REVISIONISM IN RUSSIA:
TROTSKY AGAINST THE BOLSHEVIKS:
PART ONE: TO 1914

ORIGINAL FOREWORD:
Trotsky Speaks:

for the C0MMUNIST LEAGUE (CL).

The aim of the COMMUNIST LEAGUE was then to establish a Marxist-Leninist Party in Britain free of all revisionist trends. Since then the NCMLP was created - see links on Alliance Home page. The CL works with and within the NCMLP to further their collective aims.

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I N T R 0 D U C T I 0 N

A study of revisionism in Russia is of particular importance to Marxist-Leninists, since it was through revisionism that the socialist society constructed there came to be replaced by an essentially capitalist society.

One of the myths of Trotskyism is that in the years before 1917 Trotsky fought side by side with Lenin from revolutionary positions, and that only after Stalin became General Secretary of the Russian Communist Party in 1922 did a political rift develop between Trotsky and his supporters on the one hand and the leadership of the Party on the other.

The facts documented in this report demonstrate that this theory could hardly be further from the truth. From 1903 to 1917, year after year, Trotsky fought Lenin on almost every political issue that arose, along with other figures whom we shall meet again in connection with the revisionist struggle to prevent the construction of socialism after the revolution and to destroy it when it had been built -- such figures -as Lev Kamenev (Trotsky's brother-in-law), Grigori Zinoviev, Yuri Piatakov, Grigori Sokolnikov, Nikolai Bukharin, Aleksei Rykov, Khristian Rakovsky, Adolf Warski, David Ryazanov, Evgenii Preobrazhensky, Solomon Lozovsky and Dmitri Manuilsky.

The first part of this report covers the period up to the outbreak of the first imperialist war in 1914; the second covers the period from 1914 to the "October Revolution" of 1917. Later reports will cover the period from 1917 onwards.

1879 - l895: Childhood

Lev Davidovich Bronstein, who later became Leon Trotsky was born on November 7th.,1879.

His father, David Leontievich Bronstein, was a well-to-do farmer, of Jewish origin but. Indifferent to religion, who worked with the help of wage-labour a large farm called Yanovka, near the small town of Bobrinetz in the province of Kherson in the southern Ukraine.

His mother, Anna Bronstein, was an educated, petty bourgeois, city-bred woman, of Jewish descent and orthodox in religion.

Lev was the Bronsteins' fifth child, and by the time of his birth they were affluent enough to afford a nursemaid for him.

At the age of. seven his parents sent him to a "kheder" a private Jewish religious school, at Gromokla, a German-Jewish colony about two miles away. There he stayed with relatives. But the tuition was in Yiddish, and the boy learned little there except to read and write a little Russian. After a few months his parents withdrew him from the school and he returned home.

In the autumn of 1888, when Lev was nearly nine, he was sent to stay with other relatives in Odessa in order to attend school there. These relatives --Moissei Filipovich Spentzer, a liberal publisher, and his wife, the headmistress of a secular school for Jewish girls - gave the boy his first introduction to the great literature of the world. They arranged for him to attend St. Paul's "Realschule" a progressive, cosmopolitan school which taught in Russian.

In the course of his seven years at the "Realschule" he excelled in his studies, became fastidious about his appearance and dress, and acquired, as he says, a feeling of superiority towards his fellow students.

1896-1899: Youth

In l896, at the age of seventeen, he completed his course in Odossa and moved to Nicolayev to attend a similar school for the purpose of matriculating.

Here he lodged with a family whose sons had already been touched by socialist ideas and who argued against Trotsky's conservative outlook. Six months later he had embraced socialism and had been introduced into radical discussion circle held in a gardener's hut on the outskirts of the town. Most of the members of this group were Narodniks, adherents of an intellectual, individualistic, vaguely socialist trend, which based itself, not on the working class, but on the peasantry, and which at first appealed strongly to Trotsky... One member of the group, however --Aleksandra Sokolovskaya, a girl some few years older than Trotsky who later became his first wife was a Marxist and strongly influenced the development of his views.

When his father objected to his association with this radical circle, Trotsky gave up the allowance he had been receiving from home, took up private tutoring and moved from his lodgings to live in the gardener's hut, as a member of the Narodnik "commune".

In the spring of 1897 he took a leading part in the formation of an underground trade union, the South Russian Workers' Union, which had grown to about 200 members before the end of the year and published its own duplicated paper "Nashe Delo" (Our Cause).

In the summer of 1897 Trotsky graduated with first-class honours, and at the end of that year was arrested, together with some other leading members of the union. He was kept in a small cell in the prison at Kerson for several months, being transferred to the prison at Odessa in the middle of 1898. He occupied himself here in writing a treatise on freemasonry, and in reading Marxist books smuggled in from outside.

Towards the end of 1899, Trotsky received his sentence (without trial) of deportation to Siberia for four years. He was first moved to a transfer prison in Moscow, where he met older and more experienced revolutionaries from all over Russia and made his first acquaintance with the writings of Lenin. In the spring or summer of 1900 he married in the Moscow prison Aleksandra Sokolovskaya, and shortly afterwards he and his wife began their journey into exile.

1900 - 1902: Exile

They reached their place of exile -- the settlement of Verkholensk in the mountains overlooking Lake Baikal -- in the late autumn of 1900. Having come to accept Marxism in the preceding years, Trotsky now identified himself with the labour movement, becoming a leading member of the Siberian Social Democratic Workers' Union.

In December 1900 he began to write for the "Vostochnoye Obozrenie" (Eastern Review), a progressive newspaper published in Irkutsk, under the pseudonym of "Antid Oto". His contributions consisted, mainly of reportage on the conditions of the Siberian peasants, together with literary criticism.

In the summer of 1902 Trotsky made his escape from Siberia, abandoning his wife, and two children. In Samara he received a message from Lenin asking him to report to the headquarters of 'Iskra' (The Spark) in London as soon as possible.

1902 - 1903: Trotsky Becomes an Iskra-ist

Trotsky arrived in London in October 1902 and Lenin found him lodgings. He began to contribute to "Iskra" in November 1902 and soon became known as a brilliant writer and orator.

From time to time he visited Prance, Switzerland and Belgium, and it was on a visit to Paris that he met his second "wife" (he was never formally divorced from Aleksandra Sokolovskaya), a Russian revolutionary of noble birth, Natalya Sedova, who was studying the history of art at the Sorbonne.

1903: The Struggle at the Second Congress

The Second congress Of the Russian Social-Democratic Party attended by 43 delegates, was held in July/August 1903, first in Brussels, and then in London. The main business on its' agenda was to adopt a programme and rules. Trotsky attended as a delegate from the Siberian Social-Democratic Workers' Union.

The sharpest controversy at the congress arose around the first clause of the rules, defining what was meant by the term "member of the party". In accordance with the principles he had been putting forward for some time in "Iskra", Lenin proposed the following wording for Clause 1:

 "A member of the R.S.D.L.P. is one who recognises its programme and supports the Party materially as well as by personal participation in one of the organisations of the Party".

1) It would in practice be impossible to maintain effective "control and guidance" over Party members who did not personally participate in one of the organisations of the Party;

2) It reflected the outlook, not of the working class, which is not shy of organisation and discipline, but of the petty bourgeois intelligentsia, who tend to be individualistic and shy of organisation and discipline;

3) It would widen Party membership to include supporters of the Party, and so would abolish the essential dividing line between the working class and its organised, disciplined vanguard; it would, therefore, have the effect of dissolving the vanguard in the working class as a whole and so would serve the interests of the class enemies of the working class.

Trotsky sided with Martov, whose formulation was adopted by 28 votes to 22 with 1 abstention.

