Bolshevik Party Rank and File [Archive]

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A.R.Amistad

15th May 2010, 14:58

I've been looking for documents or records that give the number of actual party members in the Bolshevik Party but have met with no success. I have of course found some voting results in Ten Days That Shook The World, but these of course don't strictly imply party membership at all. Does anyone have any information on how big the Bolshevik Party was at given time. I know that membership definitely fluctuated, since definition of membership changed over time. I'll give a breakdown of times. Does anyone know how many members there were of the Bolshevik Section and later Party in 1903, 1905, 1914-1916, 1917, 1918-1922, 1922-1928? If anyone could give me some accurate numbers that would be great.

Bonobo1917

16th May 2010, 16:35

Tony Cliff, in his "Linin, vol.1 Building the Party", gives some numbers, in Chapter 8: fourth congress, April 1906: 13,000 Bolsheviks, 18,000 Mensheviks; October 1906: 33,000 Bolsheviks, 43,000 Mensheviks. 1707: 46,143, Mensheviks, 38,174 (and several thousands in other Social Democratic groupings within the then-more-or-less-united party). In 1910, the party has shrunk to "few hundred", according to Cliff (chapter 16). The book is on marxists.org , but because I have not yet posted enogh posts, I cannot give the exact operational link here. The book is not without its problems in its politics, but the numbers seem reliably documented to me.
salud!

ChrisK

16th May 2010, 19:23

BOZG

16th May 2010, 20:05

You didn't list any sources that you have found so far but I hope you haven't already come across these.

Some discussion on the figures with estimates by Figes and Service (http://www.schoolhistory.co.uk/studentforum/index.php?showtopic=2508)

Some figures for combined membership of RSDLP in 1906 (http://www.marxist.com/bolshevism-old/part3-2.html) - Maybe if you could get a copy of the book referenced in the footnote for the figures, it may give some assistance.

A discussion on Marxism mailing list (http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/marxism/2006w23/msg00322.htm)

ComradeOm

20th May 2010, 11:35

In 1910, the party has shrunk to "few hundred", according to Cliff (chapter 16)A few hundred seems far too low. By the eve of the war their membership in the capital alone, primarily concentrated amongst the metallurgy workers, was almost certainly in the thousands

From the link in my sig, which is drawn from 3-4 accounts:

"The mass conscription of experienced workers and intensified harassment from Tsarist police decimated the party's structures leaving no more than 2,000 members in the capital, with barely 10,000 in the Empire as a whole, by the time of the February Revolution. Yet in a matter of months the party would see an explosion in its membership (80-100k in April and over 350k by the October Revolution)..."

Interestingly, the major fluctuations probably came post-1917. Rabinowitch records a major drop in membership (to the degree that party activity on the ground effectively came to a halt) in 1918. I can't recall the exact figures but Google Books (The Bolsheviks in Power) may be of help

Dave B

20th May 2010, 18:31

There is some data below just collected and cut and pasted out of a word document I have saved, can’t be bothered sorting it out in any kind of order etc

On the membership of the Bolshevik Party, a paper below put it at less than 1% in 1920
Page 3 of 17
http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Economics/Papers/1999/1999-25.pdf (http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Economics/Papers/1999/1999-25.pdf)

Lenin put it at 300,000 to 400,000 in 1922;

THE CONDITIONS FOR ADMITTING NEW MEMBERS
TO THE PARTY
LETTERS TO V. M. MOLOTOV 1922

If we have 300,000 to 400,000 members in the Party, even that number is excessive, for literally everything goes to show that the level of training of the present Party membership is inadequate. That is why I strongly insist on longer probation periods, and on instructing the Organising Bureau to draw up and strictly apply rules that will really make the period of probation a serious test and not an empty formality.
I think that this question should be discussed at the Congress with special care.
http://www.marx2mao.net/Lenin/CNM22.html (http://www.marx2mao.net/Lenin/CNM22.html)

http://www.marx2mao.net/Lenin/NC20.html (http://www.marx2mao.net/Lenin/NC20.html)

The Party was not open to everyone however;

