At the start of the year, both Bolsheviks and Mensheviks were really sects with next to no influence in the masses. But after 9 January, they began to grow rapidly. When V. Frunze, the organiser of the Party committee in the important textile centre of Ivanovo-Voznesensk, arrived in the town in May, he found “not less than between 400 and 500 activists”, mainly local workers. Martov says that there were 600 Bolsheviks there in mid-1905, the biggest committee in the central industrial region. The same author claims that the Party up to October could count the membership of its underground organisation in “a few tens of thousands of workers, and a few thousand soldiers and peasants”. By September the Social Democratic agitation was already getting an echo not only among strikers but at mass meetings, in the universities, and the most radical slogans began to obtain support. However, its sphere of influence including workers participating in organisations directly linked to the Party was made up of “hundreds of thousands of the urban and rural populace”. (J. Martov et al, Obshchestvennoe Dvizhenie v Rossii v Nachale 20 Veka, vol. 3, p. 575 in both quotes.)
The rapid growth of the party’s influence in the masses made it necessary to adapt its methods and structures to allow for rapid growth. The struggle to build the Party and to extend its influence over the broadest possible layers of the class now assumed the character of a race against the clock. In a series of internal conferences held in the autumn, Lenin insisted on the opening up of the Party, and the introduction of the elective principle from top to bottom, in order to change the composition of the committees, with an influx of fresh new workers and youth. Pressure had to be applied on the committeemen through the free airing of fresh views and criticisms from below and, where necessary, by the replacement of some of the older and conservative elements by new people who were capable of reflecting the real mood of the class. Throughout 1905, Lenin was impatient at the slowness with which the committeemen inside Russia had turned to the masses and made use of the enormous opportunities that opened up. After the October Manifesto, the conditions for Party work radically changed. Freedom of assembly and the press had been won, as well as the right to organise in unions. Everywhere there was a ferment of ideas and discussion. On all sides, the workers and the youth were seeking a vehicle with which to express their instinctive aspirations to change society.
Old methods and habits of thought die hard. Throughout the whole course of 1905 there was a sharp struggle over the need to open up the party and democratise the internal structures. It should be borne in mind that up until the autumn of 1905 the Party was still underground. But with the changed political climate the Party had to adapt its work to legal and semi-legal conditions and to spend all its energies towards the penetration of the masses. In such a situation the old narrow circle mentality with its corresponding structures had to give way to broader based Party branches.
Lenin insisted repeatedly on the need to throw the Party open to workers and youth. This, however, often met with resistance from the committeemen, who interpreted organisational principles from a narrow and mechanical point of view. The fact is that there is no cookbook to determine the structures and rules of a revolutionary party. The party structures and rules must change with changing circumstances. The elective principle and internal democracy cannot be viewed in the same light for an underground organisation and a party that seeks to gain a mass base in conditions of legality. Underground work necessarily imposes certain limitations on internal democracy, but only such that can be justified by the demands of security. In the autumn of 1905 Lenin demanded the opening up of the party. This was mainly because of the change in the objective conditions, but not entirely. The experience of the previous period had given him serious concern at the narrowness of the Bolshevik committeemen. The experience of the mistake over the Soviet had now convinced him of the urgent need for a shake up of the party and an increase of its working class composition. The party activists must find common ground and a common language with the masses, not cut themselves off from them.
The party’s structures had to be radically altered to take account of the new conditions. Many factory branches were set up to underline the new turn. The newly founded factory branches held open meetings. The Lessner factory branch recorded an attendance of 70 workers at one such meeting. The district committees in big industrial areas were split into smaller units, sub-districts. Further, a number of areas established workers’ clubs, either on a district or factory basis. In a series of internal conferences held in the autumn of 1905, the elective principle was introduced from top to bottom. This was a way of securing greater participation by the workers in the running of the party, but it was also a means of exerting pressure on the committeemen, of allowing fresh views and criticism to come from below and, if necessary, change the composition of the committees through an influx of fresh, new workers, so that the voice of the workers and their class instincts and experience in struggle could be heard and set its stamp on the party’s activities. A further development was the holding of city-wide aggregates, where the entire membership could get together and discuss the work. The district committees in big industrial areas were split into smaller units covering sub-districts. In some areas, the city committee even drew up their own rules in line with the special conditions prevailing in their areas. This was the case, for example, in Petersburg and Ivanovo-Voznesensk.
