Despite the remorseless advance of reaction, the RSDLP still maintained its structures and its basic cadres intact throughout 1906 and even maintained an open organisation. In his memoirs, Osip Piatnitsky describes the Moscow organisation where he worked in 1906, from which it is clear that the elective principle was still in place at that time:
Some of the districts were divided into sub-districts. The districts and sub-districts were connected with the factory meetings (now cells) and with the factory committees and commissions (now cell bureaux). The representatives of the district factory committees heard the reports of the district and Moscow Committees, elected a district committee, and sent representatives to the city conferences at which the Moscow Committee was elected from 1906 to nearly the end of 1907. (O. Piatnitsky, Zapiski Bol’shevika, pp. 101-2.)
Under the prevailing conditions the importance of work in legal and semi-legal organisations of all kinds is self-evident. The party participated in all manner of work, not just the trade unions, but co-ops, workers’ insurance societies, and also cultural activities, which served to maintain its links with the masses. Both the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks made great use of clubs, which acted as fronts for the work of the revolutionaries.
The most important centres of party work were our clubs. In them we concentrated all our propaganda activities: our propaganda was distributed from them, and then the workers came to hear lectures on current affairs. There, too, our members in the Duma came to report to us on their work. Virtually all the organisational work was centred on these clubs – general and special party meetings were held there, party publications were distributed from there, these were the ‘addresses’ of the local district and sub-district branches, there all local news was collected, from there speakers were sent to factory meetings. And these were also the places where enlightened workers – men and women – could meet for friendly exchange of ideas and to read books and newspapers. All clubs aimed above all at having good libraries. And eventually they also encouraged art, there were music and song groups and the like.
The revolution aroused in the minds of the workers a thirst for ideas of all sorts, not just political in the narrow sense, but science, literature, art and culture in general. Broido explains:
At first, clubs were exclusively political, but soon their character changed. Propaganda meetings gave place to lectures and discussions of a more general nature, the clubs became ‘colleges’ of Marxism. Representatives of all club committees combined to work out systematic courses of lectures, to provide and distribute the necessary books and to supply book catalogues. Soon, groups of workers asked for courses on scientific subjects. And already in the winter of 1906-7 the programmes included physics, mathematics, and technology alongside economics, historical materialism, and the history of socialism and the labour movement.
In addition to the clubs there were many ‘evening schools’; they grew in number as the clubs attracted the attention of the police and were often closed down. These evening schools included some courses for the illiterate and were often attended by working-class men and women who were already playing influential roles in the movement. (E. Broido, Memoirs of a Revolutionary, p. 133 in both quotes.)
The clubs carried on a precarious, semi-legal existence right up to the outbreak of the First World War.
The revolution pushed the workers of both factions of the RSDLP together. Throughout the latter half of 1905 there had been a continuous and spontaneous process of unity from below. Without waiting for a lead from the top, Bolshevik and Menshevik Party organisations simply merged. This fact partly expressed the workers’ natural instinct for unity, but also the fact, as we have already seen, that the Menshevik leaders had been pushed to the left by pressure from their own rank and file. By December 1905 the two leaderships had effectively re-united. There was now one united Central Committee. A unification Congress was announced and the first issue of a joint organ published, called Partiniye Izvestiya (Party News). On the editorial board there were three Bolsheviks (Lenin, Lunacharsky, and VA Bazarov), and three Mensheviks (Dan, Martov, and Martynov). But the December events had knocked the fighting spirit out of the Menshevik leaders, who were already moving back to the right, placing a large question mark over prospects for unity.
