Books about the Mensheviks

[bad ideas actualised by alcohol]

I find myself increasingly ignorant of the Mensheviks. So I was wondering if there has been written much history on them.
I am looking for information about them before the revolutions in 1917 and after, and during obviously. I am looking for information about the various theories within the menshevik faction. I want to have information about, and I know there is some debate about this among historians, when the RSDLP actually split, since for a long time the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks were factions not seperate parties. And I am looking for texts from the theorists.

While texts from political opponents are fine, I am looking for something that is a bit more objective than one of Lenin's million polemics. I'd want them too, but not just them so I can more accurately make up my mind about them.

I hope some of you can help me with this.

[bad ideas actualised by alcohol]

So far I've only fund a biography of Martov by Israel Getzler.
I really hope there is written more about them.

[The Idler]

The most well-known is the Israel Getzler biog of Martov. There's a text referenced in there by martov titled who destroyed the rsdlp and why. I would like to see this text but can't find it.
From Wikipedia


Vladimir N. Brovkin, The Mensheviks After October: Socialist Opposition and the Rise of the Bolshevik Dictatorship. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987.
A.M. Bourguina, Russian Social Democracy: The Menshevik Movement: A Bibliography. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, 1968.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menshevik#Further_reading (http://www.revleft.com/vb/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menshevik#Further_reading)

from wiki on axelrod
Abraham Ascher. Pavel Axelrod and the Development of Menshevism, Harvard University Press, 1972, ISBN 0-674-65905-8, 420p.

not much on martinov anywhere

There's some books on the russian wikipedia if you run it through translate

[bad ideas actualised by alcohol]

Thank you Idler, very helpful.

Does anyone know if this book is worthwile http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674325173 ?

Edit: didn't notice it was also on the bottom of the wiki further reading

[Tower of Bebel]

It's not a book about Mensheviks nor is it about Menshevism, but have you ever read Lenin Rediscovered ...? Not only does it debunk the myths surrounding Lenin's WITBD, it also debunks the myths surrounding the debates within Russian social democracy between 1898 and 1905. Part III, chapter 9 is of particular interest.

[bad ideas actualised by alcohol]

Thanks, it isn't exactly the subject but since reading his biogrphy of Lenin I've been meaning to get the book.

[Noa Rodman]

From skimming the online archive of IRSH (over 2300 articles), these relate;

THE POLITICS OF GOLOS AND NASHE SLOVO (http://search.socialhistory.org/Record/S0020859000006829)

Plekhanov in War and Revolution, 1914–17 (http://search.socialhistory.org/Record/S0020859000007215)

edit; and review of the Liebich book. (http://search.socialhistory.org/Record/S0020859099800625)

[Dave B]

Brovokins Mensheviks after October is good.

There is some OK stuff, on the Mensheviks, in Burbanks Intelligentsia and Revolution.

Abramovitch (Menshevik) wrote a good book on the Russian revolution; most of it is on the Stalin period and hence ‘boring’.

Theodore Dan’s (leader of the Mensheviks 1925-1946) book The Origins of Bolshevism despite being a bit dense theoretically is worth a read.

Haimson’s ‘The Mensheviks’ and Liebachs ‘From The Other Shore’ I thought weren’t that good or interesting or whatever but as books on Mensheviks rare.

Getzlers book is a bouncy enough biography on Martov which occasionally digresses into Menshevik theory.

Sukhanovs , half a Menshevik, famous standard text ‘The Russian Revolution’ has interesting material in it but I didn’t like it, he got on my nerves.

I have read them all and actually have them.



Don’t like buying books, bit of a library bod.

Hacking your way through the pre 1917 Lenin Archive is were all the most interesting stuff is including original quoted and preserved Menshevik material, in English, is.

[Geiseric]

I read Leninism Under Lenin by Marcel Liebman, which goes over the general history with the menheviks.

It seemed strange to me that they refered to themselves as the Mensheviks seeing as Menshevik means "Minority" in russian, so their name was based on the fact that they lost support of most of the RSDLP and thus most of the revolutionary working class.

[bad ideas actualised by alcohol]

I read Leninism Under Lenin by Marcel Liebman, which goes over the general history with the menheviks.

It seemed strange to me that they refered to themselves as the Mensheviks seeing as Menshevik means "Minority" in russian, so their name was based on the fact that they lost support of most of the RSDLP and thus most of the revolutionary working class.

It refers to being in the minority at one congress. Numbers shifted around a bit and the Mensheviks got more support amongst emigres. During the pre-war years(1910-1914) the Mensheviks did lose out in Russia and the Bolsheviks were seen as the more respectable revolutionary party.
They were also still in the same organization and it was a wide-spread believe they could still reconcile for many years.
I don't know how much the split really reflected workers views, if they cared that much about it at all, at the time it happened. Of course as years went by one faction started gaining more support so later it did reflect it.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Lenin covers the split in One Step Forward, Two Steps Back (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1904/onestep/index.htm). Roughly, what happened was that the minority of the Iskra editorial board and their associates (Martov, Trotsky, Zasulich etc.) joined forces with economists, Bundists etc., forming the minority faction in the 2nd congress of the RSDRP. Their ideas were rejected by the majority of the congress. The term Menshevik, I think, comes from this stage. The economist-Iskra minority faction was able to gain further concessions at the congress of the League of Russian Social-Democrats Abroad. Finally, a section of the congress majority, mostly in the leadership, led by Plekhanov, argued for further concessions for the minority, and ejected Lenin from the Central Committee. Most of the committees gathered into a congress that the CC had forbidden and deposed the conciliatory-minority Central Committee, whose supporters would from that point on be called Mensheviks.

