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Hello, and welcome to Revolutions.

Episode 10.29: Bolsheviks and Mensheviks

We ended last week with the editorial board of Iskra voting to move their headquarters to Geneva in advance of the Second Party Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, which was now scheduled for July 1903. Though there was tension between the old guard of Plekhanov, Zasulich, and Axelrod, and the new guard of Lenin, Martov, and… the other guy, they still formed a united front as leaders of the Iskra faction inside the larger social democratic community. And they were all anticipating that the coming congress would be the moment when their vision for the party became the vision for the party. But right on cue, our old friend the entropy of victory is going to come along and cleave them in twain, resulting in one of the most famous political party splits in history.

The prologue to this historic split came just before Iskra moved to Geneva, and the prologue is called the Bauman Affair. The Bauman of the Bauman Affair was Nikolay Bauman, considered by Lenin to be one of his best and most reliable agents supporting Iskra in Russia. But Bauman came with shameful baggage: while serving a term of exile in 1899, Bauman had carried on an affair with a fellow comrade, who was herself the wife of yet another comrade. Once free, Bauman mocked his former mistress and trashed her reputation. The social democratic community was not large, and this trashing of her reputation was traumatizing and humiliating, and she seemed to receive no defense or support from her fellow comrades. So in response, she wrote a letter to the party defending her honor, and then hanged herself.

Bauman himself carried on like nothing had happened, but in early 1903, the widowed husband showed up in London asking the members of Iskra, as the most central party organization that currently existed, to do something about it. Here you have one of your agents having cruelly driven another comrade to suicide. Now it was obvious to Martov and Zasulich and Axelrod that Bauman should be expelled from the party. His heinous cruelty was an ethical breach too great to overlook. Character counted for something.

But Lenin disagreed. Strongly disagreed. He refused to allow the board to even officially consider the matter. He said, this was all personal business, and outside the party’s jurisdiction. Besides, Bauman was an exceptional agent, and that was all that mattered. Lenin was so stubborn on this point that nothing was ultimately done. The board never officially heard from her husband, Bauman remained in the party, and would remain one of Lenin’s most loyal agents.

By all accounts, the other members of the board were shocked at Lenin’s adamant amorality. One of their comrades had killed herself over Bauman’s behavior, but somehow they were just supposed to act like the only thing that mattered was how good of an agent he was? While she counted for nothing? How can we let a man like Bauman stay in our ranks? I thought we were the good guys.

So the Bauman Affair would linger as a dark cloud over all their relations. And from here on out, for example, Vera Zasulich, couldn’t stand to even be in the same room as Lenin. Now, Lenin and Martov, meanwhile, remain allies for now, but the relationship noticeably cooled, as Martov had now seen a hard part of Lenin’s character that Lenin had either not revealed yet, or that Martov had chosen not to see.

On the other end, the Bauman Affair brought together Lenin and Plekhanov at a very timely moment. Plekhanov supported Lenin’s argument that the revolution is all that mattered, even above personal morality. So this brought together the two alphas, who had been competing with each other for control of the board of Iskra, and it brought them into alignment with each other, just on the eve of the Second Party Congress.

Now, all that said, I don’t want to oversell the impact of the Bauman Affair. They all still went into the Second Party Congress on the same side, aiming for the same thing: the adoption of what you might call the Iskra party platform as the official platform of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party. The core tenants of this platform was: unite the various local social democratic groups under a single central committee; advance an orthodox Marxist ideology that would be defined and elaborated and distributed by a single party organ, namely Iskra. And thanks to the work Lenin and Krupskaya had done over the past few years building up a network of loyal agents across Russia — including Bauman, who would be a delegate at the congress — Lenin fully expected the Second Party Congress to simply be those agents coming together and voting to enshrine the Iskra platform as the official party platform.