From all this we can see how extremely flexible Lenin’s conception of organisation always was. Democratic centralism embraces two apparently contradictory ideas – centralism and democracy. But in any strike, we see how both ideas can be combined in practice: the fullest freedom of discussion until a decision is taken, but after that, the fullest degree of unity in action. At certain moments in its history, the Bolshevik Party laid heavy stress on centralism, for example, during the long periods when it was forced to work in underground conditions. But in periods when they were permitted to work in ‘normal’ legal conditions, the Bolsheviks, as we see here, favoured the most open and democratic forms of organisation. The revolutionary party is a living organism, not a lifeless fossil. At some stages in its history the Bolshevik Party has laid emphasis on its centralist aspect but at other times the democratic element took precedence. Legal work opened up far broader vistas for agitational work and propaganda. Whereas previously the party press has reached a relatively small number of workers, it could now reach the masses with legal journals, meetings and other means. Meetings were held under the watchful eye of the party defence squads in workers’ clubs, libraries and other public premises.
In the course of 1905, and especially after the October Manifesto, big opportunities opened up for work in the mass organisations in a series of legal and semi-legal organisations – trade unions, embryonic factory committees, insurance societies, etc. In relation to the workers’ clubs, set up in the ‘days of freedom’, Schwarz writes:
The workers and social democratic workers’ clubs were mostly non-partisan organisations, often not even aspiring to formal party membership, concentrating on political and general education. (S.S. Schwarz, The Russian Revolution of 1905, the Workers’ Movement and the Formation of Bolshevism and Menshevism, p. 242.)
The Mensheviks originated this work. Their club at the Baltic Works in Petersburg had a membership of 120. Following their example, the mainly Bolshevik Vyborg district set up a club with 300 members. Normal membership for clubs of this type seems to have been around 200-300, at least in Moscow and Petersburg.
One indication of the growing revolutionary movement was the rapid mushrooming of trade union organisations. The task of penetrating the trade unions, a basic unit of working class organisation, was an absolute priority for the Social Democrats. Even the most backward layers were seized by the instinct to get organised. However, it was precisely the weakness of trade unionism in Russia that gave the Soviet its colossal authority and strength as the main proletarian organisation. The Soviets became the main centre of activity and to some extent displaced the trade unions in 1905. Nevertheless, trade unions still remained an important field of work, especially for the more skilled workers. This was particularly true in the big industrial centres, notably in Moscow and Petersburg. However, the Bolsheviks were often slow to take advantage of the possibilities, preferring to concentrate on the well-worn and familiar areas of narrow circle life. Lenin repeatedly protested against this organisational routinism. In this field also the Mensheviks had a head start over the Bolsheviks, much to Lenin’s dismay. The Mensheviks took initiatives setting up trade union organisations in Petersburg, Moscow, Saratov, Baku, Odessa, etc. The trade unions very quickly moved on to Social Democratic traditions. In general, the Social Revolutionaries were not in the running. However, naturally within the trade unions there were many non-party workers. That is after all the essential role of the trade unions: to unite the broadest layers of the class for struggle in defence of its own interests. The task for socialists is to fight for influence within them, gain a majority, and to exert influence over the broadest layers of the class.
There were many non-party trade unions, particularly in the south and Volga region. In the west, the Bund and the Mensheviks predominated. Moscow was a Bolshevik stronghold. The only reason why the Mensheviks could seize the initiative in Moscow was because the local Bolsheviks initially had a wrong position on the trade unions. They tried to set up separate trade unions with a definite party political identity and justified this with the aim of fighting against ‘non-partyism’. For example, they set up a Bolshevik trade union among the bakers, technicians, and fitters and turners. This was a radically false position which was subsequently criticised by Lenin in his celebrated work “Left-Wing” Communism: an Infantile Disorder, where he explicitly states that it is wrong for Marxists to try to split the trade unions and establish ‘revolutionary’ unions separated from the mass organisations. On this question also, the Bolshevik committeemen revealed their lack of understanding of Lenin’s position. Of course, the party must fight against ‘non-party’ trends, but the trade unions must embrace all sections of the working class irrespective of party affiliations. The only political trend that should be excluded from the trade unions are the fascists. Lenin wrote an article along these lines in Novaya Zhizn’ on 2 December, 1905.