Later, the withdrawal of seven opponents of Lenin from the congress altered the balance of forces in favour of Lenin and his supporters, Lenin then proposed that the editorial board of "Iskra" (which consisted of six members) should be replaced by one of three members. Trotsky countered this manoeuvre with a motion confirming the old editorial board in office, but this was defeated by a majority of 2 votes; thereupon the anti-Leninists abstained from further voting. In the elections which followed three anti-Leninists (Axelrod, Potresov and Vera Zasulich) were dropped from the board, leaving Lenin, Plekhanov and Martov. Furthermore, three supporters of Lenin were elected to form the Central Committee.

Thus, at its Second Congress the Party showed itself to be divided into two factions. From that time those Party members who supported Lenin's political line were known as Bolsheviks (from "bolshinstvo", majority) while those who opposed Lenin's political line were known as Mensheviks (from "menshinstvo" minority) .

The Bolshevik trend was a Marxist trend, representing the interests of the working class within the labour movement;

TheMenshevik trend was a revisionist trend representing the interests of the capitalist class within the labour movement.
 

The "Report of the Siberian Delegation"

Later Trotsky admitted his error in having opposed Lenin at the 2nd. Congress on the question of Party organisation. Speaking of Lenin's attitude at the Congress, Trotsky says in his autobiography:

In this he defended his, and his delegation's opposition to Lenin and his supporters at the congress:

The 1903 Menshevik Conference

After the Congress, the Mensheviks -- including Trotsky boycotted "Iskra" and refused to contribute to it.

In September 1903 they held a factional conference in Geneva to decide on future action. A shadow "central committee" was set up, consisting of Pavel Axelrod, Pedor Dan, Yuli Martov, Aleksandr Potresov and Trotsky, to direct the struggle against the Bolsheviks.

In Trotsky's view the immediate aim of the campaign should be to force the Bolsheviks to restore the ousted Mensheviks to their former positions of influence, both in the Central Committee and the editorial board. A resolution, drafted by Martov and Trotsky, was adopted by the conference:
 

Soon after the Second Congress of the Party, Plekhanov gave way to the attacks of the Mensheviks. In violation of the decisions taken at the Party congress, he claimed and exercised the right as joint editor to co-opt to the editorial board of "Iskra" the Menshevik former editors. Lenin strongly objected to this step, and resigned from the board.

The new editorial board transformed "Iskra" into a Menshevik organ, which waged unremitting struggle against Lenin and his supporters and against the Bolshevik Central Committee of the Party. Thus, from its 52nd. issue "Iskra" became known in the Party as the "new" "Iskra", in contrast to the "old" Leninist "Iskra". It continued publication until October l905.

Trotsky became a prominent contributor to the "new Iskra" and issued a pamphlet setting forth the Menshevik political line. Lenin commented:
 

In February 1904 the Russo-Japanese War began with a Japanese attack on the Russian fortress of Port Arthur. The Russian Army suffered defeat and almost the entire Russian Navy was destroyed in the Straits of Tsushima, forcing the Tsarist government to conclude an ignominious peace treaty in September 1905.

l904: "0ur Political Tasks".

Between February and May l904, Lenin was engaged on writing the book "One Step Forward, Two Steps Back". In this he expounded at length the principles of party organisation he had put forward at the Second Congress and analysed the character of the Menshevik opposition.

In August l904 Trotsky's reply to Lenin's book was published in Geneva under the title "Our Political Tasks" . It was dedicated to "My dear teacher Pavel B.Axelrod".

In "Our Political Tasks" - Trotsky developed his attack upon "Maximillien Lenin"; whom he described as:

The Campaign for The Holding Of a Party Congress

In July l9O4, two members of the Central Committee of the Party, Krassin and Noskov, broke with the Bolsheviks, giving the Mensheviks a majority on the committee. The Bolsheviks then began a campaign within the Party for the holding of a new congress.

In August l904 Lenin guided the conference of twenty-two prominent Bolsheviks which took place in Switzerland and which issued an appeal to the Party calling for the convocation of the Third Congress. At the same time a number of conference of Bolsheviks took place in Russia, out of which in December l904 came the Bureau of the Majority Committees which became the organising centre for the campaign for a new congress.

During the autumn of l9O4, the Bolsheviks organised their own publishing house and at the end of the year established their own newspaper "Vperyod" (Forward), the first issue of which appeared on January l904.

l9O4-1905: Parvus Lays the Basis for Trotsky's "Theory of Permanent. Revolution"

In November and December l904 Trotsky wrote a brochure on the necessity for the working class to play the leading role in the capitalist revolution in Russia which, the following year, he entitled "Before the 9^th January" (this being the date, under the old Russian calendar, in 1905 when the first Russian revolution began with the shooting down by the tsar's troops of an unarmed workers' demonstration).

When in Munich, Trotsky was accustomed to stay at the home of Aleksandr Helfand a Russian Jew who then claimed to be a Marxist. Helfand published his own political review "Aus der Weltpolitik" ('World Politics') and wrote articles for other magazines especially Kautsky's "Neue Zeit" (New Life) and the new "Iskra" -- under the pen-name "Parvus".

When Trotsky visited Munich in January 1905, he had the proofs of the brochure with him. Parvus was impressed with its contents and decided to put the weight of his authority behind Trotsky by writing a preface to it. In this preface he stated a conclusion which Trotsky still hesitated to draw:

On January 22nd., 1905 a peaceful demonstration of unarmed workers, led by a police agent, a priest by the name of Georgi Gapon, was fired on by troops while on its way to present a petition to the tsar at his Winter Palace in St. Petersburg. Over a thousand workers were killed, more than two thousand injured.

The massacre taught tens of thousands of workers that they could win their rights only by struggle. During the weeks and months that followed, economic strikes began to pass into political strikes, into demonstrations and in places into clashes with tsarist troops.

In a letter written in Geneva three days after ""Bloody Sunday"", Lenin wrote:

In February 1905 Trotsky returned to Russia, settling first in Kiev. Here he made contact with a member of the Party's Central Committee who had the previous July played a treacherous role in assisting the Mensheviks to capture the Central Committee -- Leonid Krassin. Krassin was in charge of a clandestine printing plant, which he now placed at Trotsky's disposal.

A few weeks later Trotsky moved to St. Petersburg, where he became leader of the city's Menshevik group.

He now adopted the view put forward in Parvus's preface to his brochure "Before the 9th. January", namely that the capitalist revolution in Russia should result in a workers' government:

Early in 1905, the Central Committee acceded to the pressure within the Party and agreed to collaborate with the Bureau of Majority Committees in convening the Third Congress of the Party.

The congress took place in London in April/May 1905, that is, during the rising tide of the 1905 Revolution. It was boycotted by the Mensheviks, and attended by 24 delegates.

The congress adopted a resolution calling on the Party urgently to make all political and technical preparations for an armed uprising, and to organise armed resistance to the violence of the government-sponsored reactionary organisations. It also amended the formulation of point 1 of the Party rules adopted at the 2nd. Congress in order to bring this into line with Lenin's principles of Party organisation and, abolishing the dual leading bodies (Central Committee and editorial board) established.at the 2nd. Congress, to make the Central Committee the leading body of the Party.

The congress set up a new central organ of the Party "Proletary" (The Proletarian). Lenin, who chaired the congress, was elected to the Central Committee, which at its first meeting, appointed him editor of the paper. This appeared in May l9O5 and was published regularly in Geneva until Lenin returned to Russia in November 1905.

The 1905-Menshevik Conference

The Mensheviks, who boycotted the Third Congress of the Party, held their own conference simultaneously in Geneva. The conference endorsed the Menshevik line on the capitalist revolution (see next section) and refrained from discussing resolutions that had been submitted on the arming of the masses and work among the troops.

Lenin's "The Two Tactics of Social-Democracy"

In July 1905 Lenin published a long work, "The Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution" in which he analysed the resolution of the Third Party Congress on the question of the capitalist revolution alongside that adopted at the Menshevik conference.