The Second Party Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party met in Brussels in July 1903. Attending were 57 delegates, of whom 43 had voting rights. The others had merely consultative rights; the ability to speak, but not cast a vote. These delegates did not attend as mere individuals, but as representatives of some officially constituted social democratic group. And in very simple terms, the goal of the congress was to unify all these different autonomous groups into a single party. And one of the most gratifying parts of the congress was that of the 26 different groups represented, all but five of them actually came from inside the Russian Empire. This was not just another assembly of impotent émigrés pretending like they had influence back home. These groups ranged from the Bundists in Lithuania all the way to the far east Siberian Union, represented by their recently escaped golden boy, Trotsky. Lenin was right not to fear any real challenge to the Iskra platform. 44 of the 57 attending delegates were Iskra agents. Those who might be considered the opposition, the Bundists and a few émigré economists, would be faced with a stark choice: submit or leave.

But hardly anything got done in Brussels. The Okhrana knew all about this meeting, even if they couldn’t stop it from happening, so the Russian ambassador appealed to the Belgian government for help, and the Belgian government, themselves not very thrilled at this congress of revolutionaries meeting in their backyard, offered the Russian government assistance. The delegates were kept under tight and not at all hidden surveillance — they often returned to their hotel rooms to find that the police had searched their rooms in their absence. Worried that they might be arrested and deported, they all decided to decamp Brussels and reconvene in London. Lenin scrambled to arrange meeting places and lodges after the surprise move, but on August the 11th, 1903, they all finally reconvened. Able now to get down to business, Lenin expected no challenges. He was thus mighty upset when he faced a challenge from Martov of all people, on the seemingly trivial point of what it meant to be a member of the party.

Now, Lenin and Martov had been on the same side of practically every issue since they had first come together back in 1895, the recent unpleasantness of the Bauman Affair being the first real crack in their alliance. But when the definition of party membership came up for debate on August the 15th, the two old comrades found themselves on opposite sides of a practically invisible line. Lenin suggested formulation for membership is that you needed to support the party program, support the party materially and personally participate in party organizations.

Okay.

Martov’s counter formulation was that you were supposed to support the party program, support the party materially, but merely engage in quote, regular personal assistance under the direction of the party. To illustrate the difference, Martov described a university professor who might wish to be a member of the party, but who could not publicly participate in a party organization for fear of losing his job. There was no reason that the party should reject such a candidate. But hidden in the apparently trivial distinction between personal participation and regular personal assistance was a much larger disagreement about where the party was, and where it was going. Lenin believed that it must remain a closed organization of full-time dedicated revolutionaries, so he wanted a narrower and more restrictive definition. Martov on the other hand was willing to be more open and inclusive. But to be very clear, Lenin was not arguing for some People’s Will style hyper-elite vanguard party, nor was Martov saying that the mere fact of claiming membership would be enough to confirm membership. The difference was smaller than that, but there was a difference.

What this really comes down to is a debate about whether the party was going to continue to operate under a state of siege mentality. Facing the threat of economism and revisionism and legal Marxism, Martov himself had fully supported building up the Iskra group using some pretty sharp elbowed tactics that demanded disciplined agents inside Russia who followed orders and who committed every waking moment to the struggle. This siege mentality had justified strategies and tactics and organizational principles that were necessary to ensure the survival of orthodox Marxism. But they were only ever meant to be temporary emergency expedience. And for Martov, the Second Party Congress was in effect the end of the siege. Not only had they survived the emergency, but they had triumphed. Iskra had won. So it was time now to return to normal order, and return to their larger long-term goals: building up the party rolls and recruiting as many new members as possible, which would naturally require flexibility and a more inclusive definition of party membership.

But for Lenin, the state of seed was nowhere near over. It might even, in fact, be a permanent way of life until the revolution was won. The emergency had not ended. The emergency would not end until the revolution was won. So they still needed a ruthless, centrally directed organization of hyper disciplined full-time agents. Basically, Martov is saying it’s time for us to open our hand, and Lenin is saying, no, we need to remain a strong fist; that only a strong fist is going to smash the tsar.

So the delegates proceeded to debate the two proposals and take a vote, and much to Lenin’s great annoyance, Martov won the point. Martov open hand beat Lenin’s closed fist 28 to 23. Lenin was doubly furious that aside from Plekhanov, the other members of the Iskra board, as well as everyone’s favorite protege, Trotsky, voted against him.

