I keep hearing that the Russians wanted Mensheviks after the Tsar

[CynicalIdealist]

Long story short: it seems like the Western version of the Russian Revolution was that it was a coup by a relatively unpopular party, whereas most Russians wanted a liberal democrat to take the Tsar's place rather than communists. Is this true, and if not, why not?

[Queercommie Girl]

The Mensheviks aren't "liberal democrats".

social democrats and liberal democrats are two different tendencies completely.

Actually the Mensheviks also came from the Marxist tradition. Trotsky was at one point somewhat sympathetic to the Mensheviks.

In principle, in a genuine democratic socialist state, both Bolshevik and Menshevik political parties should be allowed.

As for the actual history of early Soviet Russia...well...different tendencies will give you different answers, depending on whether they are liberals, social democrats, anarchists, Trotskyists or Stalinists.

[CynicalIdealist]

Alright. Social democrats, I guess. In any event, is that an accurate historical account of post-Tsarist Russia?

[pranabjyoti]

There were socialist-revolutionaries too. But, after revolution, during the time of counter revolution and sabotages, their actual characters were revealed. Ten Days That Shook The world have a very good account of that time.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Long story short: it seems like the Western version of the Russian Revolution was that it was a coup by a relatively unpopular party, whereas most Russians wanted a liberal democrat to take the Tsar's place rather than communists. Is this true, and if not, why not?

It depends on the source. The Cold War history is fading away as there are more historians who stress working-class support for the Bolsheviks.

Like Iseul said, you're confusing liberals with Mensheviks, and in fact the working class began to lean towards the Menshevik-Internationalist faction taking power in 1918, not towards the ousted liberals.

[Jose Gracchus]

It depends on the source. The Cold War history is fading away as there are more historians who stress working-class support for the Bolsheviks.

Like Iseul said, you're confusing liberals with Mensheviks, and in fact the working class began to lean towards the Menshevik-Internationalist faction taking power in 1918, not towards the ousted liberals.

What's your best source on 1918 politics in the working class? From soviet power and coalition revolution to single party Civil War dictatorship?

[Dave B]

The Mensheviks took the standard Marxist position that Russia could not go from feudalism to socialism without passing through capitalism first and thus a bourgeois democratic revolution or republic.

That was also the Bolshevik position up until some not clearly defined time in 1917 ish.

The Mensheviks were totally opposed to going into, sharing or participating in the government that would be running capitalism after the overthrow of the Tsarist absolutism.

They intended upon the inevitable introduction of a capitalist system, unfettered by the political institutions of feudalism, to be the party of "extreme opposition".

Which they became under Bolshevik state capitalism.

There was some debate about how far Marxists should go in the bourgeois ‘democratic revolution’ in helping along the ‘progressive’ historical progress of feudalism to capitalism.


The right wing of the Mensheviks, in 1917, considered that is was permissible to go as far as joining a provisional government in order to ensure the consummation of the democratic revolution through the convocation of a ‘popular constituent assembly.

The Mensheviks had advocated, stuck by and used the advice given by Engels in this matter; and it formed part of the early debate between the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks.

Towards the end of;

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894/letters/94_01_26.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894/letters/94_01_26.htm)


The Bolsheviks wanted to go further than the Mensheviks as regards meddling in the process.


Trotsky describes the Menshevik position in 1917;

Leon Trotsky; WHAT NEXT?

V: THE CHARACTER OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION



Since, in a bourgeois revolution, they were wont to say, the governing power can have no other function that to safeguard the domination of the bourgeoisie, it is clear that Socialism can have nothing to do with it, its place is not in the government, but in the opposition.

Plekhanov considered that Socialists could not under any conditions take part in a bourgeois government, and he savagely attacked Kautsky, whose resolution admitted certain exceptions in this connection.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1917/next/ch05.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1917/next/ch05.htm)


Kautsky had given the green light to the bolsheviks as regards getting 'involved' in government to the outrage of the Mensheviks who cried heresy.

And from Lenin in 1909;

The Aim of the Proletarian Struggle in Our Revolution (http://www.revleft.com/vb/index.htm#i)



The Bolshevik resolution read:

". . .The establishment of a democratic republic in Russia will be possible only as the result of a victorious popular uprising, whose organ will be a provisional revolutionary government.... Subject to the relation of forces and other factors which cannot be determined exactly beforehand, representatives of our Party may participate in the provisional revolutionary government for the purpose of waging a relentless struggle against all attempts at counter-revolution, and of defending the independent interests of the working class."

The Menshevik resolution read:

"...Social-Democracy must not set out to seize power or share it with anyone in the provisional government, but must remain the party of extreme revolutionary opposition."

It is evident from the above that the Bolsheviks them selves, at an all-Bolshevik Congress, did not include in their official resolution any such "formula" as the dictator ship of the proletariat and the peasantry, but stated only that it was permissible to participate in the provisional government, and that it was the "mission" of the proletariat to "play the leading role"


http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1909/aim/i.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1909/aim/i.htm)

[Die Neue Zeit]

What's your best source on 1918 politics in the working class? From soviet power and coalition revolution to single party Civil War dictatorship?

