The caricature of Lenin as a ‘ruthless dictator’ and cynical manoeuvre, ruthlessly trampling on his former colleagues in order to concentrate power in his hands, does not correspond to the facts. In her Memoirs of Lenin, Krupskaya gives a vivid picture of Lenin agonising over the split with Martov:
At times he saw clearly that a rupture was unavoidable. He started a letter to Clair [Krzhizhanovsky] once, saying that the latter simply could not imagine the present situation, that one had to realise that the old relations had radically changed, that the old friendship with Martov was at an end; old friendships were to be forgotten, and that the fight was starting. Vladimir Ilyich did not finish that letter or post it. It was very hard for him to break with Martov. Their work together in St. Petersburg and on the old Iskra had drawn them close together… Afterwards Vladimir Ilyich had fiercely fought the Mensheviks, but whenever Martov’s line showed a tendency to right itself, his old attitude to him revived. Such was the case, for example, in Paris 1910 when Vladimir Ilyich and Martov worked together on the editorial board of Sotsial Demokrat (Social Democrat). Coming home from the office, Vladimir Ilyich often used to tell me in a pleased tone that Martov was taking a correct line and even coming out against Dan. Afterwards in Russia, Vladimir Ilyich was very pleased with Martov’s stand during the July Days [in 1917] not because it was any good to the Bolsheviks, but because Martov bore himself as behoves a revolutionary. Vladimir Ilyich was already seriously ill when he said to me once sadly: “They say Martov is dying too”.
This was typical of a side of Lenin’s character which is too often overlooked. Completely devoid of sentimentality, Lenin never allowed himself to confuse personal likes and dislikes with questions of political principle. But Lenin knew how to recognise talent in other people and did not easily give them up as a lost cause. Personal spitefulness was completely foreign to this man who all his life showed the greatest loyalty to other comrades. In the months following the Congress, Lenin himself made repeated attempts to re-establish unity, and even offered to make a series of concessions which, in effect, represented the abandonment of the positions won by the majority at the Congress. Krupskaya recalls that:
After the Congress, Vladimir Ilyich did not object when Glebov suggested co-opting the old editorial board – better to rough it the old way than to have a split. But the Mensheviks refused. In Geneva, Vladimir Ilyich tried to make it up with Martov, and wrote to Potresov, reassuring him that they had nothing to quarrel about. He also wrote to Kalmykova (Auntie) about the split, and told her how matters stood. He could not believe that there was no way out. (N.K. Krupskaya, Reminiscences of Lenin, pp. 98-99 and p. 98.)
No sooner had the Congress ended than Lenin approached Martov to try to arrive at an agreement. Martov wrote to Axelrod in a letter dated 31 August:
I saw Lenin once [since the Congress]. He asked me to give my suggestions about collaboration. I said that I would give a formal answer when we had considered this formal proposal together, but in the meantime, refused. He talked a lot about the fact that by refusing to collaborate, we were ‘punishing the Party’, that nobody expected that we would boycott the paper. He even stated in public that he was prepared to resign if that were to be decided by the old Editorial Board, and that he intended to work twice as hard as a collaborator. (Pisma PB Aksel’roda i YO Martova, p. 87.)
If it had been up to Lenin, the split could have been quickly resolved. But the almost hysterical reaction of the minority made an agreement impossible. Defeated at the Congress, they launched a series of violent attacks against Lenin and the majority. Martov published a pamphlet accusing Lenin of causing a “State of Siege” in the party. A heated atmosphere was engendered, out of all proportion to the importance of the issues apparently at stake. Osip Piatnitsky, who was in charge of the distribution of Iskra in Berlin, recalls the surprise and consternation in the ranks at the report-back from the Congress:
We listened to the reports of both sides about the Congress, and then immediately began the agitation in favour of one or the other trend. I felt torn in two. On the one hand I was sorry that offence had been caused to Zasulich, Potresov and Axelrod, removing them from the Editorial Board of Iskra… On the other hand, I was wholly in favour with the organisational structure of the Party proposed by Lenin. My logic was with the Majority, but my feelings, so to speak, were with the minority. (O. Piatnitsky, Zapiski Bol’shevika, p. 54.)
Piatnitsky was not alone in his attitude to the split:
The news of the split hit us like a bolt from the blue. We knew that the Second Congress was to witness the concluding moves in the struggle with Workers’ Cause [the Economists], but that the schism should take a course which was to put Martov and Lenin in opposing camps and that Plekhanov was to ‘split off’ midway between the two – none of this so much as entered our heads. The first clause of the Party statutes… was this really something that justified a split? A reshuffle of jobs on the editorial board – what’s the matter with those people abroad, have they gone mad? (A.V. Lunacharsky, Revolutionary Silhouettes, p. 36.)
The quotation by Lunacharsky, who was to become one of Lenin’s principal lieutenants in the next couple of years, was a faithful reflection of the reaction of the majority of Party members to the split at the Second Congress. The prevailing mood was against the split, the real significance of which was not even clear to the principal protagonists.