Now, Martov did not realize how pissed Lenin was about losing this vote, because for Lenin, there was no problem: they had had a difference of opinion about a point, both of them held their opinions honestly, there had been a debate, and then a vote, and Martov had won. That was how it was supposed to work. And certainly Martov did not anticipate that this was the beginning of a larger breach, especially because in the next two big showdowns of the congress, Martov remained right by Lenin’s side as they completed the consolidation of the party under the Iskra platform.

And that brings us to the fate of the Bundists, represented at the congress by six delegates led by Martov’s old comrade and mentor Arkadi Kremer. The Bundists put forward a motion to define the Jewish Bund’s relationship with the larger party. Specifically, they asked to be recognized as an autonomous subgroup with their own elected central committee. They also sought recognition as the sole representatives of Jewish workers. And much to Kremer’s dismay, Martov himself led the charge rejecting the Bund’s demands. Martov’s point was that they were founding a single party, that was the point. So, despite their honest intentions and obvious organizational success, the Bund could not maintain themselves as some mere federated part of the whole. They either joined the party and submitted to the central committee, or they did not. And there was a precedent at stake: if the Jews were allowed to have the Bund, then what was to stop the Poles or the Ukrainians or Lutherans or any other subgroup from demanding their own autonomous possession? That would defeat the purpose of unification, and they would be right back to being a mere loose federation rather than a single party.

Martov also rejected the idea that the party should have to go through the Bund as some kind of cultural intermediary if they wanted to appeal to or recruit Jewish workers, who were, after all, according to Marxist orthodoxy, workers who happened to be Jews, rather than Jews who happened to be workers. Joining Martov against the Bund was Trotsky, who leveled his own razor sharp invective in saying that, as a Jew, I reject what the Bund is trying to do. Not for the least reason, that the socialist revolution is meant to erase the cruel and irrational distinctions between Jew and Gentile, so we can’t very well enshrine that distinction inside our socialist revolutionary party.

Unwilling to surrender himself in the Bund to outside control without any autonomous rights, and feeling mighty abused by his former friends, Kremer and the five other Bundist delegates walked out at the Congress. Then, right on the heels of driving out the Bund, Lenin and Martov and their allies moved onto clearing out any lingering vestiges of economism. The Congress voted two measures that were directly aimed at the economists: first they defined Iskra as the sole editorial organ of the party, and second, they voted that there would be one single foreign league for all émigré members of the party. Since there were rival papers and non-Iskra aligned émigré groups who advocated economism, it was not lost on the two economist delegates that these measures were designed to establish unchallenged orthodox supremacy inside the Party. So the two economist delegates follow the Bundists out the door.

And now we come to the real turning point of the Congress. The Bundists and the economists had all voted with Martov on the membership question, and when they walked out the door, they carried Martov’s majority with them. As soon as they were gone, Lenin knew that he now controlled a loyal caucus of voters who would vote with him no matter what. And he was not afraid to immediately take advantage of his new found majority on two key issues: the composition of the three person central committee who would control the party inside Russia, and the composition of the editorial board of Iskra, who would define the ideology and policies of the party. So on the very night after the walkout of the Bundists and the economists, Lenin convened a caucus of his loyal voters where it was agreed that the next day they would elect three loyal comrades to the central committee, and more provocatively, purge Vera Zasulich, Pavel Axelrod, and the other guy from the board of Iskra. Martov caught wind of this caucus and tried to address the group, but he was denied entry. Having been in lock step with Lenin every step of the way, martov was now literally on the outside looking in.

The next day, Lenin went ahead with his plan, the proposal to drop Zasulich, Axelrod, and the other guy from the Iskra board triggered shocked commotion. Now, it was presented as a matter of efficiency and more accurately capturing the working reality of the paper: Zasulich and Axelrod in particular did not contribute much to the process of publishing Iskra — which was true — but unceremoniously dumping them like this seemed heartless and disrespectful. Axelrod and Zasulich had been fighting the revolution since Lenin had been in short pants. They had helped found Russian Marxism, and now they were being treated like dead weight to be simply tossed aside. And given the recent personal divisions on the board, it was not hard to take all of this as a power grab by a vengeful Lenin, looking to consolidate control over the paper and the party, purging those who stood in his way. Equally shocking to Zasulich and Axelrod was that Plekhanov backed Lenin up. The new board would be composed of just Lenin and Martov and Plekhanov. The delegates who were not in on the plan rose in shocked opposition, but no amount of shouting could change the math of the vote. Lenin had the votes, and the final tally in support of his motion was 25 to two, with 17 delegates abstaining in protest.