Lenin's conception of the capitalist revolution was as follows:

1. The capitalist revolution is advantageous to the working class:

which wll make the working class the ruling class:

1. As in previous capitalist revolutions in history, the capitalist revolution in Russia will make the capitalists the ruling class:

a) this will be a capitalist government, and participation by Social-Democrats in a capitalist government is contrary to socialist principles;

b) an attempt to do so would frighten the capitalist class and lead to the restoration of autocracy:

In May 1905 Trotsky went to Finland. When he returned to St. Petersburg in October, a general strike had broken out in the city.
The striking workers elected delegates to a strike committee₃ which quickly developed into the first important "Soviet of Workers' Deputies" and began to publish its own organ: "Izvestia" (News). The Mensheviks supported the Soviet from its inception, regarding it as an organ of democratic local government-. The St. Petersburg Bolsheviks, led by Bogdan Knunyantz, were, however, at first hesitant in their approach to it, regarding it as a rival to the Party and demanding that it affiliate to the Party before they could support it.

Meanwhile Lenin, after making arrangements for the publication in St. Petersburg of a legal Bolshevik newspaper "Novaya Zizn" (New Life), had left-Geneva in October for Russia. Held up in Stockholm, he wrote from there:

After a few days under the chairmanship of the Menshevik S. Zborovski, the Soviet elected as its chairman the lawyer Georgi Nosar (better known under his pseudonym "Khrustalev"); who was then independent of any party but later joined the Mensheviks.

Trotsky, who had allied himself with the St. Petersburg Mensheviks on his arrival in the city, was elected to the Soviet and soon came to play a leading role in its activities - which following the Menshevik political line of damping down the revolutionary enthusiasm and activity of the workers.
On November 2nd.

By the beginning of December, the government felt strong enough to take the offensive again. Press censorship was re-imposed, and on December 5th. Khrustalev, the Chairman of the Soviet, was arrested together with a few other leading members. Trotsky replied to this by proposing that:

But the preparations for the "armed uprising" of Trotsky's were virtually non-existent.

On December 19th., 1905 the Moscow Soviet of Workers' Deputies, which was led by the Bolsheviks, resolved to:

Isolated strikes, riots and mutinies continued 4nto 1906, leading to a lack of clarity for some months as to whether the revolutionary tide was ebbing or merely temporarily at rest before a subsequent rise. In fact December 1905 proved to be the peak of the revolutionary tide.

1906 -1907: The Trial of the Leaders of the-St. Petersburg Soviet

The trial of the leaders of the St. Petersburg Soviet, the main charge against whom was that of plotting insurrection, began almost a year after the Revolution had been crushed, on October 2nd., 1906.

The defendants denied having engaged in technical preparation for a rising. On October 4^th, Trotsky told the court:

In February 1907 Trotsky escaped into Finland.

Trotsky's "Results and Prospects": The Theory of "Permanent Revolution"

While in prison, Trotsky wrote "Results and Prospects", which was published in St. Petersburg in 1906 as the final chapter of his book "Our Revolution", a collection of essays on the Russian Revolution of December l905.

In this essay Trotsky gave a fundamental statement of his views on capitalist revolution, the "theory of permanent revolution"

The term "permanent revolution" was derived from an address by Marx and Engels written in l850:

1. The working class will be the active force in the capitalist revolution, with the peasantry as supporters:

In his book "The Permanent Revolution", published in Berlin in Russian in l930. he says:

The Trotskyite theory of "permanent revolution" rejected Lenin's concept of two stages in the revolutionary process in tsarist Russia, and postulated a single stage, that of the proletarian-socialist revolution leading directly to the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Lenin saw the revolutionary process in colonial-type countries also as essentially one of two successive stages--firstly, the stage of national-democratic revolution, secondly, the stage of socialist revolution, but with the possibility of uninterrupted transition from the first stage to the second if the working class were able to win the leading role in the first stage.

Trotsky logically extended his theory of "permanent revolution" to colonial-type countries, here also postulating a single stage in the revolutionary process, that of proletarian-socialist revolution leading directly to the dictatorship of the proletariat.

In the revolutionary conditions, which prevailed in the autumn of 1905, Bolsheviks and Mensheviks of the rank and file worked closely together and by the end of the year most of the local organisations of the two "parties" had united. Accordingly the demand grew among the workers and the rank-and-file of the Party that the leaderships of the two sections should unite.

While fully supporting these moves for unity, Lenin and most of the Bolsheviks felt strongly that the political differences between the leaderships of the two factions should not be glossed over, since this would only confuse the workers. In this they were opposed by conciliationists among the Bolsheviks, such as Leonid Krassin and Aleksandr Bogdanov, who minimised these differences.

Lenin arrived back in Russia in November 1905, and in December attended the First Party (Bolshevik) Conference in Tammerfors (Finland), where he met J.V.Stalin for the first time.

The conference adopted a resolution to apply the elective principle within the Party in view of the freer political conditions brought about by the 1905 revolution, and another favouring the earliest possible restoration of unity with the Mensheviks and the immediate creation of a joint Central Commiittee.

Simultaneously with the Bolshevik conference, the Mensheviks held a conference in St. Petersburg where, under pressure from their- rank-and-file, they endorsed the Leninist formula of Party organisation in point 1 of the Party rules and adopted a resolution in favour of unity with the Bolsheviks

The joint Central Committee, consisting of three Bolsheviks and three Mensheviks, began to operate at the height of the December insurrection. When at the end of December, both the Bolshevik "Novaya Zhizn" (New Life) and the Menshevik "Nachalo"(Beginning) were suppressed, both leaderships combined to issue a joint newspaper -- "Severny Golos" -(Voice of the North) -- under a joint editorial Board.

1907. The Fourth (Unity) Congress of the Party

The Fourth Unity Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour was held in Stockholm (Sweden) in-April/May 1906 was attended by 111 delegates from Party organisations, together with 3 each from the national parties which affiliated to the Party at the Congress (the "Bund", the Polish Social-Democratic Party and the Social-Democratic Party 0f the Latvian Region).

As a result of the fact that many Bolshevik-led Party organisations had been broken up after the 1905 uprising, a number of these were not represented at the congress, so that the Mensheviks had a majority (62-49). This manifested itself in a number of the resolutions. As Lenin pointed out:

The congress also endorsed the formal unity of the two factions and the principle of democratic centralism.

The Central Committee elected at the Fourth Congress consisted of 7 Mensheviks and 3 Bolsheviks.

Against Bolshevik opposition, a Menshevik resolution was carried which elected an editorial board for the central organ of the Party which was outside the control of the Central Committee and contained not a single Bolshevik; it consisted of Martov, Dan, Martynov, Potresov and Maslow. During its life this editorial board did not publish a single issue of the central organ.

Thus, the "unity" created at the Fourth Congress between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks was purely formal, and the two factions continued to exist within the framework of a single party

The Stolypin Repression

The First State Duma met in May 1906, but did not prove docile enough for the ruling class. In July the tsarist government dissolved it, and Petr Stolypin (who had been Minister for Internal Affairs since May) was made Prime Minister. Under Stolypin a period of active repression of the revolutionary movement began. The new government suppressed the Bolshevik newspaper, which had been coming out since April under the successive names of "Volna" (The Wave), "Vperyod" (Forward) and "Ekho" (The Echo). In August 1906, regulations were issued providing for trial by courts martial and the death sentence for "revolutionary activity", and mass arrests and executions followed. In the same month the Bolsheviks began to issue an illegal newspaper, "Proletary" (Proletarian), edited by Lenin, which continued to appear until December 1909.

In September 1906 Lenin proposed that, since the tide of revolution was now clearly on the ebb, the Party should participate in the elections for the Second State Duma (due to be convoked in March 1907). As a result, left-wing representation in this Duma was considerably stronger than it had been in the first, namely:

157 Trudoviks (Group of Toil) and Socialist-Revolutionaries (expressing the outlook of the peasantry) (from 94 in the First State Duma);

165 Social-Democrats (from 18 in the First State Duma), while the representation of the Cadets (the Constitutional-Democratic Party, representing the interests of the bourgeoisie)

fell from 179 to 98. Most of the Social Democratic deputies were, however Mensheviks.