[Tower of Bebel]

It refers to being in the minority at one congress.
According to Lih's interpretation it also refers to the fact that outside a revolutionary situation radical or revolutionary ideas form a minority. The Mensheviks would have originally prided themselves with being the more advanced, conscious and even the more vanguardist layer among the social democrats. This interpretation, it goes without saying, partially disproves the claim that the Mensheviks were against vanguardist ideas. In fact, they were the ones who claimed that the social democratic model of Europe could not be implemented in Russia under Tsarist conditions, that a more elitist and more closed organisation was needed. In 1905 "Lenin's" definition, based on the European model of workers' parties, was implemented (because of the bourgeois freedom the working class had gained).

[bad ideas actualised by alcohol]

It would explain why they used it. Although I find it a bit implausible.
How does Lih back it up, source-wise?

[Tower of Bebel]

It would explain why they used it. Although I find it a bit implausible.
How does Lih back it up, source-wise?

The Mensheviks (and Trotsky) were all in favor of what Lih coins "campaignism", that is "party campaigns that ... required a prestigious and united leadership". Which was revealed, according to Lih, in Martov's works and how he thought the congress of 1903 should have ended. "The new central committee would have set itself the task of raising the qualitative level of local work both by its direct influence and by sending out agitators and propagandists [in the eyes of the Axelrod they would be Russian intelligentsia and workers' intelligentsia most of the time, not workers (p. 535)]. From them, the committees [branches, sections] would have learned new methods of influencing the masses." (p. 503)

The name they chose, he writes, was emblematic: it was a wide-spread idea in Russian social democracy that the minority view was progressive, a vanguard. He found clues in the complaints by the social democrat Akimov (the Rabochee Delo group) that they were "unjustly accused of going along with the majority, with being conservative and in the tail of the movement, instead of acting as a minority that advanced new and broader tasks". (p. 504)

Then in 1904 there was this article by Martov called "Always in the Minority" in which he wrote the social democratic intelligentsia "will not be afraid if the 'whole world' regards them as 'sectarians', that they "will indertand the whole moral duty, in certain circumstances, of remaining always in the minority" because they find support in the scientific worldview [of Marxism]. After the Second congress he also wrote "Once more in the Minority", which was the Menshevik manifesto after they took over the Iskra editorial board. (p. 504)

It's still an interpretation, but within the overall argument (the whole book) it really is a valid one.

[Dave B]

V. I. (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1909/feb/12.htm) Lenin (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1909/mar/23.htm) 1909

The Aim of the Proletarian Struggle in Our Revolution (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1909/aim/index.htm#i)




We shall begin with the history of the discussion of this question by the Russian Social-Democrats. It was brought up by the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks at the beginning of 1905. The former answered it with the “formula”: revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry (cf. Vperyod,[4] (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1909/aim/i.htm#fwV15E134) No. 14, April 12, 1905[1] (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1909/aim/i.htm#fwV15P360F01) ). The latter flatly rejected this definition of the class content of a victorious bourgeois revolution.

The Third (Bolshevik) Congress held in London in May 1905 and the Menshevik conference held at the same time in Geneva, officially expressed the views of the two sections of the Party. In keeping with the spirit of the times, both sections of the Party in their resolutions dealt, not with the theoretical and general question of the aim of the struggle and the class content of a victorious revolution in general, but with the narrower question of a provisional revolutionary government. 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




Karl Radek (bolshevik) The Paths of the Russian Revolution 1922



What were the differences between the two tendencies in their analysis of the character of the Russian Revolution and of its motor forces? In Lenin’s pamphlet Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution (Summer 1905) we read this:


‘Finally, we will note that the resolution, by making implementation of the minimum programme the provisional revolutionary government’s task, eliminates the absurd and semi-Anarchist ideas of giving immediate effect to the maximum programme, and the conquest of power for a Socialist revolution. The degree of Russia’s economic development (an objective condition), and the degree of class-consciousness and organisation of the broad masses of the proletariat (a subjective condition inseparably bound up with the objective condition) make the immediate and complete emancipation of the working class impossible.

Only the most ignorant people can close their eyes to the bourgeois nature of the democratic revolution which is now taking place; only the most naive optimists can forget how little as yet the masses of the workers are informed about the aims of Socialism and the methods of achieving it. We are all convinced that the emancipation of the working classes must be won by the working classes themselves; a Socialist revolution is out of the question unless the masses become class-conscious and organised, trained, and educated in an open class struggle against the entire bourgeoisie. Replying to the Anarchists’ objections that we are putting off the Socialist revolution, we say: we are not putting it off, but are taking the first step towards it in the only possible way, along the only correct path, namely, the path of a democratic republic.