This marks the real epicenter of the split in the Party. Now Martov still had a place on the Iskra board, but in solidarity with his purged friends, announced that he refused to serve. He could not believe the shameful way this had all unfolded. Others, including Trotsky, agreed with Martov. How could Lenin be so callous towards honored comrades? It was disgusting on a personal level. And on a political level, again, it was not hard to see this as Lenin ruthlessly taking control of the party. It was hard to see his intentions in a benign light, that he just wanted to make Iskra function more efficiently, when the actions themselves seem so overtly malevolent and amoral and vindictive. Especially because at the same time, Lenin’s caucus also selected three comrades, personally loyal to Lenin, to serve on the central committee. After these final votes, the Congress’s official work was done, and they dispersed. And though united on paper, and with an organizational structure and leadership committees in place, in reality, they were now sharply divided. The entropy of Iskra’s victory created two new factions, known forever after has the Bolsheviks, and the Mensheviks.

These famous party labels come to us thanks to Lenin’s adroit understanding of politics. Because Bolshevik basically just means the majority, while Mensheviks means the minority. Lenin took his victories at the end of the congress as an opportunity to label himself and his supporters the Bolsheviks, while labeling Martov and his allies merely the Mensheviks. The great irony, of course, is that Lenin’s Bolshevik “majority” only existed at one very specific moment in time. Setting aside the fact that they only held that majority because the Bundists and the economists had walked out the day before, after reports of the dramatic and acrimonious conclusion to the congress spread back out to the wider social democratic community, most members of the party tended to side with Martov, Axelrod, Zasulich, and Trotsky. The majority of the Party were Mensheviks. And it is one of the great case studies of successful political branding that Lenin managed to get his faction called the Bolsheviks at all, and that Martov and his allies accepted the label Mensheviks is generally taken as proof that they were simply not as politically adept as Lenin, which is probably true.

In the short term, Lenin’s majority was quickly exposed for what it was. The months after the Congress saw the Mensheviks boycotting Iskra and threatening to ignore the central committee of the Party altogether, challenging their legitimacy on the grounds that they had been put in place by something of a coup staged by Lenin and his cronies. In October of 1903, the foreign league of the party held its first meeting as the sole émigré wing of the party, and all the émigré leaders were there. This time, Martov commanded a majority and he received plenty of support for his denunciations of Lenin’s tactics, behavior, and vision for the Party. Plekhanov had come to regret his support for Lenin at the Congress. Now, he had believed supporting Lenin’s hard-line would result in a stronger and more unified party, and instead he had badly divided them all. Lenin was now accused of being a Robespierre leading a Jacobin coup. And in November 1903, Plekhanov told Lenin he was going to publicly invite the purged members back onto the board of Iskra. Lenin could either accept the return to the status quo or resign. Recognizing that the bulk of the party members would support Plekhanov, and that the return of these members to the board meant that his position would be nullified, Lenin resigned from Iskra in December 1903. He had done more than anyone to make Iskra what it was, and now he was out. Just a few months earlier, it seemed like Lenin had completed a personal takeover of the party, and now he had no official position or rank to speak of.

It was now Lenin’s turned to feel angry and aggrieved. He argued, not unjustly, that it was he, not the Mensheviks, who was the victim of a coup. All he had done was propose motions to a duly convened congress of the party, and then won a majority of the votes. He had broken no rules, there had been no tricks, he had observed the rules of order. Everything had been done out in the open and after a free debate. For Martov and the Mensheviks to now insist that all this be undone simply because they didn’t like the outcome was ludicrous. The party can’t operate like that. And Lenin kind of has the point here. They were accusing him of being authoritarian when they were the ones trying to go outside the rules to reverse the majority decision of a party congress. And also, we must note that whatever Lenin’s authoritarian instincts may or may not have been at this point, he did not take the opportunity afforded to him by his brief Bolshevik majority to literally expel the Mensheviks from the party for opposing him.