The Fifth Party Congress

The Fifth Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party was held in London in May/June 1907. It was attended by 336 delegates, representing a membership of some 150,000.

The congress consolidated the Russian, Polish and Latvian Parties (together with, for a time, the Bund) into a single Party based on (mainly) Leninist principles.

Trotsky participated in the congress, expounding at length his "theory of permanent revolution", to which Rosa Luxemburg gave her support:

However, a Bolshevik motion of censure on the Menshevik Central Committee elected at the Fourth Congress in 1906 was lost. This resolution was opposed not only by the Mensheviks, but by a centrist group headed by Trotsky:

Lenin's views on this question had been expressed in an article published in "Proletary", in October 1906:

Trotsky, according to his biographer, sharply supported the Menshevik attacks on this issue:

In June 1907 the tsarist government accused the Social-Democratic deputies in the Second-State Duma of conspiracy, and demanded that the Duma lift their parliamentary immunity. When the Duma hesitated, the government peremptorily dissolved it on June 16th, 1907 - the "Coup d'Etat of June 3^rd 1907 as it was known under the old calendar. Most of the Social-Democratic deputies were then arrested.

In the same manifesto the government announced new electoral laws for the Third State Duma, the purpose of which was to increase the representation of the landlords and capitalists, and to reduce still further the representation of the workers and peasants.

The Third Conference of the RSDLP was held in August 1907 in Vyborg (Finland), attended by 26 delegates of whom 15 were Bolsheviks and 11 Mensheviks.

The dissolution of the Second State Duma and the issue of the new reactionary electoral law had caused the Socialist-Revolutionary Party to revert to a policy of boycotting the elections to the Third State Duma, and had revived boycotting among the Bolsheviks. The leader of the boycottists at the conference was Aleksandr Bogdanov.

Lenin moved a resolution at the conference which declared that reaction prevailed in the country and would prevail for some years, although it would inevitably be followed by a new upsurge; in the meantime it was essential to take advantage of every legal opportunity and, in particular, of the tribune afforded by the Duma. The resolution was adopted by the conference.

The Third State Duma

Despite the decision of the Third Party Conference to participate in the elections to the Third State Duma, many Bolsheviks continued to oppose this. In the autumn of 1907 Lenin wrote a number of articles on this question, the most famous of which – "Against the Boycott" - -- Was published as part of a pamphlet entitled "Boycott of the Third Duma" , the other part being written by Lev Kamenev and entitled "For the Boycott!"

13 Trudoviks (Group of Toil), from l57 Trudoviks and Social-Revolutionaries in the Second State Duma);

18 Social-Democrats (from 65 in the Second State Duma)

The Fourth Party Conference

The Fourth Conference of the RSDLP was held in November 1907 in Helsingfors (Finland), attended by 10 Bolsheviks, 4 Mensheviks, 5 representatives of the Social-Democratic

Party of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania, 3 representatives of the Social-Democratic Party of the Latvian Region, and representatives of the "Bund".

The main business of the conference was to discuss the work of the Social-Democratic fraction in the newly elected Third State Duma. The Mensheviks to whose faction a majority of the Social-Democratic deputies belonged -- were in favour of the independence of the deputies from Party control, while the Bolsheviks regarded it as essential that the fraction should be guided by the Party like any other section of Party members. The Bolshevik resolution to this effect was adopted. This resolution also demanded that the fraction should wage relentless war in the Duma on the pro-tsarist majority, that it should under no circumstances curtail its' demands in concession to reaction, and that its efforts should be primarily devoted to using the Duma as a tribune for agitational purposes, in order to expose to the masses the reactionary policy of the pro-tsarist parties.

1907 - 1908: The Move Abroad

Owing to the increased repression of the Stolypin regime, which was extended to Finland despite the Finnish constitution, the Central Committee was compelled to move from Russia to Geneva towards the end of 1907. The publication of the illegal Bolshevik paper "Proletary" was also transferred to Geneva.

In December 1907 Lenin moved from Geneva to Paris.

In February 1908 the first issue of the central organ of the Party – "Sotsial-Demokrat" (The Social-Democrat) appeared in Russia. Following the arrest of its editors, publication of the paper was transferred abroad, first to Paris, then to Geneva. It continued to appear until January 1917.

The Menshevik leaders also moved abroad, and in February 1908 began to issue their organ "Golos Sotsial-Demokrata" (The Voice of the Social-Democrat) . The first editorial board consisted of Pavel Axelrod, Fedor Dan, Yuli Martov and Aleksandr Martynov. It continued to appear until December 1911.

1908: Liquidationism

The movement among the Mensheviks to transform the Party into a broad, legal Labour Party along British lines developed by the summer of 1908 into a trend which the Leninists called "liquidationism", since it aimed at the liquidation of the Party as the revolutionary vanguard of the working class.

In August 1908 a meeting of the Central Committee of the RSDLP was held and the liquidator Mensheviks opened their attack on the Party organisation by moving a resolution that the Central Committee should be abolished as the leading organ of the Party and converted into a mere information bureau. The motion was defeated, and a Bolshevik motion to convene a Party Conference was adopted.

At this meeting the Central Committee set up a Russian Bureau of the Central Committee, composed of one representative each of the Bolsheviks, the Mensheviks, the Polish Party, the Latvian Party and the 'Bund', responsible, under the Central Committee, for the direction of Party work within Russia. It also set up a Central Committee abroad, composed of members of the Central Committee residing outside Russia, responsible to the Russian Collegium.

"0tzovism" and "Ultimatumism"

From August l908 the Leninist tactics of combining legal and illegal forms of struggle began to be attacked, riot only by the liquidationists on the right, but also by a group of 'leftist' Bolsheviks who demanded the renunciation of all legal forms of struggle.

Since the main demand of this group of Bolsheviks was the immediate recall of the Social-Democratic Deputies from the Duma, they were called "Otzovists" (from "otozvat", to recall)

Another group of ostensibly "leftist" Bolsheviks did not demand the immediate recall of the Party's deputies, but demanded that they should be presented with an ultimatum to correct their political errors or be recalled. Lenin described these "ultimatumists" as :

In arguing in favour of recall, as did both otzovism and ultimatumism, the adherents of these trends made great play with the errors committed by the Social-Democratic deputies in the Duma who were mainly Mensheviks. The Leninists replied that this was an argument for correcting the errors, not for recalling the deputies.

From August 1908, therefore, the Leninists carried on a struggle on the question of Party organisations on two fronts:

Against liquidationism on the one hand, and against "leftist" otzovism and ultimatumism on the other hand.

The reaction following the defeat of the 1905 Revolution led to a revival of' idealist philosophy among the Russian intelligentsia, including some Social-Democrats.

During 1908 a number of books were published which claimed to bring Marxism "up-to-date". The most important of these was a symposium entitled "Studies in the Philosophy of Marxism", published in St. Petersburg, the leading contributors to which were Aleksandr Bogdanov and Anatoly Lunacharsky. Following the lines of an earlier work by -Bogdanov – "Empirio-Criticism" (l904-06)-- this attempted to combine Marxist philosophy with the idealist philosophy of Ernst Mach and Richard Avenarius to produce a "synthesis" which they called "empirio-criticism". - -

Among some Social-Democrats the revival of idealist philosophy took the form of trying to reconcile Marxist philosophy and religion.

In l908, Anatoly Lunacharsky published "Religion and Socialism" in which he described Marxism as a "Natural, earthly, anti-metaphysical, scientific and human-religion".

Shortly afterwards Maxim Gorky wrote a novel entitled "A Confession", in which a character prays to the people with the words:

The Leninists considered that a truly united Party could be brought about-only by a rapprochement between the Bolsheviks on the one hand and a section of the Mensheviks on the other hand, those representing the principal factions within the Party and the only ones with significant mass influence. They estimated that a section of the Mensheviks would move farther from reflecting the interests of the capitalist class and nearer to reflecting the interests of the working class, so coming to oppose liquidationism, to split off from the liquidator Mensheviks and to support genuine, practical unity with the Bolsheviks.

