Origins and early activities
edit
The RSDLP was not the first Russian
Marxist
group; the
Emancipation of Labour
group had been formed in 1883. The RSDLP was created to oppose the revolutionary populism of the
Narodniks
, which was later represented by the
Socialist Revolutionary Party
(SRs). The RSDLP was formed at
an underground conference in Minsk in March 1898
. There were nine delegates: from the
Jewish Labour Bund
, and from the
Robochaya Gazeta
("Workers' Newspaper") in
Kiev
, both formed a year earlier in 1897; and the
League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class
in
Saint Petersburg
. Some additional social democrats from Moscow and
Yekaterinburg
also attended. The RSDLP program was based strictly on the theories of
Karl Marx
and
Friedrich Engels
. Specifically, that despite Russia's agrarian nature at the time, the true revolutionary potential lay with the industrial working class. At this time, there were three million Russian industrial workers, just 3% of the population. The RSDLP was illegal for most of its existence. Within a month after the Congress, five of the nine delegates were arrested by the
Okhrana
(imperial secret police).
[2]
Before the
2nd Party Congress
in 1903, a young intellectual named Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (better known by his pseudonym,
Vladimir Lenin
) joined the party. In 1902, he had published
What Is To Be Done?
, outlining his view of the party's proper task and methodology: to form "the vanguard of the
proletariat
". He advocated a disciplined, centralized party of committed activists who would fuse the underground struggle for political freedom with the class struggle of the proletariat.
[3]
Internal divisions
edit
In 1903, the
2nd Party Congress
met in exile in
Brussels
to attempt to create a united force. However, after unprecedented attention from the Belgian authorities the Congress moved to London, meeting on 11 August in
Charlotte Street
.
[4]
At the Congress, the party split into two irreconcilable factions on 17 November: the
Bolsheviks
(derived from
bolshinstvo
?Russian for "majority"), headed by Lenin; and the
Mensheviks
(from
menshinstvo
?Russian for "minority"), headed by
Julius Martov
. Confusingly, the Mensheviks were actually the larger faction, but the names Menshevik and Bolshevik were taken from a vote held at the 1903 Party Congress for the editorial board of the party newspaper,
Iskra
(
Spark
), with the Bolsheviks being the majority and the Mensheviks being the minority.
[5]
These were the names used by the factions for the rest of the party Congress and these are the names retained after the split at the 1903 Congress.
[5]
[6]
[7]
Lenin's faction later ended up in the minority and remained smaller than the Mensheviks until the
Russian Revolution
.
[5]
A central issue at the Congress was the question of the definition of party membership. Martov proposed the following formulation: "A member of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party is one who accepts the Party's programme, supports the Party financially, and renders it regular personal assistance under the direction of one of its organizations".
[8]
On the other hand, Lenin proposed a more strict definition: "A member of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party is one who accepts its programme and who supports the Party both financially and by personal participation in one of the Party organizations".
[8]
Martov's big tent definition of party membership initially won the vote 28?23. However, his majority was short-lived, given the exit from the party, for separate reasons, of its Bundist and Economist members who had supported his definition. That left in the majority those in favour of Lenin's definition of party members as, in effect, professional revolutionaries- centrally directed, tightly disciplined, and therefore capable of operating effectively in the tsarist police state. From this was derived the faction names: "Majority" ("Bolshevik") and "Minority" ("Menshevik").
Despite a number of attempts at reunification, the split proved permanent. As time passed, ideological differences emerged in addition to the original organizational differences. The main difference that emerged in the years after 1903 was that the Bolsheviks believed that only the workers, backed up by the peasantry, could carry out the bourgeois-democratic revolutionary tasks in Russia, which would then provide incentive to socialist revolution in Germany, France and Britain, while the Mensheviks believed that the workers and peasants must seek out enlightened people from the liberal bourgeoisie to carry out the bourgeois-democratic revolutionary tasks in Russia. The two warring factions both agreed that the coming revolution would be "bourgeois-democratic" within Russia, but while the Mensheviks viewed the liberals as the main ally in this task, the Bolsheviks opted for an alliance with the peasantry as the only way to carry out the bourgeois-democratic revolutionary tasks while defending the interests of the working class. Essentially, the difference was that the Bolsheviks considered that in Russia the tasks of the bourgeois democratic revolution would have to be carried out without the participation of the
bourgeoisie
. The
3rd Party Congress
was held separately by the Bolsheviks.
