Menshevik
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Mensheviks (Russian: Меньшевики IPA: [mʲɪnʲʂɨˈvʲikʲɪ]) were a faction of the Russian revolutionary movement that emerged in 1903 after a dispute between Vladimir Lenin and Julius Martov, both members of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party. At the 2nd Congress of the RSDLP in August of 1903, Lenin argued for a small party of professional revolutionaries with a large fringe of non-party sympathizers and supporters. Martov disagreed, believing it was better to have a large party of activists with broad representation. A majority of delegates agreed with Martov and formed the Mensheviks, while Lenin's faction became known as the Bolsheviks. Lenin, through a series of political maneuvers, lock-outs and the eventual storming out of the Congress by the Jewish Bund managed to secure an artificial majority within the Congress in favor of his position. The majority of the Central Committee and other central Party organs elected at the Congress supported Lenin's position, and hence Menshevik is derived from the Russian word меньшинство (menshinstvo, "minority") while Bolshevik is derived from большинство (bolshinstvo, "majority").
The split between the two factions was long standing, and had to do both with pragmatic issues based in history such as the failed revolution of 1905, and theoretical issues of class leadership, class alliances, and bourgeois democracy. Both factions believed that Russia was not developed to a point at which socialism was possible and believed that the revolution for which they fought to overthrow the Tsarist regime would be a bourgeois democratic revolution. The Bolsheviks felt that the working class should lead the revolution in an alliance with the peasantry with the aim of establishing the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry, where the Party acts as extreme revolutionary opposition. On the other hand, the Menshevik vision was one of a bourgeois democratic revolution in which they could take part in government.
Contents |
[edit] After the split
[edit] 1903–17
Many Mensheviks left the party after the defeat of 1905 and joined more legal opposition organisations. After a while, Lenin's patience wore out with their compromising and in 1908 he called Mensheviks "liquidationists". This eventually led to the Bolsheviks declaring their faction to be the party in 1912 with the aid of a handful of Mensheviks. The Menshevik faction proper further split in 1914 at the beginning of World War I. Most Mensheviks opposed the war, but a vocal right-wing minority supported it in terms of "national defense".
[edit] 1917 Revolution
After the overthrow of the Romanov dynasty by the February Revolution in 1917, the Menshevik leadership led by Irakli Tsereteli demanded that the government pursue a "fair peace without annexations", but in the meantime supported the war effort under the slogan of "defense of the revolution". Along with the other major Russian socialist party, the Socialist Revolutionaries (RSDLP), the Mensheviks led the emerging network of Soviets, notably the Petrograd Soviet in the capital, throughout most of 1917.
With the collapse of the monarchy, many social democrats viewed previous tactical differences between the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks as a thing of the past and a number of local party organizations were merged. When Bolshevik leaders Lev Kamenev, Joseph Stalin and Matvei Muranov returned to Petrograd from Siberian exile in early March 1917 and assumed the leadership of the Bolshevik party, they began exploring the idea of a complete re-unification of Bolsheviks and Mensheviks at the national level, which Menshevik leaders were willing to consider. However, Lenin and his deputy Grigory Zinoviev returned to Russia from their Swiss exile on April 3, 1917 and re-asserted control of the Bolshevik party by late April 1917, taking it in a more radical, anti-war direction. They called for an immediate socialist revolution, which made any re-unification impossible.
In March–April 1917 the Menshevik leadership conditionally supported the newly formed liberal Russian Provisional Government. After the collapse of the first Provisional Government on May 2, 1917 over the issue of annexations, Tsereteli convinced the Mensheviks to strengthen the government for the sake of "saving the revolution" and enter a socialist-liberal coalition with Socialist Revolutionaries and liberal Constitutional Democrats, which they did on May 4, 1917 (Old Style). With Martov's return from European exile in early May, the Left wing of the party challenged the party's majority led by Tsereteli at the first post-revolurionary party conference on May 9, but the Right wing prevailed 44–11. From that point on, the Mensheviks had at least one representative in the Provisional Government until it was overthrown by the Bolsheviks during the [October Revolution] of 1917.
With the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks clearly diverging, Russian Mensheviks and non-factional social democrats returning from European and American exile in spring-summer of 1917 were forced to take sides. Some re-joined the Mensheviks. Some, like Alexandra Kollontai, joined the Bolsheviks directly. A significant number, including Leon Trotsky and Adolf Joffe, joined the non-factional Petrograd-based anti-war group called Mezhraiontsy, which merged with the Bolsheviks in August 1917. A small but influential group of social democrats associated with Maxim Gorky's newspaper Novaya Zhizn (New Life) refused to join either party.
[edit] Georgian Mensheviks
The Democratic Republic of Georgia was a stronghold of the Mensheviks. In parliamentary elections held on February 14, 1919 they won 81.5% of the votes. The Menshevik leader Noe Zhordania became Prime minister.
Prominent members of Georgian Menshevik Party were Noe Ramishvili, Evgeni Gegechkori, Meliton Kartsivadze, Akaki Chkhenkeli, Nikolay Chkheidze and Alexandre Lomtatidze. After the occupation of GDR by the Bolsheviks in 1921, many Georgian Mensheviks along with their leader Noe Zordania fled to France. In Leuville-sur-Orge they acquired a small castle where the set up of Government in exile was commenced. In 1930 Noe Ramishvili, one of the leaders of Georgian Mensheviks, was assassinated by a Bolshevik spy in Paris.
[edit] After the 1917 Revolution
This split in the party crippled the Mensheviks' popularity, and they received less than 3% of the vote during the Russian Constituent Assembly election in November 1917 compared to the Bolsheviks' 25% and the Socialist Revolutionaries' 57%. The right wing of the Menshevik party supported right-wing actions against the Bolsheviks, while the left wing, the majority of the Mensheviks at that point, supported the Left in the ensuing Russian Civil War. However, Martov's leftist Menshevik faction refused to break with the right wing of the party with the result that their press was sometimes banned and only intermittently available.
Menshevism was finally made illegal after the Kronstadt Uprising of 1921. A number of prominent Mensheviks emigrated thereafter. Martov who was suffering from ill health at this time went to Germany, where he died in 1923. However, before his death he established the paper Socialist Messenger. The Socialist Messenger would move along with the Menshevik centre from Berlin to Paris in 1933 and then in 1939 to New York City where it was to be published up until the early 1970s.
[edit] See also
[edit] Further reading
- Haimson, Leopold H: The Mensheviks : From the Revolution of 1917 to the Second World War
- Haimson, Leopold H: The Making of Three Russian Revolutionaries: Voices from the Menshevik Past
- Liebich, André: From the other shore: Russian social democracy after 1921. Cambridge, Mass., London 1997
- Moorehead, Alan: The Russian Revolution. Harper & Brother, New York, New York 1958.