In fact, towards the end of 1908 various groups of Mensheviks in Moscow, and later in the Vyborg district of St. Petersburg, passed resolutions sharply condemning the liquidator Mensheviks and their anti-Party policy.

A leading role in the splitting of the Mensheviks was taken by Georgi Plekhanov, who publicly dissociated himself from liquidationism, retired from the editorial board of the organ of the liquidator Mensheviks, "Golos Sotsial-Demokrata" (The Voice of the Social-Democrat), and began to issue his own illegal journal "Dnevnik Sotsial-Demokrata" (The Diary of a Social-Democrat) . In this paper, Plekhanov vigorously attacked the liquidators and called upon all Mensheviks who recognised the necessity of illegal work to rally together. The Leninists called these anti-liquidationist Mensheviks "Party Mensheviks".

The Leninists maintained that unity was possible only with groups, which accepted the fundamental principles of Leninist strategy and tactics, and of Leninist organisation.

There were some, however, who stood for unity of the groups at any price, who minimised the differences of principle between Bolsheviks and others and who demanded, that for the sake of unity, the Leninists should make compromises in their principles. Those people the Leninists called "conciliationists".

In the summer of 1907, following the Fifth Congress of the RSDLP, Trotsky had moved to Berlin. Here he became intimate with the right wing-leaders of the Social-Democratic Party of Germany. As his biographer, Isaac Deutscher, expresses it:

In October 1908, Trotsky began to edit a small run-down paper called "Pravda" (Truth), started in l905, by the pro-Menshevik Ukrainian Social-Democratic League ("Spilika") At the end of 1908, the group abandoned the paper, and it became Trotsky's own journal. Published in Vienna from November 1909, it continued to appear until December 1913.
The principal regular contributors to the Viennese "Pravda", under Trotsky, were Aleksandr Skobolev (a student-who later became Minister of Labour in the Kerensky government) Adolf Yoffe (who committed suicide in 1927-in protest at Trotsky's expulsion from the Party), David Ryazanov (later director of the Marx-Engels Institute) and Victor Kopp (later a Soviet diplomat).

As Lenin commented in October 1911:

The Fifth Conference of the RSDLP was held in Paris in January 1909, attended by 18 delegates (6 Bolsheviks, I Mensheviks, 5 representatives of the Social-Democratic Party of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania, and 3 representatives of the "Bund").

The conference adopted a Bolshevik resolution which defined liquidationism as:

In June 1909 the editorial board of the Bolshevik newspaper "Proletary" (The Proletarian) called a conference in Paris to which leading Bolsheviks were invited. Although called officially an "enlarged editorial conference" it was, in fact, a Bolshevik Conference.

The conference adopted a-resolution to the effect that otzovism, ultimatumism,_Machism_and god-building were all incompatible with membership of the Bolshevik faction, and the adherents of these trends were declared to have placed themselves outside the faction:

From August to December 1909 a number of otzovists and god-builders who had been expelled from the Bolshevik faction at the enlarged meeting of the editorial board of in June, held a "school" on the island of Capri (Italy).
The leading figures in the school were Grigori Alexinsky, Aleksandr Bogdanov and Anatoly Lunacharsky, with the participation of Maxim Gorky.

In December 1909 a number of lecturers at the Capri school, together with a number of prominent Bolsheviks including Vyacheslav Menzhinsky, Dmitri Manuilsky and Mikhail Pokrovsky formed themselves into a new faction which they named "Vperyod"(Forward.) The name was selected because it was that of the paper published by the Bolshevik "Bureau of the Committees of the Majority" in l904, in order to lend support to the group's claim that its members were "true Bolsheviks" and that the Leninists were now "betraying Bolshevism".

As Lenin characterised the faction:

1910: The January 1910 Central Cormmittee Meeting

 In January 1910, against the opposition of Lenin who considered the circumstances inopportune, a meeting of the Central Commiittee of the RSDLP was held in Paris, attended by representatives of the Bolsheviks, the Mensheviks, the "Party Mensheviks", the Social-Democratic Party of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania, the Social-Democratic Party of the Latvian Region, the "Vperyod" group, the Viennese group, and the "Bund'. Lenin's opposition to the holding of the Central Committee at this time was due to his awareness that a number of Bolsheviks -- including Alexel Rykov, Solomon Lozovsky, Lev Kamenev, and Grigori Sokolnikov, had adopted a concilationist position.

Despite this, the Leninists were able to secure the unanimous adoption of a resolution which condemned both otzovism and liquidationism, although without specifically naming them.

1) to dissolve all factional groups;
2) to discontinue the Bolshevik paper "Proletary" and the Menshevik paper "Golos Sotsial-Demokrata";
3) to grant Trotsky's Viennese "Pravda"' a subsidy from Party funds and to delegate a representative of the Central Committee to sit as co-editor along with Trotsky;
4) to set up an editorial board for the Party's central organ, "Sotsial-Demokrat" (The Social-Democrat) consisting of two Bolsheviks (Lenin and Zinoviev), two Mensheviks (Martov and Dan, and one representative of the Polish Party (Waraki);
5) to initiate a "Discussion Sheet" in conjunction with the central organ, open to representatives of trends which differed from the line of the Party;
6) to establish the seat of the Central Commitee in Russia;
7) to transfer all funds in the possession of factional centres to the general Party treasury.

"Both the ideological merit of the plenum and its conciliationist error become clear. Its merit lies in its rejection of the ideas of liquidationism and otzovism; its mistake lies in indiscriminately concluding an agreement with persons and groups whose deeds do not correspond to their promises ( 'they signed the resolution')".
(V. I. Lenin: "The New Faction of Conciliators or the Virtuous", in: ibid.; p. 101).

"The conciliators recognised all and sundry tendencies on 'their mere promise to purge themselves, instead of recognising only those tendencies which are purging themselves (and only in so far as they do purge themselves) of their "ulcers". The 'Vperyod'-ists, the 'Golos' ites and Trotsky all 'signed' the resolution against otzovism and liquidationism -- that is, they promised to 'purge themselves' -- and that was the end of it! The conciliators 'believed' the promise and entangled the Party with non-Party grouplets, 'ulcerous' as they themselves admitted."
(V. I.. Lenin: 'The Climax of the Party Crisis' in. ibid; p. 115).
 

The Mensheviks, however, declined to dissolve their factional organisation, their factional paper "Golos Sotsial-Demokrata' (The Voice of the Social-Democrat) or to break with liquidationism. In fact, they began to publish in St. Petersburg a new legal monthly magazine called "Nasha Zarya" (Our Dawn) (which continued to appear until 1914) and continued to publish in Moscow their legal journal "Vozrozhdeniye" (Regeneration). And in August 1910 the Mensheviks began to issue in Moscow the magazine "Zhizn"(Life) (which, appeared until September 1910), while in January 1911 they began to issue in St. Petersburg the legal magazine "Dyelo Zhizni" (Life's Cause)
(which appeared until October 1941).

In all these publications, as well as in "Golos Sotsial-Deniokrata"; which continued to appear regularly, the Mensheviks continued to put forward openly liquidationist views:

"A party in the form of a complete and organised hierarchy of institutions does not exist"
(P. Potresov: Article in "Nasha Zarys", No. 2, February 1910, p. 61, cited in: V. I. Lenin: "Notes Of a Publicist", in: "Selected Works", Volume 4; London; l943; p. 53).

"There is nothing to wind up and -- we on our part would add -- the dream of re-establishing this hierarchy in its old underground form is simply a harmful reactionary utopia".
(Editorial in "Vozrozhdeniye", No. 5, April 12th., 1910, p. 51, cited in V.I.Lenin: ibid.; p. 53).