So Lenin is basically saying, and I’m paraphrasing here: you accuse me of orchestrating an authoritarian purge yet such a purge never actually took place. All I did was drop the least active members from the editorial board of Iskra, and elect comrades in good standing to serve on the central committee. And now you’re freaking out and boycotting the central committee and Iskra, so who is in the wrong here? What exactly is the problem?

But clearly there was a problem. A big problem. And so we’ll wrap up today trying to make some sense of this Bolshevik/Menshevik split. Now lots of people, then and now, look at all this arguing over membership rules and who sat on an editorial board, and concluded that these are just excuses to cover a naked contest for personal power, that the issues and principles didn’t matter, this is just about a fight for who personally controlled what committees. Lenin wanted to be in control. His rivals also wanted to be in control. The exceedingly minor points over which they split prove that this was not about what or why or how, but who. And while this is true, I think it can be taken too far. Because there was a difference in principles: are we inclusive or exclusive? Wide or narrow? Disciplined or flexible? A party of people or an organization of professionals? Do we have an open hand or a closed fist?

In the months that followed, everybody traded essays in the underground press that elaborated some of these divisions, and Axelrod in particular wrote a long essay about the necessity of transitioning from an intelligentsia led organization to a proletariat led party. So there were ideological and organizational principles at stake, at least at the beginning. But the thing is, ideological and organizational principles were not the only principles at play. It seems pretty clear, at least on the Menshevik side, that the thing that really upset them was the moral dimension. Lenin’s unscrupulous ruthlessness offended them. His behavior was callous and churlish, disrespectful, mean, devoid of comradery, loyalty, or generosity. In a word: unprincipled. They associated such cruel and ruthless amorality with the despotic tsar and the exploitive capitalists. It’s why they’re the bad guys. They don’t care about people, but we do. That’s why we’re the good guys. And at a minimum, we have to at least care about each other. Character counts for something. Lenin said, such sentimentality was a sign of weakness? Well, they disagreed. And how can you really trust comrade Lenin, if you know that he’ll chuck you overboard if he thought it would bring the revolution one day closer.

Now of course, we should stop for a moment and ask where Martov’s generosity of spirit and loyal comradery were when he led the charge purging the Bundists and the economists from the party. But the point is, that when they now talked about what had split the Bolsheviks from the Mensheviks, these issues of morality and honor and loyalty were front and center. And those too were principles that were at stake.

But there is no denying that in very short order principles gave way to personalities. Like any feud, the original causes were forgotten in a never ending cycle of personal slights and insults and attacks. The grudges became personal and deep and bitter. And when you keep driving to the heart of the split between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks, what it really comes down to is a simple question: how do you feel about Lenin? If you liked him, you were a Bolshevik. If you didn’t like him, you were a Menshevik. And as the insults became personal and petty and vulgar, especially between Lenin and Trotsky, it really didn’t matter what they were fighting for, it only mattered who they were fighting against. Lenin and Martov’s personal friendship was now over. Their political alliance was at an end. And when Lenin now talked about the enemy he meant Martov, not the tsar.

So, what was this all about? Was it about party principles, moral codes, personal grudges, or just a raw contest for power? The answer is yes, yes, yes, and yes. But though these personal conflicts and bitter grudges kept the feud inside the Party permanent, it did not actually break up the Party. Everyone spent all of 1904 enmeshed in mutual insult flinging, but everyone still identified as a member of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, and this is because though their differences loomed large under close magnification, with a wider lens they were all still on the same side, standing oppose to the tsar, of course, but also against liberals, revisionist Marxists, anarchists, and the neo-narodist SRs. And next week we are going to return to those neo-narodist SRs as they organize their own national party to achieve their own ends by their own means, almost none of which aligned with the members of the Russian Social Democratic labor Party. But after this, there won’t be any time left to organize, because in February 1904, the Russo-Japanese War is going to get going, and then after that, suddenly, the revolution they had all been waiting for and planning for and organizing for and preparing for their whole lives was at hand.