The confusion of the rank and file was understandable. At this stage there were no obvious political differences between the majority and minority. However deplorable the behaviour of the Martovites, whose spiteful attacks and boycotting of the work of the party reflected the hurt pride of individualist intellectuals unwilling to submit their personal inclinations to the will of the majority, the real differences between Bolshevism and Menshevism were far from being clearly defined at this stage. It is true that the germs of these differences were already present in 1903, but for the moment they had not yet acquired a definite political content. Rather, it was a difference in attitudes – as reflected in Lenin’s characterisation of the two trends as the ‘hards’ and the ‘softs’. However, the clash of these two trends undoubtedly foreshadowed the future split between Bolshevism and Menshevism, which only finally took place in 1912, after nearly a decade of ceaseless attempts on the part of Lenin to unite the party on a principled basis. Lenin himself explained the reason for the split in the following passage:
Examining the behaviour of the Martovites since the Congress, their refusal to collaborate on the Central Organ (although officially invited by the editorial board to do so), their refusal to work on the Central Committee, and their propaganda of a boycott – all I can say is that this is an insensate attempt, unworthy of Party members, to disrupt the Party – and why? Only because they are dissatisfied with the composition of the central bodies; for speaking objectively, it was only over this that our ways parted, while their subjective verdicts (insults, affronts, slurs, oustings, shutting out, etc.) are nothing but the fruits of offended vanity and a morbid imagination. (LCW, Account of the Second Congress of the RSDLP, September 1903, vol. 7, p. 34.)
Refusing all Lenin’s attempts at reconciliation, the Martovites pressed on with their campaign of agitation. They were particularly strong abroad. They had money and close contacts with the leaders of the European Social Democracy. In September 1903, Martov’s group took the first step in the direction of a split by setting up a ‘Bureau of the Minority’, with the aim of capturing the Party’s leading bodies by all available means. They began to publish their own factional literature for distribution in Russia. Despite all this, Lenin still pinned his hopes on reconciliation. On 4 October, 1903 a meeting was held between Lenin, Plekhanov and Lengnik for the majority, and Martov, Axelrod, Zasulich and Potresov for the minority. The majority were willing to make concessions, but when the minority reacted by demanding a total overturn of the Congress decisions, it became clear that agreement was impossible. To accept such a demand would mean putting the clock back to the situation which prevailed before the Second Congress.
Factional struggle has a logic of its own. By repudiating the Second Congress, and defending organisational formlessness under the guise of an alleged ‘struggle against centralism’, the minority’s position on organisational questions was gradually becoming indistinguishable from the views of the Economists with whom, only yesterday, they had been at loggerheads. The accidental ‘bloc’ of the softs with the Economist right wing at the Congress, which Lenin had already pointed out, by degrees turned into a fusion. The extreme Economist Akimov, with malicious irony, noted the approximation of the minority to the old opportunist views of Economism:
The move of the ‘soft’ Iskraites towards the so-called Economists on organisational and tactical questions is recognised by everyone except the ‘softs’ themselves. Yet even they are ready to admit that “we can learn a great deal from the Economists”.
Even at the [Second] Congress, the Union’s delegates [i.e., Economists] supported the Mensheviks and voted for Martov’s formulation. Today all the members of the former Union [i.e., the Economist-controlled Union of Russian Social Democrats Abroad] regard the tactics of the ‘softs’ as more correct, and as a concession to their own viewpoint. When it disbanded, the Petersburg Workers’ Organisation [Economist] declared itself at one with the Mensheviks. (V. Akimov, A Short History of the RSDLP, p. 332.)
The differences came to a head at the Second Congress of the League of Russian Revolutionary Social Democracy Abroad held in Geneva in October 1903. After the RSDLP Congress, the minority had tried to find a point of support for its position. The League of Russian Revolutionary Social Democracy Abroad was little more than a paper organisation – a couple of pamphlets had come out in its name, but its activity was next to nothing, a logical state of affairs since the centre of gravity was now in Russia. Immediately after the split, the Martovites decided to call a conference of the League in Geneva. This was done in a factional way; known supporters of the majority were not informed of the meeting, whereas supporters of the minority were brought from as far away as Britain. Lenin delivered the report-back of the Party Congress in measured terms, but was answered by a slashing attack by Martov, which poisoned the atmosphere from the outset.
At the Second Congress of the Party, it had been decided that the League would be the official overseas organisation of the Party, with the same status as a local Party committee in Russia. This clearly meant that it would be under the control of the CC. But the minority, which controlled the League, would not accept this, and approved new rules giving the League independence from the CC with a view to turning it into a base for factional work against the majority. Lengnik moved that this be referred to the CC and when this was turned down, the representatives of the majority, incensed, walked out of the congress.