^"The tactics which are to be observed in the activities of the so-called 'liquidators' are the 'tactics' which put the open labour movement in the centre, strive to extend it in every possible direction, and seek within this open labour movement and there only the elements for the revival of the party".
(Y.Martov: "Article in "Zhizn", No. 1, September 12th., 1910, p. 9-l0; cited in: V. I. Lenin: 'The Social Structure of State Power, the Prospects and Liquidationism"; in:ibid.; p. 84).

"In the new historical period of Russian life that has set in, the working class must organise itself not 'for revolution', not 'in expectation of a revolution', but simply for the determined and systematic defence of its special interests in all spheres of life; for the gathering and training of its forces for this many-sided and comlex activity; for the training and accumulation in this way of socialist consciousness in general; for acquiring the ability to find one's bearings -- to stand up for oneself".
(Y. Larin: "Right Turn and About Turn!", in: "Dyelo Zhizni", No. 2, p..18, cited in: V. I. Lenin: ibid.; p. 90).

"Great political tasks make inevitable a relentless war against anti- liquidationism. ., . Anti-liquidationism is a constant brake, constant disruption."
(F. Dan: "Article in "Nasha Zarya", No. 6, 1911, cited by: J. V. Stalin: "The Situation in the Social-Democratic Group in the Duma ", in: "Works", Volume 2; Moscow; 1953; p. 385).

"During that year (1910), the 'Golos'-ites, the 'Vperyod'-ists, and Trotsky, all in fact, estranged themselves from the Party and moved precisely in the direction of liquidationism and otzovism-ultimatumism".
(V. I. Lenin: "The Climax of the Party Crisis", in: ibid; p. 116).

 "Since that very plenum of 1910, the above-mentioned principal publications of the liquidators. . have turned decidedly and along the whole line towards liquidationism, not only by 'belittling' (in spite of the decisions of the plenum) 'the importance of the illegal Party'; but directly renouncing the Party, calling it a 'corpse', declaring the Party to be already dissolved, describing the restoration of an illegal Party as a 'reactionary Utopia', heaping calumny and abuse on the illegal Party in the pages of the legal magazines".
(V. I. Lenin: Resolution on Liquidationism and the Group of Liquidators, Sixth Conference of the RSDLP, in: Ibid.; p. 152)

"All the liquidationist newspapers and magazines... after the most definite and even-unanimous decisions have been adopted by the Party, reiterate thoughts and arguments that contain obvious liquidationism. . . .
The truth proved by the documents I have quoted, which cover a period of more than five years (.1908-13), is that the liquidators, mocking all the Party decisions, continue to abuse and bait the Party, i.e., 'illegal work'".
(V.- I. Lenin: "Controversial Questions", in:. ibid.; p. l33-4).

"'Vperyod', No. 3 (May 1911) . . openly states that otzovism is a 'completely legitimate tendency within our Party' (p. 78)".
(V.I. Lenin: 'The New Faction of Conciliators Or the Virtuous', in; ibid.; p. 107).

"The conspiracy of the émigré clique (i.e., the Bolsheviks -- Ed.) against the Russian Social-Democratic Labour party";
(L. Trotsky: "Pravda', No. 21, 1910),

and adding threateningly:

"Lenin's circle, which wants to place itself above the Party, will find itself outside it'.
(L. Trotsky: ibid).

"That Trotsky's venture is an attempt to create a faction is obvious to all now, after obvious to all now, after Trotsky has removed the representative of the Central Committee from 'Pravda'".
(V. I. Lenin: "The Historical Meaning of the Internal Party Struggle in Russia": In 'Selected Works'; Volume 3; London; 19~6; p. 517).

As Trotsky's sympathetic biographer Isaac Deutscher expresses it:

"This was the occasion on which Trotsky, the champion of unity, should have spared the offenders against unity no censure. Yet in 'Pravda' he 'suspended judgement' and only mildly hinted at his disapproval of the Mensheviks' conduct.. . . Trotsky took his stand against the disciplinarians. Having done so, he involved himself in glaring inconsistencies. He, the fighter for unity, connived in the name of freedom of dissent at the new breach in the Party brought about by the Mensheviks. He, who glorified the underground with zeal worthy of a Bolshevik; joined hands with those who longed to rid themselves of the underground as a dangerous embarrassment. Finally, the sworn enemy of bourgeois liberalism allied himself with those who stood for an alliance with liberalism against those who were fanatically opposed to such an alliance. . . .
So self-contradictory an attitude brought him nothing but frustration. Once again to the Bolsheviks he appeared not just an opponent, but a treacherous enemy. . . Martov made him turn a blind eye more than once on Menshevik moves which were repugnant to him. His long and bitter quarrel with Lenin made him seize captiously on every vulnerable detail of Bolshevik policy. His disapproval of Leninism he expressed publicly with the usual wounding sarcasm. His annoyance with the Mensheviks he vented mostly in private arguments or in 'querulous' letters".
(I. Deutscher: "The Prophet Armed: Trotsky: 1879-1921"; London; 1970; p.. 195, 196).

"At the Plenary Meeting Judas Trotsky made a big show of fighting liquidationism and otzovism. He vowed and swore that he was true to the Party. He was given a subsidy. . .
Judas expelled the representative of the Central Committee from 'Pravda' and began to write liquidationist articles in 'Vorwarts'. In defiance of the direct decision of the School Commission appointed by the Plenary Meeting to the effect that no Party lecturer may go to the 'Vperyod' factional school, Judas Trotsky did go and discussed a plan for a conference with the 'Vperyod' group. . . Such is Judas Trotsky's blush of shame".
(V. I. Lenin: "Judas Trotsky's Blush of Shame"; in: "Collected Works"; Volume 17; Moscow; l963; p.45) .

"And what about the work in Russia? Not a single meeting of the Central Committee was held during the whole year! Why? Because the members of the Central Committee in Russia (conciliators who well deserved the kisses of 'Golos Likvidatorov') kept on 'inviting' the liquidators for a year and a quarter but never got them to 'accept the invitation'".
(V. I. Lenin: "The Climax of the Party Crisis", in: Ibid.; p.116).

"All Party work .. during the whole of that year (i.e., 1910 -- Ed.) was done by the Bolsheviks and the Plekhanovists. . .
This Party work (in literature, which was accessible to all) was conducted by the Bolsheviks and the Plekhanovists in spite.. of the 'conciliatory' resolutions and the collegiums formed by the plenum, and not in conjunction with the 'Golos'-ites and the 'Vperyod'-ists, but against them (because it was impossible to work in conjunction with the liquidators and otozovists-ultimatumists)".
(V. I. Lenin: ibid.; p. 115, 116).

Considering in September l910 that the repudiation of the January 1910 Central Committee decisions had been sufficiently demonstrated; in this month the Bolsheviks funded their own factional nowspaper "Rabochaya Gazeta"' (Worker's Newspaper), published in Paris under the editorship of Lenin. The Sixth Party Confercnce in January 1912, transformed this paper into the official organ of the Party's Central Committee, and it continued to appear until August 1912.

"The first factional step the Bolsheviks took was to found "Rabochaya Gazeta" in September 1910".
(V. I. Lenin. "The New Faction of Conciliators or the Virtuous", in "Selected Works" Volume 4; London; l943; p. 102).

"By their 'declaration' of December 18, 1910, the Bolsheviks openly and formally declared that they cancelled the agreement with all the other factions. The violation of the 'peace' made at the plenum, its violation by 'Golos', 'Vperyod' and Trotsky, had become a fully recognised fact".
(V.I. Lenin: "The Climax of the Party Crisis", in ibid.; p.117.

"For a year and a half, from January 1910 to June 1911, when they had a majority in the Foreign Bureau of the Central Committee and faithful 'friends' in the persons of the conciliators in the Russian Bureau of the Central Committee, they did nothing, absolutely nothing to further the work in Russia!"
(V. I. Lenin: 'The Climax of the Party Crisis", in: ibid.; p. 121).

