The Second Congress of the RSDLP and the Bolshevik–Menshevik Split

Why did Russian Social Democrats need another congress in 1903?

The Russian Social Democratic Labour Party had already proclaimed its foundation at Minsk in March 1898. But only nine people attended that First Congress, and it ended having adopted nothing more than the party name and a manifesto. There was no programme and no rules, and most of the delegates were soon arrested. For the next five years the Social Democratic organisations of the empire were scattered among local committees and workers' circles with weak ties to one another. Looking back, Krupskaya wrote that the Second Congress was, strictly speaking, an inaugural congress: the first had adopted only a name and a manifesto, and the party, which had lived without a programme, laid its theoretical foundations only now. The Russian Wikipedia likewise calls the Second Congress the party's de facto founding congress. 1 2 3

In those five years a struggle over direction grew inside the movement. Economism, a current that wanted to concentrate on the economic struggle for wages and hours and to leave the political struggle against the autocracy to the liberals, took root around Rabocheye Dyelo and the Union of Russian Social Democrats Abroad. Against it, Lenin, Martov and Potresov joined Plekhanov, Axelrod and Zasulich of the Emancipation of Labour group and brought out the first issue of the newspaper Iskra at Leipzig on 24 December (11 December Old Style) 1900. Its epigraph, "From the spark a flame will flare up", came from a poem by a Decembrist. These six formed the editorial board, and the paper was printed in turn in Munich, London and Geneva. Krupskaya, as secretary of the board, handled the connections inside Russia. 4 5 6

From the start Iskra was more than a newspaper. A network of agents who smuggled it across the border and distributed it grew up across Russia, and that network became the skeleton of a national organisation. In What Is to Be Done?, published at Stuttgart in March 1902, Lenin set the idea out as theory. Attacking the "artisanal" methods of the Economists, he argued that a national political newspaper and a secret organisation of people who made revolutionary activity their profession, an organisation of professional revolutionaries, had to draw the scattered movement together. The book was banned by the censors inside Russia but was widely read among activists. As Krupskaya recalled, Lenin was attacked at the congress for What Is to Be Done?; the book formed the background of the dispute to come. 4 7 8 9 1

How was the congress prepared, and who came to it?

The push for a congress did not come from the Iskra group alone. The Economist-leaning Union Abroad had been calling for one since 1900, and in spring 1902 both sides met at the Białystok conference and elected an Organising Committee. When nearly all its participants were soon arrested, the Iskra group held another meeting in autumn 1902 and set up a new Organising Committee on which its supporters had an overwhelming majority. At a session in Orel in February 1903 the committee adopted draft regulations for convening the congress, visited the local organisations and fixed the list of those entitled to representation. The Russian Wikipedia notes that in this process most of the elected delegates turned out to be Iskra supporters, while organisations that disagreed were kept away from the congress on various pretexts. 2 10

The congress opened in Brussels on 30 July (17 July Old Style) 1903. For security the Belgian party lent a large flour warehouse; Trotsky remembered a storeroom full of bales of wool and swarms of fleas. Plekhanov gave the opening speech, with the window behind the platform covered in red cloth. But the Belgian police shadowed the delegates and expelled several of them, and after 6 August the congress moved to London. Of its 37 sessions, 13 were held in Brussels and 24 in London, and it closed on 23 August (10 August Old Style). Twenty-six organisations were represented: 43 delegates holding 51 deciding votes and 14 delegates with a consultative voice only. 2 10 5 1

In an account written straight after the congress, Lenin broke down the political grouping of the 51 votes: five Bundists, three Rabocheye Dyelo supporters, four of the Yuzhny Rabochy group, six waverers he called "the Marsh", and about thirty-three more or less firm Iskra-ists. When those thirty-three voted together they could decide any question. The list of delegates included Plekhanov and Deutsch for the Emancipation of Labour group, Martov for the Iskra organisation, Lenin for the League Abroad, Trotsky for the Siberian Union, Bauman for the Moscow committee, Krasikov for Kiev, Zemlyachka for Odessa, Gusev for the Don committee and Knunyants for Baku. The Bund sent Liber, Medem and others, while Axelrod, Zasulich, Potresov and Krupskaya had a consultative voice only. 11 12 10

What did the congress agree on, and why did the Bund walk out?