Lenin was in favour of organisational unity, but did not for a moment abandon the ideological struggle, maintaining a firm position on all the basic questions of tactics and perspectives. This was entirely characteristic of Lenin’s whole approach – extreme flexibility on all organisational and tactical questions combined with an absolutely implacable attitude on all questions of principle and theory. However, we must be careful not to read into the history of Bolshevism intentions and ideas derived from our knowledge of subsequent events. For many years, the official Soviet histories presented the role of Lenin as that of an all-seeing, all-knowing Leader who foresaw everything in advance and guided the party with a sure hand towards the goal of ultimate victory. From this kind of hagiography, no understanding of the real Lenin can be gained. The whole history of Bolshevism remains shrouded in mystery, like a fairy story or a religious myth. It was neither. In fact, far from having an absolutely clear idea of where he was going at this time, Lenin was still very unsure as to how things were going to turn out. Of course, he was very clear on the need to stand firm on the basic ideas and revolutionary principles of Marxism, and also on the need to maintain the Bolsheviks as the consistently revolutionary wing of the RSDLP. But his support for reunification was neither a sham nor a manoeuvre. On the basis of the revolution, the Mensheviks had moved far to the left, and it was not at all clear how this would end up. Lenin was not yet clear in his own mind that it would be necessary to make a complete break, and did not finally come to this conclusion until 1912. It is entirely false to present the picture in any other way.
In fact, while the Party was formally united, from the outset it was divided into two opposing tendencies – the revolutionary and the opportunist wings. Reformism or revolution, class collaboration or an independent proletarian policy: these were the basic questions which separated Bolshevism from Menshevism. The basic differences immediately emerged over the attitude to the Duma and to the bourgeois parties. The Mensheviks stood for capitulation to the liberal bourgeoisie, which in practice had gone over to constitutional Monarchism and surrendered to the autocracy. For two months a heated discussion raged over different resolutions. The main working class centres supported the Bolshevik platform. But this was a very different Party to that of the past. Even the debates of the Third Congress one year earlier now seemed like ancient history. It was as if a whole epoch had been compressed into 12 months. There could be no question of maintaining the old narrow circle structures and mentality. The committeemen were increasingly elbowed aside by fresh workers and youth. The revolution had mobilised millions around the banner of Social Democracy. It was impossible and undesirable to maintain the old setup where delegates had been elected from narrow groups of professional revolutionaries (the ‘committees’). Now the Party had to be organised on a much wider basis, and on strictly democratic principles. The size of the Party is revealed by the ratio of members to delegates at the Fourth Party Congress – one to every 300 members.
The Fourth ‘Unity’ Congress was held from 10 to 25 April, 1906, in Stockholm, whence they had been invited by the Swedish Social Democrats. The general conditions of reaction undoubtedly gave rise to a distortion in the representation of the rival factions. Some Bolshevik branches were unable to send delegates through financial difficulties. Repression created other difficulties. As a general rule, the areas dominated by the Mensheviks, that is, small-scale industry and small towns, were less hard hit by reaction, which had a disproportionate effect on the Bolsheviks. Arrests, imprisonment and general disruption of party branches meant that the Bolsheviks were under-represented at the Fourth Congress, which was dominated by the Mensheviks. There were a total of 112 delegates with full voting rights and 22 consultative, representing 62 organisations. Also present were the representatives of national Social Democratic organisations (Poland and Lithuania, Latvia, Finland, Ukraine, and the Bund, and also the Bulgarian SDRP). The Bolsheviks had 46, the Mensheviks 62. In addition there was a small number of conciliators. Trotsky was in prison. Among the Bolshevik delegation – Lenin, Krassin, Gusev, Lunacharsky, Shaumyan, Bubnov, Krupskaya, Lyadov, A.I. Rykov, A.P. Smirnov, Frunze, Dzerzhinsky, and an obscure young Georgian with the alias Koba, later known to history by the name of Stalin.
The main issues debated at the Stockholm congress were the agrarian programme, the current situation and the tasks of the proletariat, attitude to the Duma, armed uprising, the partisan movement, the trade unions, the nature of the Social Democratic organisations, and the Party rules. The Mensheviks lost no time in seizing the advantage afforded by their majority. In a report of the congress written in May 1906, Lenin recalls that:
The elections at the Congress took only a few minutes. Virtually, everything had been arranged before the general sessions. The Mensheviks took all five seats on the editorial board of the Central Organ. As for the Central Committee, we agreed to elect three persons to it, the other seven being Mensheviks. What the position of these three will be, as a kind of supervisors and guardians of the rights of the opposition, is something that only the future can tell. (LCW, Report on the Unity Congress of the RSDLP, vol. 10, p. 375.)