BOLSHEVIKS

The Bolsheviks represented one wing of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labor Party that had emerged in tsarist Russia at the end of the nineteenth century. Closely identified with its leader and founder, Vladimir Lenin (Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov; 1870–1924), the Bolsheviks sought to take political and intellectual leadership of a revolutionary movement that would use the mass organization of workers to overthrow the autocratic government of the Romanov dynasty.

early development of marxism in russia

Marxism first attracted radical Russian intellectuals in the 1880s, when a few disillusioned populists saw in the emerging urban proletariat the key to transforming Russia's repressive political and social system. The movement gathered momentum in the 1890s with the acceleration of Russian industrialization. Inspired by the analysis of the early converts to Marxism, Georgy Plekhanov, Pavel Axelrod, and Vera Zasulich, and by the rise of labor unrest in Russian cities, a new generation of radical intellectuals took the lead to organize workers' circles and to channel their energy into a revolutionary political movement. From the start, Marxist activists disagreed on whether to concentrate on the political task of overthrowing the autocracy or on more immediate goals of organizing workers around economic grievances. In the late 1890s, an activist of the younger generation, Lenin, joined with Plekhanov and Axelrod in opposing the approach of working only for economic gains. Meanwhile, an independent Marxist movement representing impoverished Jewish workers in Russia's western Pale of Settlement, the Bund, also began to recruit members and to advocate revolutionary change. In 1898, nine representatives of these scattered Marxist groups and circles came together in Minsk to found the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party. This founding congress sought to emphasize unified organization over theory, but as labor unrest continued to mount, groups of Social Democrats began to disagree on theory and tactics, using political newspapers published outside Russia to articulate their points of view and to rally supporters.

Lenin argued that such a newspaper should serve as the organizing center for underground committees inside Russia. Together with Yuli Martov, who had once favored the tactics of economic agitation, Lenin founded the newspaper Iskra (The spark) in late 1900 to articulate their position: for the priority of the political struggle to overthrow tsarism. Inside Russia, followers of the Iskra line began to agitate within the underground committees to win activists over to the goal of revolution. Lenin further elaborated his ideas on revolutionary tactics in his pamphlet What Is to Be Done? (1902), which emphasized the need for a centralized and conspiratorial revolutionary party.

bolshevik–menshevik split

To consolidate its leadership over the Social Democratic movement, the Iskra group of Lenin, Martov, Plekhanov, Axelrod, Zasulich, and Alexander Potresov called for a party congress to ratify their position. The second congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party met first in Brussels in July 1903 and later reconvened in London after being harassed by the Belgian police. By this time, however, serious divisions had emerged within the party and even within the Iskra group over the structure and tactics of the party. The Bund wanted the exclusive right to organize all Jewish workers; others in the party objected. Lenin insisted on the primacy of the central newspaper, published abroad, as the organizing center of the movement; a central committee inside Russia would merely supervise local activities. Most contentiously, Lenin advocated a very narrow definition of party membership: he insisted that Russia's repressive political conditions demanded that only committed professional revolutionaries should be considered as members. His opponents argued that this would exclude many workers and that anyone who embraced the principles of social democracy should be allowed to join the party. In a carefully arranged series of votes, Lenin first defeated the Bund's position, provoking that group to leave the congress. Next he won a vote making Iskra the central party organ, spurring another walkout. Finally, with a majority of one, he pushed through his remaining organizational points, with his supporters taking the majority of positions on the central committee and Iskra editorial board. Lenin triumphantly named his group the Bolsheviks (majorityites), and his opponents, which now included his former ally Martov, the Mensheviks (minorityites).

The Mensheviks fought back, and after winning Plekhanov over to their side, regained Iskra for their faction: Lenin's majority had been short-lived. Efforts to reunite the factions would continue into 1917, but the Bolshevik–Menshevik split would never fully heal. The two factions remained close on many points, but the Bolsheviks continued to place primacy on the political revolution, and a centralized and secretive party, whereas the Mensheviks emphasized that the revolution must come from workers, not just professional revolutionaries, and they directed their efforts toward organizing the labor movement.

"We demand that the tactics that have prevailed in recent years be changed; we declare that 'before we can unite, and in order that we may unite, we must first of all firmly and definitely draw the lines of demarcation between the various groups.' " (Vladimir Lenin, What Is to Be Done, 1902)

revolution of 1905 and its aftermath

The Russian Revolution of 1905, which began with worker unrest in January 1905, revealed the isolation of the Social Democratic movement. Neither faction played much of a leadership role. Independently, workers' groups mounted strikes and organized trade unions: local Social Democratic organizations arose in the excitement of the revolutionary moment and increasingly called for the central leaders to forget their differences and come together as one Social Democratic party. The creation of an elected parliament, the Duma, in the aftermath of 1905 gave the Social Democratic parties new incentives for unity, and the Menshevik–Bolshevik split ended officially at the fourth (Unification) congress in Stockholm in the spring of

1906. Many Mensheviks had moved closer to the Bolsheviks on the necessity of centralized party leadership, and they held sway in the new central committee, which consisted of seven Mensheviks and three Bolsheviks, later augmented by five more members from the Polish and Latvian Social Democratic parties and from the Bund, which had rejoined the movement.