Easily overshadowed by the split it is remembered for, the congress in fact reached agreement on most of the big questions. The draft programme worked out jointly by the Iskra and Zarya editors was debated over nine sessions. The congress adopted it in two parts. The maximum programme named the socialist revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat as the conditions of the final goal; the minimum programme listed the immediate tasks: overthrow of the tsarist autocracy, a democratic republic, the eight-hour day, full equality and self-determination of all nations, abolition of the survivals of serfdom, and return to the peasants of the strips of land (otrezki) the landlords had cut off. The Economists Akimov and Martynov and the Bundist Liber opposed the clause on the dictatorship of the proletariat because the programmes of the West European parties had none, but they were outvoted. 2 10 1

The first big clash came over the status of the General Jewish Labour Bund. The Bund had been a co-founder of the party at the First Congress, and in 1903 it was the largest socialist organisation in the empire, with some 30,000 members. It demanded recognition as the sole representative of the Jewish workers and a federal structure for the party. The Iskra-ists called this separatism that would split the party along national lines and argued for a single party uniting the workers of every nationality on Russian soil. Lenin arranged for Martov and Trotsky, both Jews, to answer the Bund. The federal proposal was defeated 41 to 5 with 5 abstentions; on this vote the future Bolsheviks and Mensheviks stood together. 13 10 2 1

When the congress rejected both federation and the claim to sole representation, the Bund delegates left the hall. Earlier, on the equality of languages, a Bundist amendment giving every citizen the right to use their own language had been defeated in a 23 to 23 tie, and a similar motion was carried when the Georgian Zhordania moved it again. Then, when the congress recognised the Iskra-ist League Abroad as the party's only organisation abroad, the two delegates of the Union Abroad also walked out in protest. The loss of these seven votes changed the balance in the hall. Among its other decisions the congress branded the Socialist-Revolutionaries a faction pursuing bourgeois tendencies under the flag of socialism, and adopted resolutions on demonstrations, the trade union struggle, students and work among religious sectarians. 10 2 14 11

Who is a party member? What happened in the vote on Paragraph One?

The first crack inside the Iskra camp appeared in the debate on the rules. The issue was Paragraph One, which defined a party member. Lenin's draft defined a member as "one who accepts its programme and who supports the Party both financially and by personal participation in one of the Party organisations"; Martov proposed replacing the last words with "regular personal assistance under the direction of one of the Party organisations". Lenin held that the "elasticity" of Martov's wording would open the door to wavering elements and opportunism, while Martov said they could only rejoice if every striker and demonstrator could declare himself a party member. The content of the dispute and its later interpretations are treated separately in the entry on the Paragraph One controversy. 11 15 16

Martov's wording won. The minutes give 28 votes to 22 with one abstention; Lenin, writing just after the congress, recalled it as "about twenty-eight votes to twenty-three, or something like that". Voting for Martov were part of the Iskra-ists, among them Axelrod, Zasulich and Trotsky, together with the five Bundists and the Rabocheye Dyelo delegates. Lenin needled this coalition by quoting a Rabocheye Dyelo delegate who said he had voted for Martov in order to choose "the worse alternative". Plekhanov sided with Lenin. Yet in the debate Lenin himself said he did not regard the difference as a matter of life or death for the party: "We shall certainly not perish because of an unfortunate clause in the Rules!" The rest of the rules passed without serious disagreement. 2 11 15 10

The vote mattered less for the clause itself than for the alignment it revealed. From this point Lenin saw the Iskra-ist minority following Martov becoming the rallying point for the non-Iskra-ists and the Marsh. Martov's side, for its part, read Lenin's wording as an attempt to subordinate the party to its centre. The Russian Wikipedia sums up a division among historians as well: the British historian Robert Service holds that Martov envisaged a party whose members could voice their own opinions and Lenin one subordinated to the centre, while another view holds that the congress stenograms show no profound difference of principle between the two groups at all. 17 16 2

How did the names "majority" and "minority" come about?