V. I. Lenin

PURGING THE PARTY

"As one of the specific objects of the Party purge, I would point to the combing out of ex-Mensheviks. In my opinion, of the Mensheviks who joined the Party after the beginning of 1918, not more than a hundredth part should be allowed to remain; and even then, every one of those who are allowed to remain must be tested over and over again. Why? Because, as a trend, the Mensheviks have displayed in 1918-21 the two qualities that characterise them: first, the ability skilfully to adapt, to "attach" themselves to the prevailing trend among the workers; and second, the ability even more skilfully to serve the whiteguards heart and soul, to serve them in action, while dissociating themselves from them in words.
Both these qualities are the logical outcome of the whole history of Menshevism. It is sufficient to recall Axelrod's proposal for a "labour congress",[16 (http://www.revleft.com/vb/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=1752383#en16)] the attitude of the Mensheviks towards the Cadets[17 (http://www.revleft.com/vb/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=1752383#en17)] (and to the monarchy) in words and action, etc., etc. The Mensheviks "attach" themselves to the Russian Communist Party not only and even not so much because they are Machiavellian (although ever since 1903 they have shown that they are past masters in the art of bourgeois diplomacy), but because they are so "adaptable". Every opportunist is distinguished for his adaptability (but not all adaptability is opportunism); and the Mensheviks, as opportunists, adapt themselves "on principle"

so to speak, to the prevailing trend among the workers and assume a protective colouring, just as a hare's coat turns white in winter. This characteristic of the Mensheviks must be kept in mind and taken into account. And taking it into account means purging the Party of approximately ninety-nine out of every hundred Mensheviks who joined the Russian Communist Party after 1918, i.e., when the victory of the Bolsheviks first became probable and then certain.
The Party must be purged of rascals, of bureaucratic, dishonest or wavering Communists, and of Mensheviks who have repainted their "facade" but who have remained Mensheviks at heart. "

http://www.marx2mao.net/Lenin/PTP21.html#en15 (http://www.marx2mao.net/Lenin/PTP21.html)

{3}The Ninth Congress was held in Moscow from March 29 to April 5, 1920. It was attended by 715 delegates, the greatest number ever, who represented 611,978 Party members. Of them 553 had voice and vote, and 162, voice only. The delegates came from Central Russia, the Ukraine, the Urals, Siberia and other areas

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1921/10thcong/ch01.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1921/10thcong/ch01.htm)

Alan Woods and Ted Grant

Lenin and Trotsky—what they really stood for Chapter 7

Lenin's Struggle Against Bureaucracy

In February, 1917, the Bolshevik Party had no more than 23,000 members in the whole of Russia. At the height of the Civil War, when party membership involved personal risk, the ranks were thrown open to the workers, who pushed the membership to 200,000. But as the war grew to a close, the party membership actually trebled reflecting an influx of careerists and elements from hostile classes and parties.
Lenin at this time repeatedly emphasised the danger of the Party succumbing to the pressures and moods of the petty-bourgeois masses; that the main enemy of the revolution was:

"everyday economics in a small-peasant country with a ruined large industry. He is the petty-bourgeois element which surrounds us like the air, and penetrates deep into the ranks of the proletariat. And the proletariat is de-classed, i.e. dislodged from its class groove. The factories and mills are idle - the proletariat is weak, scattered, enfeebled. On the other hand the petty-bourgeois element within the country is backed by the whole international bourgeoisie, which retains its power throughout the world." (Works, vol. 33, page 23)
The "purge" initiated by Lenin in 1921 had nothing in common with the monstrous frame-up trials of Stalin; there was no police, no trials, no prison-camps; merely the ruthless weeding out of petty-bourgeois and Menshevik elements from the ranks of the Party, in order to preserve the ideas and traditions of October from the poisonous effects of petty-bourgeois reaction. By early 1922, some 200,000 members (one-third of the membership) had been expelled.

http://www.tedgrant.org/archive/grant/1969/lat/7.htm (http://www.tedgrant.org/archive/grant/1969/lat/7.htm)

Yet we are told that the 240,000 members of the Bolshevik Party will not be able to govern Russia,

http://www.marx2mao.net/Lenin/RSP17.html (http://www.marx2mao.net/Lenin/RSP17.html)

V. I. Lenin

NINTH CONGRESS OF THE R.C.P.(B.)

MARCH 29- APRIL 5, 1920

it is essential for the Central Committee to be constituted in such a way as to have a transmission belt to the broad masses of the trade unions (we have 600,000 Party members and 3,000,000 trade union members) to connect the Central Committee simultaneously with the united will of the 600,000 Party members and the 3,000,000 trade union members. We cannot govern without such a transmission belt.

http://www.marx2mao.net/Lenin/NC20.html (http://www.marx2mao.net/Lenin/NC20.html)