People of the Revolution and the USSR

Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) Non-Bolshevik socialists 1850–1928 ○ Natural causes

Theorist of the mass workers' party: the argument that lost to Lenin's vanguard

Trotsky recalled: 'An atmosphere of simplicity and sincere comradely participation reigned in the Akselrod household.'

A former narodnik, he co-founded the Emancipation of Labour group (1883) with Plekhanov and Zasulich, the first Russian Marxist organisation. As an Iskra editor (1900) and, after the 1903 RSDLP split, the central theoretician of Menshevism, he argued for a mass, democratic workers' party against Lenin's vanguard model. He served on the Petrograd Soviet executive in 1917 but opposed the October Revolution and spent his final decade in exile, active in the Second International.

Mensheviks (RSDLP) Non-Bolshevik socialists 1869–1934 → Died

One of the six who built Iskra: the Menshevik theorist who parted with Lenin

Witnessing the October Revolution, Potresov called it "the murder of democracy" and the Bolshevik regime that followed "the socialism of fools."

One of the six original editors of Iskra (1900) and a founding figure of the RSDLP. At the 1903 party congress he sided with Martov and became a leading Menshevik theorist, arguing for a mass party against Lenin's vanguard model. During WWI he led the defensist wing of Menshevism; he rejected the October Revolution and was briefly imprisoned by the Cheka in 1919. He left the USSR in 1925 and continued writing against the Soviet regime from Berlin and Paris until his death.

Mensheviks (RSDLP) Non-Bolshevik socialists 1871–1947 ○ Lung cancer

Menshevism's theoretical pillar who stood for democratic socialism against Lenin

In 1943, the lifelong anti-Bolshevik Menshevik leader Dan wrote in The Origins of Bolshevism that Bolshevism had been chosen by history to be 'the carrier of socialism, the key idea of our epoch.'

Fyodor Dan was a revolutionary, physician, and a founding leader and chief theorist of the Menshevik faction of the RSDLP. At the 1903 Second Congress he sided with Martov against Lenin; after the February Revolution he became the leading ideologist of 'revolutionary defencism' and served on the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet and the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee. Exiled in 1922, he headed the Menshevik Foreign Delegation from Martov's death in 1923 until 1940, upholding democratic socialism against both Bolshevik authoritarianism and Western social-democratic accommodation. In The Origins of Bolshevism (1943) he recognized Bolshevism as the historical carrier of socialism while arguing for political liberalization in the Soviet Union.

Mensheviks (RSDLP) Non-Bolshevik socialists 1873–1923 → Died

Lenin’s oldest friend and most principled adversary

In 1918 Martov published an exposé revealing that Stalin had been expelled from the party in 1907. Stalin sued him for libel, and the revolutionary tribunal sentenced Martov to 'public censure.'

He built Iskra alongside Lenin, then split with him in 1903 over a single clause on party membership and led the Mensheviks. After October he stayed, fighting to keep a legal opposition alive, and in 1920 was permitted to leave. He died of tuberculosis in Berlin. It is told that the dying Lenin asked after him.