Vladimir Lenin: Bolshevik vs. Menshevik Split & One Step Forward, Two Steps Back for Revolution

By: Matthew Hunter

The Second Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party was a pivotal moment in the Russian Marxist movement and cemented Lenin as one of the key leaders. Lenin and Nadya by 1903 were living in the town of Secheron, near Geneva Switzerland. There he, along with a never-ending stream of fellow Marxists visiting him, drafting the Rules of the Party and the Party Programme to be voted on at the Congress. The year prior the party organized a conference by the “Bund, the Petersburg Committee, the Yekaterinoslav Committee, Iskra, the Union of Russian Social-Democrats Abroad, the Nizhny-Novgorod Committee, and the Association of Southern Committees and Organisations.” That conference was almost a Party Congress but ultimately formed the Organizing Committee for the Party Congress. However, most of the Organizing Committee were subsequently arrested by the Russian police state. A second Organizing Committee was formed after contact with the original was lost—this new one did not have any members of the Bund featured on it. In effect, the first split of the party was foreshadowing itself. 

As Plekhanov said in the opening of the Party Congress, “The reasons for this absence were not known to the [Organizing Committee], but it hoped that the Bund would not refuse subsequently to take part in its activity…” The new Committee organized the party Congress for Brussels where eventual police pressure would have it moved mid-session to London. Lenin wrote in-depth on the Party Congress that would create the Bolshevik-Menshevik split. 

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back draws heavily from the minutes of the Congress to make sure it wasn’t inaccurate. As he stated, “The first question is that of the political significance of the division of our Party into “majority” and “minority” which took shape at the Second Party Congress and pushed all previous divisions among Russian Social-Democrats far into the background. The second question is that of the significance in principle of the new Iskra’s position on organisational questions, insofar as this position is really based on principle.” Lenin added that the “‘majority’ is the revolutionary, and the ‘minority’ the opportunist wing of our Party…” For Lenin, this Congress was a clear demarcation between two wings of the party that was at significant odds with each other—a “crisis” in the party. 

It’s tragic, as by all accounts he was “deeply content” as the Congress started and Plekhanov gave the opening speech. This was the real first Congress of the RSDLP—an organization he had spent over a decade trying to form, went to prison, and exile to achieve. This was supposed to be a moment of triumph for Lenin and the entire Russian working and peasant classes. This was the dream of countless people who sacrificed everything. But unfortunately, and clearly, several eclectic groups with “ideological instability” came to opportunist, party-wrecking, and individualist lines. 

Per historian Christopher Read, 43 delegates with 51 votes and 14 “consultive delegates” were allowed to speak but not vote at the Congress. Iskrists, as they were called at the time, had 27 delegates with 33 votes. The rest were seven Economists, five Bundists, and four undecided. Lenin separated it into “24 Iskra-ists of the majority, nine Iskra-ists of the minority, ten in the centre, and eight anti-Iskra-ists.” That delicate alliance between the majority and minority within Iskra would eventually fall apart. Julius Martov, Leon Trotsky, and others in that minority stayed with the Iskra voting bloc on the vote on the Party Programme, condemning the federation of the party, and endorsing Iskra as the “Party’s Central Organ.” They were also united against the rest of the “anti-Iskra-ists and the entire ‘Centre’” for other resolutions regarding Iskra, and the position of the Bund—who wanted to be an independent group within the Party and not adhere to the Party program in total, but only in part and when it suited them. This was the same with the Yuzhny Rabochy group and the Rabocheye Dyelo/Union of Russian Social Democrats Abroad which the former was voted to be dissolved. 

The Iskra-ist minority, however, did break and form a coalition with the anti-Iskra-ists and “centre” when it came to other votes—equality of languages and paragraph 1 of the Party Rules. The Iskra majority was defeated in these votes, but slowly and then quickly, groups began to leave in protest. The Bund left the Congress after not getting the independence to break Party rules. Lenin said only “Comrade Brouckère remained at the Congress” out of the eight anti-Iskra-ists. So the opportunist coalition that had formed had a small majority and then gave it away—purely out of pettiness and a sense of “anarchist individualism.” Elections at the Congress for the Central Organ, Committee, and Party Council were the “final division” between the Bolshevik and Menshevik camps. It was the “complete fusion” of the minority of Iskra with the opportunist and reactionary circles of the Party. Martov would later call this division of the party, with Lenin’s programs and policy proposals receiving the majority of the support at the Congres, “accidental.” Lenin refuted that by asking if it was an “accident” that the “most extreme” and “opportunist” wings of the Party withdrew from a struggle with the most “consistent revolutionary Social-Democrats.” 

Lenin summarized exactly what this divide at the Congress was about, “…struggle between the opportunist and the revolutionary wing of the Party on the question of organisation, the same conflict between autonomism and centralism, between democracy and “bureaucracy”, between the tendency to relax and the tendency to tighten organisation and discipline, between the mentality of the unstable intellectual and that of the staunch proletarian, between intellectualist individualism and proletarian solidarity.” The reactionary wings of the party wanted a loose organization, not a revolutionary party that had strict membership to avoid infiltration. Democratic Centralism was vital to avoid anarchistic and individualist actions that would hurt the collective party—in order for the Party to have authority it can’t be divided into many different groups that don’t coherently and collectively work together. The dictatorship of the proletariat—the basic Marxist concept of the working class needs to have political and state power in order to start a socialist transition—was key to any communist revolutionary party. These were the key struggles that Lenin and the majority—the Bolsheviks—struggled for during the Party Congress. There were 37 sessions of the Congress, and Lenin took the floor to speak 120 times. After the Party Congress was concluded, on August 24, many of the delegates and Lenin visited Karl Marx’s grave at Highgate Cemetary. It was a solemn pilgrimage that Lenin would often take when he and Nadya lived in London as well. Lenin softly said in front of Marx’s grave, “[he] is our teacher. Let us pledge to be faithful to his teaching. We shall never give up the struggle. Onwards, comrades, only onwards.” 

Unfortunately, even with Plekhanov and Lenin himself offering concession after concession to the Mensheviks and Martov especially, the infighting would become too much following the Congress. Lenin would resign from the Iskra board. Many Social Democrats would come to favor Martov’s interpretation of the Party Congress—Karl Kautsky and Rosa Luxemburg—two giants of the German Social Democratic Party. Plekhanov the old ally and mentor of the entire Russian Marxist movement also abandoned Lenin and the Bolsheviks. However, it wasn’t purely due to a perceived “Robespierrean” view of Lenin that was prevalent at the time. Lenin foreshadowed this development of a divide of the Social Democratic Movement—the Second International—with critiques of Bernstein. But in just about a decade the fractures of the reformist and vulgar distortions of Marxism would rupture the international socialist movement. It just happened to rupture and divide in Russia first in 1903. 

As Lenin stated, “One step forward, two steps back.... It happens in the lives of individuals, and it happens in the history of nations and in the development of parties. It would be the most criminal cowardice to doubt even for a moment the inevitable and complete triumph of the principles of revolutionary Social-Democracy, of proletarian organisation and Party discipline.”