Did I not reference The Mensheviks after October before? :confused:

[chimx]

Long story short: it seems like the Western version of the Russian Revolution was that it was a coup by a relatively unpopular party, whereas most Russians wanted a liberal democrat to take the Tsar's place rather than communists. Is this true, and if not, why not?

"most" Russias were peasants/farmers or tied to the agrarian economy in some way -- something like 80+% in 1917 I believe (pulling number from memory). Most people in this group were relatively apolitical in terms of associating themselves with a political party and only cared about land reform.

Most farmers were more familiar with the SR's land reform and as a result the SRs were more popular with the majority of the Russian people. That is why the SRs received so many votes in the constituent assembly.

However the Bolshevik agrarian program was identical to the SRs, and when the CA was disbanded by the Bolsheviks, there was not a significant amount of uproar from the country side since they were getting what they wanted either way.

[KC]

Not to mention that the SR's split and the left SR's went to the side of the Bolsheviks.

[blake 3:17]

Long story short: it seems like the Western version of the Russian Revolution was that it was a coup by a relatively unpopular party, whereas most Russians wanted a liberal democrat to take the Tsar's place rather than communists. Is this true, and if not, why not?

The February revolution did put a very unstable "democratic" pretty liberal party into power. I don't know what the polling means involved, and who had suffrage. The October revolution, which was led by the Bolsheviks, was based on the power of the workers councils and military measures. Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution provides a fair bit of detail. His account is reasonably fair considering he led the military operations involved.

Most revolutions happen when dictatorships or occupiers have lost all legitimacy. This gives us no very clear idea about how revolutions will develop. Life under dictatorship is usually full of censorship and the banning of ideas and discussion. While it is very exciting to see dictators overthrown, the question is always what next? On one level, peoples will figure it out for themselves, on the other hand, having those figurings discussed, challenged, accepted and rejected by various national democratic forces.

[Queercommie Girl]

^

No people will not just "figure it out for themselves". Where the existing state machine has completely fallen, political power will always pass to the ones with the most power, not necessarily to the "masses" at all.

E.g. in China's capitalist revolution, although Sun Yat-sen and the bourgeois revolutionaries in China completely overthrew the feudal Manchu Qing Dynasty, they could not hold onto power, and political power was hijacked by the feudal warlords, because they had more military power.

Political power will always be hijacked by the political force that is the most powerful, that's an absolute law.

[ComradeOm]

Long story short: it seems like the Western version of the Russian Revolution was that it was a coup by a relatively unpopular party, whereas most Russians wanted a liberal democrat to take the Tsar's place rather than communists. Is this true, and if not, why not?Entirely false. The "liberal democrats" in Russia 1917 were not the Mensheviks but rather the Kadets (Constitutional Democrats). Their following was almost entirely limited to the urban upper classes. 1905 was the last time that they enjoyed anything approaching popular support amongst the workers

There has been a tendency in Western histories to view the Mensheviks and SRs (the 'moderate socialists') as idealistic losers as honest democrats who failed from lack of conviction or political savoir-faire. Of course the Bolsheviks are portrayed as unscrupulous schemers who somehow 'stole' the revolution. In academic circles this version came under increasing attack from the 1980s and is almost unsustainable today. Unfortunately this has yet to filter through to popular perception. See here (http://www.revleft.com/vb/russian-revolution-bolshevik-t105275/index.html) for an examination of how 'unpopular' the Bolsheviks were in 1917

[pranabjyoti]

John Reed's Ten Days That Shook The world give some very good eye-witness account of that time.

[Slav92]

Forgive me if I dont write with the depth and grandeur that most of you write with, but surely the names of the parties give a clue as to who was more popular?

Mensheviks - the majority
Bolsheviks - the minority

(atleast, this is what was taught to me in a western history class, I'm sure someone will enlighten me if im wrong)

[Volcanicity]

Forgive me if I dont write with the depth and grandeur that most of you write with, but surely the names of the parties give a clue as to who was more popular?

Mensheviks - the majority
Bolsheviks - the minority

(atleast, this is what was taught to me in a western history class, I'm sure someone will enlighten me if im wrong)
It's actually the other way around.Bolsheviks=majority and Menshevik=minority.

[ComradeOm]

Mensheviks - the majority
Bolsheviks - the minority

(atleast, this is what was taught to me in a western history class, I'm sure someone will enlighten me if im wrong)Actually its the other way around - Bolshevik is derived from 'majority' (bol'shinstvo) while men'shinstvo means 'minority'. Of course even this is misleading given that the terms refer to the composition of a single party congress (some sources refer to a single editorial board at this congress) in 1903. But yes, the Bolsheviks probably were in the majority prior to 1914

Enlightenment away!

[Dimentio]

Long story short: it seems like the Western version of the Russian Revolution was that it was a coup by a relatively unpopular party, whereas most Russians wanted a liberal democrat to take the Tsar's place rather than communists. Is this true, and if not, why not?