The Social Democrats remained ambivalent about whether they should participate in the elections to the Duma or to boycott them. Formally united, Mensheviks and Bolsheviks still disagreed on major points of doctrine: the Mensheviks believed that the Duma represented the necessary bourgeois stage of Russian development and that they should cooperate with Duma liberals in opposing tsarist policy. Organizing a mass movement of workers remained a key goal. The Bolsheviks preferred to work to undermine the Duma as well as the autocracy, and while professing unity, adopted more violent tactics of armed robbery in order to support their faction's activities. As the government rebounded from the shock of the 1905 revolution, however, it became less tolerant of the Duma and of revolutionary political parties, driving the Bolsheviks further underground and making labor organization very difficult for Mensheviks. A radical wing of the Bolshevik fraction, based inside Russia, responded to the deteriorating political climate by demanding that the Social Democrats withdraw altogether from the Duma. Left Bolshevik intellectuals, including

Alexander Bogdanov and Anatoly Lunacharsky, also challenged Lenin on theoretical grounds. Lenin's hold on the Bolshevik movement had become very tenuous by 1910, as even his former supporters Plekhanov and Leon Trotsky now attacked him for his excessive sectarianism. Meanwhile, rank-and-file Social Democrats still agitated for a resolution of these sectarian differences, while party leaders abroad continued to disagree.

lead up to 1917

Inside Russia, and once again largely independent of Social Democratic leadership, a growing labor force became increasingly militant as Russia's economy began to revive after 1910. When government troops fired upon striking miners in the Lena goldfields in Siberia in April 1912, new waves of unrest spread across the empire. The slow and steady trade union organizing of the Mensheviks now seemed too tame for increasingly militant skilled workers. The Bolsheviks had earlier disdained trade union agitation, but at the party's conference in Prague in January 1912, they now called on the trade unions to become the mass instrument of insurrection. This Prague conference also sealed a new break with the Mensheviks, because Lenin had called it unilaterally to the exclusion of the Menshevik faction.

The Bolsheviks' more militant approach to the trade union movement gained significant support during the years from 1912 to 1914. Emphasizing how the repressive autocratic regime impeded workers' efforts to organize and improve their working conditions, the Bolsheviks appealed to the labor movement to become the instrument of the overthrow of tsarism as well as of capitalism. Increasingly, proletarian Bolsheviks emerged as the radical leaders of the network of trade unions and strike committees, winning additional converts through the proletarian physiognomy of the party and by the appeal of its task-oriented tactics. The Mensheviks, by contrast, stuck to their belief that trade unions must work to raise the long-term cultural, political, and economic levels of Russia's workers. Only a mass movement, fully mobilized and conscious of its goals, could make a legitimate socialist revolution. For the Mensheviks, that revolution required Social Democratic unity. The Bolsheviks, however, following Lenin's lead, were willing to split the socialist movement and go the revolutionary path alone.

See alsoBund, Jewish; Lenin, Vladimir; Martov, L.; Mensheviks; Plekhanov, Georgy; Revolution of 1905 (Russia); Zasulich, Vera.

bibliography

Bonnell, Victoria E. Roots of Rebellion: Workers' Politics and Organizations in St. Petersburg and Moscow, 1900–1914. Berkeley, Calif., 1983. Thorough sociological study of the self-organization of Russian urban workers and their interactions with the Bolshevik and Menshevik parties.

Haimson, Leopold H. The Russian Marxists and the Origins of Bolshevism. Cambridge, Mass., 1955. Classic study of the intellectual origins of the Menshevik–Bolshevik split, taking the story up to 1905.

Lane, David. The Roots of Russian Communism: A Social and Historical Study of Russian Social-Democracy, 1898–1907. Assen, Netherlands, 1969. Analysis of the structure, social composition, and activities of Social-Democratic Party organizations nationally and in seven regions, including St. Petersburg, Moscow, the Caucasus, and Siberia.

Schapiro, Leonard. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union. 2nd ed. New York, 1971. Massive and detailed history of the Communist Party from its origins to the end of the Khrushchev era.

Service, Robert. Lenin: A Political Life. 3 vols. Bloomington, Ind., 1985–1995. Thorough biography focusing on Lenin's political writings and party organization.

Ulam, Adam B. The Bolsheviks. New York, 1965.

Wildman, Allan K. The Making of a Workers' Revolution: Russian Social Democracy, 1891–1903. Chicago, 1967. Pioneering study of the relationship between Marxist intellectuals and activist workers in the Russian revolutionary movement.

Williams, Robert C. The Other Bolsheviks: Lenin and His Critics, 1904–1914. Bloomington, Ind., 1986.

Diane P. Koenker