A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891-1924

Lenin seized this opportunity to assert his control of the Central Committee and its organ, Iskra, by ejecting the three 'Menshevik' veterans — Zasulich, Axelrod and Potresov — from its editorial board. Lenin's conspiratorial methods hardened the divide between the two factions. Their clash was at first much more to do with personalities, style and emotions than with the articulation of distinctive ideologies. The Mensheviks were outraged by Lenin's shoddy treatment of the three ousted editors — he had called them Iskra's 'least productive members' — and in solidarity with them Martov now refused to serve with Lenin and Plekhanov on the new editorial board. They accused Lenin of trying to become the dictator of the party — one talked of his needing to wield a 'baton' like the one used by army commanders to instil discipline in the ranks — and set themselves up as the defenders of democracy in the party. Lenin's own intransigence, his refusal to patch up his differences with the Mensheviks (differences which, by his own admission, were 'in substance . . . very unimportant'), and his readiness, once provoked, to admit to his belief that there had to be a dictator of the party to discipline the 'wavering elements in our midst', merely heightened the emotional tensions. The meeting broke down

in petty squabbles, with each side accusing the other of having 'started it', or of having 'betrayed' the other. People took sides on the basis of hurt feelings and outraged sensibilities and established bonds of loyalty. Lydia Dan recalls that she took Martov's side not so much because she thought that he was right but because:

I felt that I had to support him. And many others felt that way. Martov was poorly suited to be a leader. But he had an inexhaustible charm that attracted people. It was frequently difficult to account for why they followed him. He himself said, 'I have the nasty privilege of being liked by people.' And, naturally, if something like a schism occurred, Martov would be noble, Martov would be honourable, while Lenin . . . well, Lenin's influence was enormous, but still.. . For my own part, it was very tragic to have to say that all my sympathies for Lenin (which were considerable) were based upon misunderstanding.³²

For several years the incipient political differences between the Men-sheviks and the Bolsheviks continued to be masked by personal factors. No doubt it was in part because the two factions all lived together — sometimes literally — in small exile communities, so that their arguments over party dogma often became entangled in squabbles over money and lovers. But Lenin's personality was the crucial issue. Bolshevism was defined by a personal pledge of loyalty to him; and Menshevism, though to a lesser extent, by opposition to him. Valentinov, on his arrival in Geneva in 1904, was shocked by the 'atmosphere of worship [of Lenin] which people calling themselves Bolsheviks had created' there. Lenin reinforced this divide by his violent attack on the Mensheviks in his pamphlet One Step Forward, Two Steps Back (1904). He now called them 'traitors' to the Marxist cause. None of his Bolshevik lieutenants was even allowed to talk to any of the Menshevik leaders without gaining his prior approval.³³

Only very slowly, during and after 1905, were the differences between the two factions spelled out in political terms. In fact for a long time (right up until 1918) the rank and file Social Democrats, particularly on the Menshevik side, sought to stitch the party together again. This was especially so in the provinces, where the party's forces were simply too small to afford such factional disputes. Here they continued to work together in united SD organizations. But gradually, as the party was forced to confront the dilemmas of real politics, during the 1905 Revolution and then in the Duma period, so its two factions demarcated themselves both in terms of their different ideologies, their strategies and tactics, and in terms of their ever more diverse political styles and cultures.

Menshevism remained a loose movement — high on morals, low on discipline. There was no real Menshevik leader, in the sense that the Bolsheviks