The real rupture came in the elections to the central bodies. Even before the congress the six Iskra editors often deadlocked three against three. Lenin had proposed adding Trotsky as a seventh editor, but Plekhanov objected. Lenin then proposed cutting the board to three: Plekhanov, Martov and Lenin. He cited the count for the past 45 issues, 39 articles by Martov, 32 by Lenin and 24 by Plekhanov against 6 by Zasulich, 8 by Potresov and 4 by Axelrod, and said that in three years the board of six had never once met in full. According to Krupskaya, Martov at first agreed to a board of three, but turned against it after being persuaded that it meant betraying Axelrod, Zasulich and Potresov. 2 11 1 5

After the Bund and the Union Abroad had gone, the firm Iskra-ists who followed Lenin and Plekhanov became the majority with about twenty-four votes. The congress rejected a motion simply to endorse the old editorial board and then elected Plekhanov, Martov and Lenin. Martov refused to serve, saying a "state of siege" had been declared in the party. Three Lenin supporters were elected to the Central Committee: Krzhizhanovsky and Lengnik, both in their absence, and Noskov; Plekhanov was elected fifth member of the five-man Party Council. The Martovites and the Marsh would not hand in their ballots; Krupskaya recorded that in the Central Committee election 20 of the 44 votes were abstentions. 11 2 1 18

This is where the two names came from. At first people spoke of "hards" and "softs", and Trotsky recalled that even before the congress Lenin was "hard" and Martov "soft". After the elections Lenin called his side the Bolsheviks, from bolshinstvo, majority, and Martov accepted the name Mensheviks, from menshinstvo, minority, for his. The names stuck. Yet over the congress as a whole neither side held a firm majority throughout: Martov won on Paragraph One, and Lenin won the elections thanks to the seven departed votes. The Russian Wikipedia cites the view that accepting the unflattering name was Martov's mistake, and that fixing a momentary voting success in the faction's name was a shrewd move by Lenin. 9 5 19 2

How did the minority win back Iskra after the congress?

Once the congress was over, the minority boycotted the new central bodies. In mid-October 1903 seventeen Menshevik activists met in Geneva and elected Martov, Potresov, Axelrod, Dan and Trotsky as a "Bureau of the Minority", accusing Lenin's supporters of splitting the party by creating "a closed, one-sidedly selected central organisation". The minority would not hand its transport links to Russia over to the Central Committee and kept local organisations' money from reaching the central treasury. Krupskaya wrote that sympathisers who had lent flats or given money withdrew their help, citing "personal squabbles". She also recalled that just after the congress Lenin did not object when Noskov suggested co-opting the old editorial board, but the Mensheviks refused. 20 21 22

The first clash took place at the congress of the League of Russian Revolutionary Social Democracy Abroad, held in Geneva on 26 to 31 October 1903, where the Mensheviks had the numbers. Krupskaya wrote that when Lenin, his head bandaged after a cycling accident, gave his report on the Second Congress, Dan, Krokhmal and others leapt up banging their desks. The League passed a resolution calling on party workers to fight the Bolsheviks' "bureaucratic centralism", censured Lenin and adopted rules that made it independent of the Central Committee. Lengnik, attending for the Central Committee, demanded changes; when the League refused, he declared the League and its congress unlawful. Amid the uproar Plekhanov said, "I can't shoot at my own side." 20 22 21 17

Plekhanov decided to bring the old editors back for the sake of peace in the party. Lenin held that a congress decision could not be revised to please a circle, but, saying he would not stand in the way of peace either, he left the editorial board after Iskra No. 51. Plekhanov soon co-opted Axelrod, Zasulich, Martov and Potresov. His article "What Should Not Be Done", printed in Iskra No. 52 on 20 November (7 November Old Style) 1903, argued that after defeating Economism the party must not fall into the opposite "straight-line" thinking, and that driving out comrades who had leaned towards revisionism and then come back would harm party unity. The party's central organ thus passed into the minority's hands, and inside the party people came to distinguish the "old Iskra" of Lenin's time from the "new Iskra" that followed. 17 23 4 6

What did each side argue in the pamphlet war of 1904?