"The rupture between the Bolsheviks . . . and the Foreign Bureau of the Central Committee is a correction of the conciliationist mistake of the plenum. The rapprochement of the factions which are actually fighting against liquidationism end otzovism will now proceed despite the forms decided on by the plenum, for these forms did not correspond to the content".
(V. I. Lenin: "The New Faction of Conciliators or the Virtuous", in: ibid.; p. 101).

In June 1911, on the initiative of Lenin, a meeting of Central Committee members living- abroad was held in Paris, attended by representatives of the Bolsheviks, the "Party Mensheviks" the Social-Democratic Party of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania, and the Social-Democratic Party of the Latvian Region.

The meeting set up an Organising Commission Abroad, charged with the calling of an All-Russian Conference. This, in turn, set up a Technical Comminion Abroad, to deal with technical questions such as publishing, transport, etc.

From its inception the Organising Commission Abroad had a majority of conciliationist members and, to avoid bringing about a break with the liquidator Mensheviks, it did not proceed with the work of calling a conference. In November 1911 therefore, the Bolshevik members withdrew from it.

The Russian Organising Commission

In July 1911 the Bolshevik member of the Central Committee in Paris sent Grigori Ordzhonikidze to Russia to work there for the calling of a Party Conference. As a result of Ordzhonikidze's activity, a meeting of representatives of local Party organisations set up in November 1911 a 'Russian Organising Commission" charged with making all arrangements for convening of a Party Conference.

This commission, composed of Bolsheviks and "Party Mensheviks", made arrangements for the convening of the Sixth Party Conference in Prague in January 1912.

"By November l4, the Russian Organisation Committee was formed. In reality, it was created by the Bolsheviks and by the Party Mensheviks in Russia. 'The alliance of the two strong factions' (strong in their ideological solidarity and in their work of purging 'ulcers') became a fact".
(V.I. Lenin: "The Climax of the Party Crisis", in: "Selected Works", Volume 4; London; 1943, p. 118)

In the same month, December 1911, a meeting of Bolshevik groups abroad took place in Paris, with the aim of unifying the Bolshevik groups abroad for the forthcoming Party conference. It was attended by 11 voting delegates, under the leadership of Lenin.

1912: The Sixth Conference of the RSDLP

To remedy the intolerable situation created by Menshevik domination of the Central Committee, which refused either to be active or to convoke a congress, a conference of the Party was convened in January 1912 on the initiative of the Bolsheviks - the Sixth Conference of the- RSDLP.

More than twenty organisations of the Party were represented at the conference, including those of St. Petersburg, Moscow, Kiev, Ekaterinoslav, Nicolayev, Saratov, Kazan, Vilna, Dvinsk, Tiflis and Baku. The Mensheviks refused to attend – except for a small group of "Party Mensheviks".

The conference elected a Bolshevik Central Committee, headed by Lenin, and this in turn set up a new Russian Bureau of the Central Committee, headed by Stalin, to direct the practical work of the Party within Russia.

A resolution drafted by Lenin and adopted by the conference reviewed the anti-Party activities of the liquidator Mensheviks, who were grouped around the magazines "Nasha Zarya" (Cur Dawn) and "Dyelo Zhizni" (Life's Cause), and declared them to be now "outside the Party":

"The Conference declares that the group represented by 'Nasha Zarya' and 'Dyelo Zhizni' has by its behaviour, definitely placed itself outside the Party'.
(V. I. Lenin: Resolution on Liquidationism and the Group of Liquidators, Sixth Conference RSDLP, in: "Selected Works", Volume 4; London; l943; p. 152).

"The conference was of the utmost importance in the history of our Party, for it drew a boundary line between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks and amalgamated the Bolshevik organisations all over the country into a united Bolshevik Party".
(J. V. Stalin: Report to the 15th. Congress of the CPSU (B.), cited in: "History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks)". Moscow; 194l; p. l42).

The liquidator Mensheviks and the group around Trotsky's "Pravda" (Truth) refused to recognise the Sixth Party Conference as "legitimate":

"Neither the liquidators nor the numerous groups living abroad (those of . . Trotsky and others). . recognised our January 1912 conference".
(V. I. Lenin: "Socialism and War", in: "Collected Works", Volume 18; London; n.d.; p. 255).

"The circle whose interests are in conflict with vital needs of the Party, the circle which lives and thrives only through chaos and confusion".
("Pravda", No. 25; 1912),

"We wait quietly for an answer before we undertake further steps'.
(Ibid.)

"I advise you to reply to Trotsky through the post:
"To Trotsky (Vienna) . We shall not reply to disruptive and slanderous letters"; Trotsky's dirty campaign against 'Pravda' is one mass of lies and slander.."
(V. I. Lenin: "Letter to the Editor of Pravda", July 19th., 1912, in: "Collected Works", Volume 35; Moscow; 1966; p. 41),

". . .a vociferous champion with fake muscles".
(J. V. Stalin: "The Elections in St. Petersburg", in: "works"; Volume 2; Moscow; l953; p. 288).

From the autumn of 1910 Trotsky began preparations to try to unite all the anti-Bolshevik elements associated with the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party into a single bloc which, by calling a conference in the name of the Party, might usurp the name and machinery of the Party.
As Lenin put it:

"Trotsky groups all the enemies of Marxism. Trotsky unites all to whom ideological decay is dear; . . . all philistines who do not understand the reasons for the struggle and who do not wish to learn, think and discover the ideological roots of the divergence of views".
(V. I Lenin: Letter to the Russian Collegium of the Central Committee of the RSDLP, in: "Collected Works", Volume 17; 1963; p. 21).

"On the 26^th November, 1910, Trotsky carried through a resolution in the so called Vienna Party Club (a circle of Trotskyites, exiles who are pawns in the hands of Trotsky) . . . . Trotsky's attacks on the bloc of Bolsheviks and Plekhanov's group are not new; what is new is the outcome of his resolution; the Vienna Club (read 'Trotsky') has organised a 'general Party fund for the purpose of preparing and convening a conference of the RSDLP'.
This . . is a clear violation of Party legality and the start of an adventure in which Trotsky will come to grief".
(V. I. Lenin: ibid; p. 19, 20)

"Trotsky's resolution.. . expresses the very aim of the 'Golos' group -- to destroy the central bodies so detested by the liquidators, and with them, the Party as an organisation. It is not enough to lay bare the anti-Party activities of 'Golos' and Trotsky; they must be fought".
(V. I. Lenin: "The State of Affairs in the Party", in: ibid.; p. 23).

"The conference declared that the conference (i.e., the Sixth Party Conference of the RSDLP -- Ed) is an open attempt of a group of pcrsons, who have quite deliberately led the Party to a split, to usurp the Party's flag, and it expresses its profound regret that several Party organisations and comrades have fallen victims to this deception and have thereby facilitated the splitting and usurpatory policy of Lenin's sect. The conference expresses its conviction that all the Party organisations in Russia and abroad will protest against the coup d'etat that has been brought about, will refuse to recognise the central bodies elected at that conference, and will by every means help to restore the unity of the Party by the convocation of a genuine all-Party conference".
(Resolution of March 1912 Paris conference in: "Vorwarts"; (Forward), March 26th., 1912).

"The basis of this bloc is bloc is obvious: the liquidators enjoy full freedom to pursue their line . . 'as before', while Trotsky, operating abroad, screens them with
r-r-revolutionary phrases, which cost him nothing and do not bind them in any way".
(V. I. Lenin: "'The Liquidators against the Party", in: "Collected Works", Volume 18; Moscow; 1963; p. 24).

During the first half of 1912 the revolutionary movement in Russia began to revive.

In April 1912; during a strike in the Lena goldfields in Siberia, more than 500 workers were killed or wounded by tsarist police. The workers replied with mass strikes and demonstrations, which reached their highest point on May Day.

