ed. 1974. The Mensheviks : From the Revolution of 1917 to the Second World War. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
- —— 1988. The Making of Three Russian Revolutionaries: Voices from the Menshevik Past. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Liebich, André. 1997. From the Other Shore: Russian Social Democracy after 1921. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
External links
- marxists.org:glossary:/m/e "Menshevik Party", "Menshevik Internationalists". Glossary of Organisations: Me.
- "The Bolshevik-Menshevik Split." History Today.
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