Whoever wants to reach Socialism by any other path than that of political democracy will inevitably arrive at conclusions that are absurd and reactionary both in the economic and the political sense. If any workers ask us at the appropriate moment why we should not go ahead and carry out our maximum programme we shall answer by pointing out how far from Socialism the masses of the democratically-minded people still are, how undeveloped class antagonisms still are, and how unorganised the proletarians still are.

Organise hundreds of thousands of workers all over Russia; get the millions to sympathise with our programme! Try to do this without confining yourselves to high-sounding but hollow Anarchist phrases — and you will see at once that achievement of this organisation and the spread of this Socialist enlightenment depend on the fullest possible achievement of democratic transformations.’



This was not just a passing thought, but the theoretical foundation of the entire position of Lenin and the Bolsheviks during the first revolution. How, therefore, did it differ from that of the Mensheviks?


The differences did not begin to show until it was a question of determining the role of the non-proletarian classes in the revolution and relationships with them. Starting off from the fact that the Russian Revolution would to begin with prepare the ground for the free development of capitalism — this concept was common to both Mensheviks and Bolsheviks —the Mensheviks concluded from it that leadership in the revolution must fall to the bourgeoisie. The Mensheviks combated in the most resolute manner the idea that the working class along with the peasantry must take power for the revolution to achieve its bourgeois democratic aims — if nothing more. According to the Menshevik conception, the role of the revolutionary working class and its party had to be the role of a left opposition. The Mensheviks compared the efforts of the working class to conquer power along with the peasantry to Millerandism, to the participation of the Social Democracy in bourgeois governments towards the end of the nineteenth century, and prophesied that any attempt to participate in government would be a disaster for the Social Democracy.


On their side, the Bolsheviks demonstrated that, firstly, the Menshevik conception was completely schematic, and, secondly, that it was renouncing the radical victory of the bourgeois revolution. From the fact that the Russian Revolution was bourgeois in content it did not absolutely follow, they said, that the industrial bourgeoisie had to be its agent. The industrial bourgeoisie was too allied to Tsarism and feared the working class too much to be able to place itself at the head of the popular masses in the struggle against Tsarism. The entire history of the nineteenth century had already rendered it too conscious of its antagonism with the working class. But there was outside of the industrial bourgeoisie a bourgeois class whose interests cried out for the victory of the revolution. This was the peasantry.

The Bolsheviks explained that the peasantry had to struggle against Tsarism up to the final victory if it wished to obtain the land. The peasantry is a bourgeois class. But is it a class which must destroy the edifice of Tsarism in order to achieve its bourgeois aims? This class is uneducated, and is beginning to take its first steps. The task of the Social Democracy must be to lead in struggle, not only the working class, but the peasantry as well.

If the work of the Social Democracy were to be successful, if the masses of the people were to rise up against Tsarism, then the creation of a revolutionary government would be necessary, whose job it would be to lead the bourgeois revolution to its conclusion by a struggle against the forces of the old regime who could not be annihilated by a single blow.

The Bolsheviks saw in participation in this common revolutionary proletarian government a guarantee of the achievement of the revolution; they reproached the Mensheviks with wanting to limit themselves to an oppositional role, and abandoning the leadership a priori to elements who did not want the final victory of the revolution, but sought for a compromise with Tsarism. The controversies between the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks just before and during the revolution consequently involved different relations with the peasantry on the one side and with the liberal bourgeoisie on the other. These differences also posed the question of the role of the working class in the revolution, the question of knowing if the working class should take the leadership during the revolution, or if it should leave the leadership to the bourgeoisie.


Trotsky and Parvus on the one side, and Kautsky and Rosa Luxemburg on the other, were already at this time expressing concepts differing from those of both tendencies of Russian Social Democracy. Beginning with Kautsky, who is now calling absurd and Utopian all those who dare to express a doubt about the correctness of Menshevik concepts, this is what he declared in reply to an inquiry from Plekhanov [Kautsky, The Driving Forces of the Russian Revolution and its Prospects, November ……………..and so on
http://www.marxists.org/archive/radek/1922/paths/ch01.html

Lenin 1911



When we look at the history of the last half-century in Russia, when we cast a glance at 1861 and 1905, we can only repeat the words of our Party resolution with even greater conviction:

"As before, the aim of our struggle is to overthrow tsarism and bring about the conquest of power by the proletariat relying on the revolutionary sections of the peasantry and accomplishing the bourgeois-democratic revolution by means of the convening of a popular constituent assembly and the establishment of a democratic republic ".
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1911/mar/19.htm (http://www.marx2mao.com/Lenin/PRPPR11.html)




Leon Trotsky; WHAT NEXT? 1917
V: THE CHARACTER OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION


Since, in a bourgeois revolution, they (Mensheviks) 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

[Manzil]

Vladimir N. Brovkin, The Mensheviks After October: Socialist Opposition and the Rise of the Bolshevik Dictatorship. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987.

Brovkin also edited Dear Comrades (Hoover Institution Press, 1991), which is a documentary history compiling leading Mensheviks' reactions to the October revolution and the emergent civil war. Both recommended.