No, that is a confusion between the Mensheviks and the Socialist Revolutionaries, who won the 1918 elections to the Constituent Assembly, something which Lenin rejected.

The Mensheviks won power in Caucasus, and were then subjugated by the Red Army in the early 1920's.

[Dave B]

Without wanting to get into spurious details, or double checking facts etc

The split occurred at a conference of Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party, or RSDLP in 1903 in Brussels, Amsterdam or somewhere I think, which was composed mainly of émigrés circa 100-200.


That could not be particularly representative one way or the other of the actual membership in Russia as it was not possible to operate as an open party etc.


Which was itself one of the subjects of the debate.


Before the vote, that finalised the split, which the Bolsheviks won as in fact a slight ‘majority’, a large group of delegates from the Bundist fraction had walked out in disgust over a slightly different issue.

The Bundist were the ‘Jewish’ section of the RSDLP which was quite large, as a disproportionate section of the industrial working class in Russia came from the ‘Jewish’ community.


As I seem to remember it, the Bundists were proper international socialists as opposed to being religious etc but still wanted to retain their cultural identity within the party etc ie producing their own literature in their own language or whatever.


There had been a bit of a row in the party over that with many objecting to sections within the party over any issue let alone nonsensical ‘cultural’ or ‘ethnic’ based false ideology.


Whilst both ‘leading’ Mensheviks and Bolsheviks didn’t like the idea of a ‘Jewish’ section, the Mensheviks tended to be a bit more tolerant of it and the Bundists tended towards the Menshevik fraction both before and after the split.


Had the Bundists not walked out the "Mensheviks" would almost certainly have been the "Bolsheviks".


Rafail Abramovich who became a leading Menshevik after the death of Martov had ‘come out of’ the Bundist section.
eg

http://www.uea.ac.uk/his/webcours/russia/documents/abramovich.shtml (http://www.uea.ac.uk/his/webcours/russia/documents/abramovich.shtml)


Abramovich wrote an interesting history of the Russian revolution called ‘The Soviet Revolution 1917-39’.


He was deeply involved in it, knew Lenin personally and his recollections are well worth a read for something "different".


But he did know what socialism was and had the balls to stick around having already dodged a Bolshevik firing squad once.


And in fact ,from the first Stalinist, Trotsky;

Terrorism and Communism




True, Abramovich demonstrated to us most learnedly that under Socialism there will be no compulsion, that the principle of compulsion contradicts Socialism, that under Socialism we shall be moved by the feeling of duty, the habit of working, the attractiveness of labor, etc., etc. This is unquestionable. Only this unquestionable truth must be a little extended. In point of fact, under Socialism there will not exist the apparatus of compulsion itself, namely, the State: for it will have melted away entirely into a producing and consuming commune.



http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1920/terrcomm/ch08.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1920/terrcomm/ch08.htm)


The SPGB are often accused of being Mensheviks; which is a bit absurd really if only because the Mensheviks were not impossibilists.

And whilst the Mensheviks were under pressure after 1918 and couldn’t organise openly, the majority left Mensheviks found it difficult to keep the right ‘under control’ as undoubtedly to some extent they started to permeate the party.


And thus the minority of renegade right Mensheviks, and there were some, are taken as typical by lying Leninist story-tellers.


We can get an idea of what the right Mensheviks were like from Lenin’s take on the bête noire right Menshevik, Skobelev, who went into the provisional government, and went on to have an interesting career under Stalin;




Today we must point out that the programme of the Menshevik Minister Skobelev (http://www.revleft.com/glossary/people/s/k.htm#skobelev-matvei) goes even further than Bolshevism. Here is the programme, as reported in the ministerial paper, Rech:

"The Minister [Skobelev] declared that ’... the country’s economy is on the brink of disaster. We must intervene in all fields of economic life, as there is no money in the Treasury. We must improve the condition of the working masses, and to do that we must take the profits from the tills of the businessmen and bankers’. (Voice in the audience: ‘How?’) ’By ruthless taxation of property,’ replied the Minister of Labour, Skobelev. ’It is a method known to the science of finance. The rate of taxation on the propertied classes must be increased to one hundred per cent of their profits.’ (Voice in the audience: ’That means everything.’) ‘Unfortunately,’ declared Skobelev, ’many corporations have already distributed their dividends among the share holders, and we must therefore levy a progressive personal tax on the propertied classes. We will go even further, and, if the capitalists wish to preserve the bourgeois method of business, let them work without interest, so as not to lose their clients.... We must introduce compulsory labour service for the shareholders, bankers and factory owners, who are in a rather slack mood because the incentive that formerly stimulated them to work is now lacking.... We must force the shareholders to submit to the state; they, too, must be subject to labour service.’"
We advise the workers to read and reread this programme, to discuss it and go into the matter of its practicability
.

http://marxists.anu.edu.au/archive/lenin/works/1917/may/16b.htm (http://marxists.anu.edu.au/archive/lenin/works/1917/may/16b.htm)

Not exactly my cup of tea, but not exactly a ‘liberal’ either.

I have just winged that a bit and I am happy to be corrected on details.