1904 was the year of pamphlets. Martov published a pamphlet branding the congress outcome a "state of siege", and Trotsky, who had been a delegate of the Siberian Union, attacked Lenin fiercely in his Report of the Siberian Delegation. The "state of siege" Lenin insisted on, he wrote, required full powers; the practice of organised distrust demanded an iron hand; and the system of Terror is crowned by a Robespierre. Lenin answered with One Step Forward, Two Steps Back, a point-by-point analysis of the minutes and the delegates' speeches. Published in Geneva in May 1904, it presented the conflict at the congress as one between the revolutionary and the opportunist wings of the party. Plekhanov demanded that the Central Committee disavow the book. 21 24 25 26

Criticism came from outside Russia too. In "Organisational Questions of the Russian Social Democracy" in July 1904, Rosa Luxemburg treated One Step Forward, Two Steps Back as a methodical exposition of the "ultra-centralist" tendency and charged that it was full of the sterile spirit of the overseer, more concerned to control the party than to make its activity fruitful. Social Democratic centralism, she argued, had to be the "self-centralism" of the advanced sections of the proletariat, and the errors of a truly revolutionary movement were historically infinitely more fruitful than the infallibility of the cleverest Central Committee. In Our Political Tasks, dedicated to Axelrod and published in August 1904, Trotsky warned that the party organisation would substitute itself for the party, the Central Committee for the organisation, and finally a dictator for the Central Committee. 27 28 20 29

Yet the dispute did not stay within organisational theory. In "The Working Class and the Social Democratic Intelligentsia" (July and August 1904) Plekhanov belatedly attacked What Is to Be Done? as "a pamphlet weak in every respect", and Ryazanov, introducing Plekhanov's collected works years later, noted that differences had begun to appear not only on organisation but on tactics. Nor was the minority of one mind. Trotsky regarded the split as an episode and pressed for early reunion with the majority; after arguing all year with the Menshevik leaders over the attitude to the liberals and to the Bolsheviks, he formally left the minority in September 1904 and from then on acted at his own risk, leaning on neither faction. 23 30 9

Why did the Central Committee turn conciliator, and how did the Bolsheviks organise separately?

The Central Committee elected by the congress at first consisted solely of Lenin's supporters. In October 1903 Krasin, Zemlyachka, Gusarov and Essen were co-opted, and in November Lenin and Galperin. By summer 1904 things had changed. Lengnik and Essen were arrested, Krzhizhanovsky and Gusarov withdrew and Zemlyachka was removed. The remaining members, Noskov, Krasin and Galperin, believed that ending the split came first. In July 1904 the Central Committee issued a declaration accepting the new Iskra board and proposing that Lenin be added to it. Lenin, protesting that this July declaration barred him from defending his views and communicating with Russia, resigned from the Central Committee as well. 2 21 4 18

From then on the Bolsheviks built their own organisation apart from the party centre. In August 1904 twenty-two of Lenin's supporters met in Switzerland, issued an appeal "To the Party" and demanded a Third Congress. The Odessa, Ekaterinoslav, Nikolayev, Riga, St Petersburg and Moscow committees and the Caucasian League backed it. In a draft written in autumn 1904 Lenin accused the new Central Committee of ignoring the majority and striking secret bargains with the minority alone, and announced the formation of a Bureau of Majority Committees. Regional conferences in the south, the Caucasus and the north elected the bureau and entrusted it with preparing the congress. Bogdanov, Olminsky, Lunacharsky and others joined, and on 4 January 1905 (22 December 1904 Old Style) the Bolshevik paper Vperyod (Forward) began to appear in Geneva. 6 31 21 4

The conciliatory line did not last. On 20 February (7 February Old Style) 1905 Lenin was formally removed from the Central Committee, but two days later, on 22 February (9 February Old Style), most of its members, Noskov and Galperin among them, were arrested together. By March only Krasin and Lyubimov remained, and this Central Committee convened the Third Congress together with the Bureau of Majority Committees. Meanwhile revolution had broken out in Russia with Bloody Sunday in St Petersburg in January 1905. Krupskaya wrote that as the revolutionary tide rose the émigré squabbles troubled them far less than before, and that correspondence with Russia reached three hundred letters a month. 2 18 3 30 21

How did the two gatherings of 1905 make the split permanent?

