bolsheviks and mensheviks

[chuckles]

I've begun studying the history of the russian revolution in some depth, but i can't find any sources that tell me the difference between the bolsheviks and the mensheviks. could anyone help me out?

[luxemburg89]

Wikipedia has a reasonably good article on it. Just search Bolshevism and read that article - whilst making notes - and then follow the Menshevism link (I'm not sure where on the page it is but you'll find it).

I hope that helps - alternatively, whereabouts are you? I know a brilliant study guide but it's UK based only.

[Vargha Poralli]

Well the split of RSDLP in to two factions Bolsheviks and Mensheviks happened in 1903 because of the disagreements on tactics between Lenin on one hand and Martov on the other hand. It is very difficult to asses who were the originally the Bolshevik and who were all Originally mensheviks as people constantly switched factions from 1903-1917.

Two Tactics of Social Democracy in a democratic Revolution - Lenin (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1905/tactics/index.htm) gives the basic differences between his line and the Line proposed by the Others.

[Tower of Bebel]

The Russian Social-Democratic party was plit because of an issue on tactics: the party. Ideological differences grew there after and espesially during the Revolution of 1917 there were major differences.

[blackstone]

Well the two wings of the RSDLP did infact have different views of Russians revolution, but that is not what caused the split in 1903. What caused the split was a question over membership for the party. The Bolsheviks wanted a more defined and more strict definition of a party member, which they hoped to ensure that only active participants of the Party were considered members. WHile the Mensheviks were in favor of a less strict and more broad conditions for membership. From there and after the Revolution, the differences between them grew.

Just to clarify on what Racoon, said.

Of course there were ideological and practical differences between the two as well. Which another, more well read comrade, well hopefully be able to explain more in detail then me

[Tower of Bebel]

I found a website that countained the results of elections during 1917 and 1918 and I was shocked to see that the Mensheviks failed to get support in every election. In many even the Cadets received more votes.

[CornetJoyce]

Rafail Grigorev, staff writer for New Life, a daily founded by Maxim Gorky, wrote just before the bolshevik seizure of power in 1917:



It is now too late to talk merely of a 'crisis' of Menshevism. However much one may try to avoid 'terrifying words', one must recognise the indisputable fact of the complete collapse of the Menshevik wing of social-democracy, its passing into political oblivion.

Anybody who is acquainted with the situation in the main Petrograd Menshevik organisation, which until recently numbered some 10,000 people will know that it has effectively ceased to exist. Local meetings have very poor attendences - 20 or 25 people, membership dues are not collected, and the print-run of the Workers' Newspaper is falling catastrophically. The last town conference could not take place because of the lack of a quorum. We do not even need to mention how the last elections to the City Duma went. At a meeting of the Petrograd Soviet the Menshevik resolution gets 19 votes. At the elections to the Moscow regional Dumas the Mensheviks get 25 seats out of 560... Individual and group resignations from the party have become a normal event. In the provinces this process of disintegration is taking place less acutely and painfully, but there too in the recent period splits from those united social-democratic organisations of defencist Mensheviks left over from the start of the revolution have been becoming more frequent, whilst the Bolsheviks and Menshevik-Internationalists have been continuing to exist together.

... there has never been a united Menshevik front throughout the entire period of the revolution, irrespective of the mass mood: neither in the period when the Menshevik - SR bloc was in all its strength and glory, nor now, when the wheel of fortune has turned to the Bolsheviks. There was not one official announcement or step taken by the Mensheviks which was not publicly repudiated by Mensheviks themselves. It is no secret that the heaviest blows against Menshevism, morally far more damaging than anything done by its external enemies, were dealt by its internal enemies: Martov and his co-thinkers.

It was precisely that group which exposed the whole petty-bourgeois nature of revolutionary-defencist Menshevism, its dangerous anti-democratic tendencies and its social-patriotic essence.

The Menshevik-Internationalists won for themselves an almost independent political existence, openly refused to subordinate themselves to all-party decisions, operated as an independent faction, and published their own papers. The defencists were quite right to characterise this as disorganising and 'anarchistic' work. There emerged a picture quite incomprehensible to the European mind: whilst everywhere else the split in the workers' movement caused by the war separated social-patriotism from internationalism, and the different tendencies within them were found on their respective sides of the 'barricade', here the internationalists have found themselves in different organisational camps. A significant and well-defined internationalist group, with a strong leadership, remains within a social-patriotic organisation, and is waging an open and merciless struggle against it from within.

In the eyes of the Menshevik-Internationalist leaders that paradox is justified by the necessity of winning the greatest possible number of party members for their ideas.

From an educational point of view that would seem expedient, but the trouble is that political education has political consequences: the Menshevik-Internationalists have won many people over - but not for themselves - for the Bolsheviks. The ideological struggle with Menshevik defencism necessitated a political struggle in the most literal sense: one cannot day in and day out show the masses the disastrousness of Tsereteli and Dan's politics, and then call on those same masses to vote for them at the elections.

[The-Spark]

I read somewhere that Bolshevik meant Majority and Menshevik meant Minority.

[Vargha Poralli]

Originally posted by The-[email protected] 28, 2007 09:47 pm
I read somewhere that Bolshevik meant Majority and Menshevik meant Minority.
Yes literally. It doesn't men Bolsheviks had the majority of membership all times.

[ComradeOm]

Originally posted by Raccoon+July 27, 2007 11:37 pm--> (Raccoon @ July 27, 2007 11:37 pm) I found a website that countained the results of elections during 1917 and 1918 and I was shocked to see that the Mensheviks failed to get support in every election. In many even the Cadets received more votes. [/b]
By the time of the CA elections the Mensheviks had been almost completely eclipsed by the Bolsheviks as the party of the urban proletariat. This was a result of the complete incompetence of the Provisional Government and the Menshevik association with the capitalists. Their refusal to sanction the Revolution was the final blow.


The-Spark
I read somewhere that Bolshevik meant Majority and Menshevik meant Minority.This is because the Bolsheviks enjoyed a majority on the Iskra (RSDLP paper) editorial board at the time of the Second Congress. In terms of numbers they remained the smaller faction until 1917 when they were the only party not to be tarnished by the failure of the PG.

Its important to note two things though -

1) the split was always more about personalities than politics. Martov and the Internationalists were politically far closer to Lenin than they were to the right of their party. The power of egos cannot be underestimated.

2) Outside of St Petersburg and Moscow the split was largely nominal. Isolated from the bitterness of their respective leaderships, the grassroots of both factions continued to work closely together in the regions until after the October Revolution.

[Janus]

Bolsheviks and Mensheviks (http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic=37663&hl=+bolshevik*++menshevik*)
Bolshevism vs. Menshevism (http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic=38182)
Who were the Mensheviks? (http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic=65504)

[Tower of Bebel]

http://web.grinnell.edu/individuals/kaiser/region.gif

The Menhseviks always were the majority and had - correct me if I'm wrong - more influence during the revoltuion of 1905 than the Bolsheviks. Yet, a series of mistakes and the succes of the Bolshevik strategy made the Mensheviks ready for extinction by 1917/8.