The
4th Party Congress
was held in
Stockholm
, Sweden and saw a formal reunification of the two factions (with the Mensheviks in the majority), but the discrepancies between Bolshevik and Menshevik views became particularly clear during the proceedings.
The
5th Party Congress
was held in London, England, in 1907. It consolidated the supremacy of the Bolshevik faction and debated strategy for communist revolution in Russia.
Joseph Stalin
never later referred to his stay in London.
[9]
1912 split
edit
The Social Democrats (SDs) boycotted elections to the
First Duma
(April?July 1906), but they were represented in the
Second Duma
(February?June 1907). With the SRs, they held 83 seats. The Second Duma was dissolved on the pretext of the discovery of an SD conspiracy to subvert the army. Under new electoral laws, the SD presence in the
Third Duma
(1907?1912) was reduced to 19. From the
Fourth Duma
(1912?1917), the SDs were finally and fully split. The Mensheviks had seven members in the Duma and the Bolsheviks had six, including
Roman Malinovsky
, who was later uncovered as an
Okhrana
agent.
[10]
In the years of Tsarist repression that followed the defeat of the
1905 Russian Revolution
, both the Bolshevik and Menshevik factions faced splits, causing further splits in the RSDLP, which manifested themselves from late 1908 and the years immediately following. The Mensheviks split into the "Pro-Party Mensheviks" led by
Georgi Plekhanov
, who wished to maintain illegal underground work as well as legal work; and the "Liquidators", whose most prominent advocates were
Pavel Axelrod
,
Fyodor Dan
,
Nikolai Aleksandrovich Rozhkov
and
Nikolay Chkheidze
, who wished to pursue purely legal activities and who now repudiated illegal and underground work.
[11]
The Bolsheviks split threeways into the Proletary group led by Lenin,
Grigory Zinoviev
and
Lev Kamenev
, who waged a fierce struggle against the liquidators, ultimatists and recallists; the Ultimatist group led by
Grigory Aleksinsky
, who wished to issue ultimatums to the RSDLP Duma deputies to follow the party line or to resign immediately; and the Recallist group led by
Alexander Bogdanov
and
Anatoly Lunacharsky
and supported by
Maxim Gorky
, who called for the immediate recall of all RSDLP Duma deputies and a boycott of all legal work by the RSDLP, in favour of increased radical underground and illegal work.
[11]
There was also a non-faction group led by
Leon Trotsky
, who denounced all the "factionalism" in the RSDLP, pushed for "unity" in the party and focused more strongly on the problems of Russian workers and peasants on the ground. The Menshevik Julius Martov was formally considered a liquidator partly because most of his closest political friends were liquidators.
[11]
In January 1912, Lenin's Proletary Bolshevik group called a conference in Prague and expelled the liquidators, ultimatists and recallists from the RSDLP, which officially led to the creation of a separate party, known as the
Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (Bolsheviks)
, while the Mensheviks continued their activities establishing the
Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (Mensheviks)
. In August 1912, Trotsky's group tried to reunite all the RSDLP factions into the same party at a conference in Vienna, but he was largely rebuffed by the Bolsheviks.
[11]
The Bolsheviks seized power during the
October Revolution
in 1917 when all political power was transferred to the
soviets
and in 1918 changed their name to the
All-Russian Communist Party
. They banned the Mensheviks after the
Kronstadt rebellion
of 1921.
The
Interdistrictites
, known as the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (Internationalists), emerged in 1913 as another faction originating from the RSDLP.