The "August Bloc"

In August 1912 the anti-Bolshevik conference, to prepare which the "Organisation Committee" had been set up in March, took place in Vienna under the leadership of Trotsky, Martov and Dan.
The organisations represented at the conferences --organisations which together formed what the Party called the "August Bloc" were:
 

1) liquidator Mensheviks grouped around the paper -"Golos Sotsial-Demokrata";
2) The liquidator Menshevik group around "Nevsky Golos"(The Voice of the Neva), a legal newspaper published in St. Petersburg from May to August 1912;
3) The "Caucasian Regional Committee of the Social-Democratic Labour Party". (described by Lenin as a fictitious body), a group of Mensheviks from the Caucusus headed by Noah Jordania);
4) The Ukrainian social-democratic organisation 'Spillka";
5)The seven Menshevik Duma deputies;
6) The "Vperyod" group;
7) The Social-Democratic Party of the Latvian Region; and
8) The group around Trotsky's Viennese "Pravda".
Representatives of the Polish Socialist Party (not the Polish Social-Democratic Party) and of the Lithuanian Social-Democratic Party attended as observers.

The conference adopted a resolution calling for the adaptation of the Party organisation to the "new forms and methods of the open Labour Movement'.

It adopted a new programme virtually in line with that of the liberal capitalists in order to make it acceptable to the tsarist government and enable the new party which was planned to emerge from the conference to function legally.

It also adopted a resolution on "national-cultural autonomy" in violation of the national programme of the RSDLP (to be discussed in the next section).

The "Organisation Committee" continued in existence.

Seventeen years later Trotsky commented critically on his role in initiating the formation of the "August Bloc";

The policy of "cultural-national autonomy" is based on the erroneous theory that nations are composed of individuals of a particular nationality, irrespective of the territory they inhabit. On the basis of this theory, the proponents of "cultural-national autonomy" propose that within a particular state there should be "separate bodies" with jurisdiction over the cultural affairs of each "nation"", bodies elected by individual persons of each nationality represented within the frontiers of the state concerned.

In l899, under the influence of Otto Bauer and Karl Renner, "cultural-national autonomy" had been included in the programme of the Austrian Social-Democratic Party:

The conference of the anti-Bolshevik "August Bloc" in August 1912 adopted a resolution on this question which declared:

Lenin approved heartily of Stalin's work:

The campaign of the liquidator Mensheviks for a legally tolerated "open labour party" was associated with the concept that the "backward" Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party should "Europeanised" i.e. transformed into a social-democratic party of the tyep existing in Western Europe, where capitalist "democracy" had long been established and, furthermore, where the domination of opportunist trends was already clearly discernible. Trotsky played an important role in this campaign for the "Europeanisation" of the Russian Party:

Within a few weeks of the founding conference, it was clear to Trotsky that the "August Bloc" had already been proved abortive. He says in his autobiography, referring to September 1912:

Trotsky returned briefly to Vienna at the beginning of 1913, and then returned to the Balkans to cover the Third Balkan War (June-August 1913) between Serbia and Greece on the one hand and Bulgaria on the other.

The 1912 Duma Elections

In July 1912 the Third State Duma was formally dissolved, and the elections for the Fourth State Duma took place in the autumn.

The Bolsheviks and the Menshevik dominated "August Bloc" put forward rival candidates for the Duma. The Bolshevik candidates went to the working people on a revolutionary platform:

These deputies -- the Bolshevik "Six" and the Menshevik "Seven" -- at first formed a single "Social-Democratic" fraction in the Duma, which opened in November 1912. The fraction elected Nikolai Chkheidze, -the Georgian Menshevik leader, as its Chairman.

The "Vperyod" Group Cooperate with the Bolsheviks

In November 1912 the "Vperyod" group severed their connection with the "August Bloc" and offered their cooperation to the Bolsheviks.

Lenin accepted the offer of cooperation gladly – but dubiously:

In January 1913 a conference of the Central Committee of the RSDLP with leading Party workers was held in Cracow (Poland).

One resolution adopted by the conference noted the revolutionary revival that had marked the year 1912 and declared that one of the immediate tasks of the Party was:

Lenin, who attended the Conference, considered that it was:

In "April 1913 Trotsky wrote a letter to Nikolai Chkheidze, Chairman of the Duma Menshevik fraction, in which he said:

In October 1913 another conference of the Central Committee of the Party with leading Party workers, attended by 22 persons, was held at Poropino (Polarid) -- a conference referred to in Party literature as the"Summer" Conference of 1913.

One of the principal resolutions adopted by the Conference dealt with the position of the Party's Duma fraction. Since the seven Menshevik deputies had a majority in the fraction over the six Bolshevik deputies, the latter were constantly being pressed, in the name of "democracy", to adopt the rightist viewpoints of the majority. The conference protested at the conduct of the seven Menshevik deputies and decided that the bloc of six Bolshevik deputies, who were following the political line of the Party's Central Committee, should have equal rights with the bloc of Mensheviks.

The seven Menshevik deputies refused to accept this resolution, and the Bolshevik "six" formed an independent "Russian Social-Democratic Workers' Fraction".

Another important resolution dealt with the national question, and clarified the meaning of "the self-determination of nations", as the right of an oppressed nation to secede and form an independent state:

The Polish Party based their attitude on the ideas put forward by Rosa Luxemburg in her article "The National Question and Autonomy"; published in "Przeglad Socjal-Demokratyczny" (Social-Democratic Review) in 1908-09).

Although the Polish Party rejoined the RSDLP in 1906, its leaders continued to opposethe principle of the right of nations to self-determination, and in March 1914, Trotsky used this opposition to attack the Bolsheviks:

In February 1914 the Fourth Congress of the Social-Democratic Party of the Latvian Region held in Brussels and attended by Lenin, resolved to withdraw from the "August Bloc".

With the withdrawal of the Latvian Party, described by Lenin as

 Trotsky's "Borba"

 With the collapse of the "August Bloc", in February 1914, Trotsky withdrew from the editorial board of the Menshevik paper "Luch" (The Torch) and, together with some of his Viennese supporters, began to publish a legal journal called "Borba" (The Struggle), which continued to come out until July 1914. In this paper, as Lenin noted, he put forward liquidationist ideas in a disguised form.

 In July 1914 the Executive Committee of the International Socialist Bureau (ISB) took up Trotsky's concilationist mantle by convening a conference in Brussels of all the groups connected with the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party. Apart from representatives of the ISB (who included Karl Kautsky, and Emile Vandervelde), the conference was attended by delegates from:

1. the (Bolshevik) Central Committee of the RSDLP;

2. the (now Bolshevik) Social-Democratic Party of the Latvian Region;

3. the "Vperyod" Group;

4. the (now purely Menshevik) "Organisation Committee";

5. the "Bund";

6. Plekhanov's "Yedinstvo"(Unity) Menshevik group;

7. the Social-Democratic Party of Poland and Lithuania;

8. the Polish Social-Democratic Opposition;

9. the Polish Socialist Party; and

10. Trotsky's "Borba" group.

 The leader of the Central Committee delegation, Inessa Armand, delivered a statement, (drafted by Lenin) setting out fourteen conditions under which the Central Conmittee considered unification possible. These conditions included: the renunciation of views condemned by the Party, the recognition of the necessity of illegal as well as legal work, submission to the Central Committee and dissolution of factions.

Although, under the terms of reference under which it had been convened, the conference was for the purpose of an exchange of opinions only, Kautsky moved a resolution declaring that there were "no substantial disagreements" between the various groups to justify a continuation of "the split" in the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party. The resolution was adopted by a majority of the delegates present, with the delegates of the Central Committee of the RSDLP and the Latvian Party abstaining.

The question of actual unification was to have been taken up at the next congress of the Second International, due to be held in Vienna in August l9l4, but the outbreak of the First World War prevented this congress from taking place.

After the conference, the anti-Bolshevik groups continued to collaborate for a time in what came to be called the "Brussels Bloc".

 END OF PART ONE.
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