Piatnitsky, then a young technical worker in Iskra, described his bewilderment at the embittered factional atmosphere at the conference, where the forces of minority and majority were evenly divided:
The Congress opened. The Mensheviks sat on one side, the Bolsheviks on the other. I was the only one who had not yet definitely joined one side or the other. I took my seat with the Bolsheviks and voted with them. The Bolsheviks were led by Plekhanov. On the same day, I think, the Bolsheviks, with Plekhanov at their head, left the Congress. I, however, remained there. It was clear to me that the departure of the Bolsheviks, the majority, from the Central Organisation and the Party Council would force the minority either to bow to the decisions of the Second Congress or break with it. But what could I do? Nothing. Both sides could boast of great leaders, responsible Party members who certainly ought to know what they were doing. While attending the sessions of the League Congress, after the departure of the Bolsheviks, I finally decided to adhere to the side of the latter, and also left the Congress. (O. Piatnitsky, Zapiski Bol’shevika, p. 63.)
At a hastily improvised meeting in a nearby cafe, Plekhanov indignantly denounced the behaviour of the minority and proposed a plan of action for a struggle against them. Nevertheless, in private, Plekhanov was filled with misgivings. Initially firm in defence of Lenin’s position, which he knew to be correct, Plekhanov’s nerve began to falter, as soon as it became clear that an unbridgeable gap was opening up between the majority and his old friends and colleagues. Had he done the right thing in siding with Lenin? Was it worth tearing the party apart for the sake of a few rules? Lenin and he had made every possible concession to the minority, but the latter demanded total surrender. What of that? What was so terrible about co-opting all the old editors back on for the sake of peace? After all, the old system, for all its faults, was better than this.
Lenin, too, was in favour of concessions, and even contemplated co-opting the former editors. But experience showed that every offer of concessions merely increased the intransigence of the minority. Reluctantly, Lenin picked up the gauntlet the other side had thrown down, because further retreats would do harm to the cause of the Party. The break with Martov had been extremely painful, even traumatic, for Lenin, who confessed to Krupskaya that this was the most difficult decision of his life. But for Lenin the interests of the Party, the working class and socialism were more important than any personal considerations.
Plekhanov was a different type altogether. The victim of “the dead sea of émigré life that drags one to the bottom” (NK Krupskaya, O Vladimirye Ilyiche, vol. 1, p. 54.), Plekhanov proved unable to make the transition to the new historical period, a period of revolution which made new demands on the party and its leadership. What was truly amazing was not so much that he capitulated, but that he had sided with Lenin in the first place. It is a tribute to the man that he at least attempted to make the transition, and not only on this occasion. Later, in 1909, he again turned to the left and entered a bloc with the Bolsheviks. But that was his last attempt before finally veering to the right, to end up tragically in the camp of patriotic reaction in the last few years of his life. Trotsky once remarked that, in order to be a revolutionary, it is not enough to have a theoretical understanding. It is also necessary to have the necessary willpower. Without this, a revolutionary is like “a watch with a broken spring”. That phrase accurately describes Plekhanov’s weak side, which, despite his tremendous contribution, finally undermined and destroyed him.
The evening of 18 October saw the break with Plekhanov. At a meeting of the majority, only days after he had proposed an all-out struggle against the Martovites, Plekhanov did a 180° turn and argued for peace at any price: “I cannot fire against my own comrades. Better a bullet in the brain than a split,” he exclaimed. “There are times when even the autocracy has to give in.” (Quoted in SH Baron, Plekhanov, p. 327.) He presented his demands in the form of an ultimatum: either they were accepted, or he would resign from the Editorial Board. Plekhanov’s defection was a heavy blow to the majority. With serious misgivings, but still hoping to facilitate unity, Lenin resigned from the Editorial Board shortly afterwards. However, far from uniting the Party, Plekhanov’s move had the opposite effect. The Martovites merely used their success to pass new demands: the co-option of minority supporters onto the Central Committee and the Party Council and the recognition of the discussion taken at the Second Congress of the League of Social Democrats Abroad. Having capitulated once, Plekhanov now gave in to all these demands, which, in effect, would overturn all the decisions of the Party congress.
The position of the majority looked extremely bleak. The minority now controlled the central organ, Iskra, the League Abroad and the Party Council. Only the Central Committee remained, theoretically, with the majority. But the majority was deprived of a voice. Gradually, Iskra ceased to publish the articles and letters sent in by the supporters of the majority. Meanwhile, the Mensheviks exploited to the full their contact and personal friendships with the leaders of the Socialist International. The Bolsheviks had a poor time of it in the international socialist press.
In his memoirs, Lyadov recalls a conversation he had with Kautsky in which the latter gave his voice to exasperation:
What do you want? We don’t know your Lenin. He’s a new man to us. Plekhanov and Axelrod we all know very well. We are accustomed to finding out about the state of affairs in Russia only through their explanations. It goes without saying that we cannot believe your assertion that suddenly Plekhanov and Axelrod have become opportunists. That’s absurd!