The Third Congress met in London from 25 April to 10 May (12 to 27 April Old Style) 1905, with 24 voting and 14 consultative delegates, all of them Bolsheviks. It had invited every committee and organisation, but when Plekhanov, Martov and Axelrod, members of the former Party Council, refused to recognise its convocation, the whole minority stayed away. The congress laid the responsibility for the split on these three, rewrote Paragraph One in Lenin's wording, and placed the leadership between congresses in the hands of a single Central Committee. In his report on the congress Lenin stressed that the new rules guaranteed the minority, too, the right to publish party literature and to wage an ideological struggle. 32 33 3

Around the same time the Mensheviks held a separate conference in Geneva. The two factions now had different congresses and different centres, and the quarrel shifted from organisation to revolutionary tactics. The Third Congress resolved to prepare an armed uprising, to set up after a victorious rising a provisional revolutionary government of workers and peasants, and to allow Social Democrats to take part in it. The Mensheviks held that the revolutionary proletariat should act together with the liberal bourgeoisie against the autocracy. The Third Congress also resolved that Menshevik committees refusing to accept its decisions could be dissolved. Plekhanov, concluding that he could not work with the Mensheviks, had begun his own journal, Diary of a Social Democrat, and after the Geneva conference, in May 1905, he left the Iskra board as well. 19 32 23

Even then the split did not end in one stroke. Under the pressure of revolution the two factions formally reunited at the Fourth (Unity) Congress in Stockholm in 1906, at which the Bund also rejoined the party. That congress, where the Mensheviks were the majority, nonetheless replaced Paragraph One with Lenin's wording. But both factions kept their own organisations, and after the Prague conference of January 1912 they became separate parties in all but name. Lenin later wrote that "Bolshevism has existed as a trend of political thought and as a political party since 1903", and the Soviet Communist Party traced its own history from the Second Congress. In that sense the split of 1903 was the place where several of the paths of twentieth-century Russian revolutionary history first parted. 14 19 13 2

Was the split about principle or about personalities?

The participants' own explanations differed from the start. Just after the congress Lenin wrote that, objectively, the only thing they had parted over was the composition of the central bodies; afterwards he explained the difference as a conflict between the revolutionary and opportunist wings of the party. The Soviet Short Course of the History of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) summed up that Lenin's formulation saw the party as an organised detachment subject to discipline while Martov's saw it as organisationally amorphous, and it labelled the new Iskra an organ of opportunism. Krupskaya likewise recalled that the comrades around Lenin were far more seriously committed to principle while the others leaned towards compromise and regard for persons, and that many looked at personalities and missed the substance. 11 6 1

The other side and later observers saw it differently. In his autobiography Trotsky wrote that his break with Lenin looked on the surface like a matter of "moral" or even personal grounds, but that underneath it was political: at the time he had not grasped how intense a centralism a revolutionary party leading millions would need. He also put the bitterness of the conflict down to the older leaders' failure to recognise that Lenin had grown into a leader. Plekhanov reportedly told Axelrod of Lenin during the congress, "Of such stuff Robespierres are made." The English Wikipedia sums up that the difference at first looked minor and rooted in personal conflicts, but grew until it became irreparable. 5 9

The numbers did not match the names either. The Bolsheviks won the name "majority", but at many later stages Lenin's supporters were in the minority, and after 1905 the Mensheviks gathered wide support in the trade unions, the Duma and the soviets. Still, from 1903 the name "Bolshevik" became a politically valuable asset. Present-day accounts generally treat the Second Congress both as the de facto founding congress that united Russian Social Democracy into one party and as the place where two models of the party first collided. The tension between organisational discipline and breadth of membership, between the powers of the centre and the autonomy of local organisations, recurred again and again thereafter among Bolsheviks and Mensheviks alike. 19 14 2