(sometimes called Menshevists
) were a
of the Russian
movement that emerged in 1904 after a dispute in the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party
(RSDLP) between Julius Martov
and Vladimir Lenin
, leading to the
splitting into two factions, one being the Mensheviks and the other being the Bolsheviks
. The dispute originated at the
Second Congress of the RSDLP
, ostensibly over minor issues of party organization.
supporters, who were in the minority in a crucial vote on the question of party membership, came to be called Mensheviks
, derived from the Russian word меньшинство (minority
), whereas Lenin's adherents were known as
, from большинство (majority
Neither side held a consistent majority over the course of the congress. The split proved to be long-standing and had to do both with pragmatic issues based in history, such as the failed revolution of 1905
, and theoretical issues of class leadership, class alliances, and interpretations of
. While both factions believed that a proletariat revolution was necessary, the Mensheviks generally tended to be more moderate and were more positive towards the
opposition and the dominant peasant-based Socialist Revolutionary party
2nd Congress of the RSDLP
in August 1903, Lenin and Martov disagreed, first about which persons should be in the editorial committee of the party newspaper Iskra
, and then about the definition of a "party member
" in the future party statute.
Lenin's formulation required the party member to be a member of one of the party's organizations, whereas Martov's only stated that he should work under the guidance
of a party organization. Although the difference in definitions was small, with Lenin's being slightly more exclusive, it was indicative of what became an essential difference between the philosophies of the two emerging factions: Lenin argued for a small party of professional revolutionaries with a large fringe of non-party sympathizers and supporters, whereas Martov believed it was better to have a large party of activists with broad representation.
Martov's proposal was accepted by the majority of the delegates (28 votes to 23).
However, after seven delegates stormed out of the Congress – five of them representatives of the Jewish Bund
who left in protest about their own federalist proposal being defeated
– Lenin's supporters won a slight majority, which was reflected in the composition of the Central Committee
and the other central Party organs elected at the Congress. That was also the reason behind the naming of the factions. (It was later hypothesized that Lenin had purposely offended some of the delegates in order to have them leave the meeting in protest, giving him a majority. However, Bolsheviks and Mensheviks were united in voting against the Bundist proposal, which lost (41 to 5).
) Despite the outcome of the congress, the following years saw the Mensheviks gathering considerable support among regular
and effectively building up a parallel party organization.
In 1906, at the
4th Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party
, a reunification was formally achieved.
In contrast to the Second Congress
, the Mensheviks were in the majority from start to finish; yet, Martov's definition of a party member, which had prevailed at the First Congress, was replaced by Lenin's. On the other hand, numerous disagreements about alliances and strategy emerged. The two factions kept their separate structures and continued to operate separately.
As before, both factions believed that Russia was not developed enough to make socialism possible and that therefore the revolution which they planned, aiming to overthrow the
, would be a bourgeois democratic revolution. Both believed that the working class had to contribute to this revolution. However, after 1905, the Mensheviks were more inclined to work with the liberal
democratic parties such as the Constitutional Democrats
, because these would be the "natural
" leaders of a bourgeois revolution. In contrast, the Bolsheviks believed that the Constitutional Democrats were not capable of sufficiently radical struggle, and tended to advocate alliances with peasant representatives and other radical socialist parties such as the
. In the event of a revolution, this was meant to lead to a
dictatorship of the proletariat
and the peasantry, which would carry the bourgeois revolution to the end. The Mensheviks came to argue for predominantly legal methods and trade union work, while the Bolsheviks favoured armed violence.
Some Mensheviks left the party after the defeat of 1905 and joined legal opposition organisations. After a while, Lenin's patience wore out with their compromising and in 1908 he called these Mensheviks "liquidationists
The Menshevik faction split further in 1914 at the beginning of
World War I
. Most Mensheviks opposed the war, but a vocal minority supported it in terms of "national defense
With the monarchy gone, many social democrats viewed previous tactical differences between the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks as a thing of the past and a number of local party organizations were merged. When Bolshevik leaders
and Matvei Muranov
returned to Petrograd from Siberian
exile in early March 1917 and assumed the leadership of the Bolshevik party, they began exploring the idea of a complete re-unification of Bolsheviks and Mensheviks at the national level, which Menshevik leaders were willing to consider. However, on April 3, 1917, Lenin and his deputy Grigory Zinoviev
returned to Russia from exile in Switzerland
and re-asserted control of the Bolshevik party by late April 1917, taking it in a more radical direction. They called for an immediate revolution and transfer of all power to the Soviets, which made any re-unification impossible.
In March–April 1917, the Menshevik leadership conditionally supported the newly formed liberal
Russian Provisional Government
. After the collapse of the first Provisional Government on May 2, 1917 over the issue of annexations, Tsereteli convinced the Mensheviks to strengthen the government for the sake of "saving the revolution
" and enter a socialist-liberal coalition with Socialist Revolutionaries and liberal Constitutional Democrats, which they did on May 4, 1917 (Old Style). With Martov's return from European exile in early May, the left wing of the party challenged the party's majority led by Tsereteli at the first post-revolutionary party conference on May 9, but the right wing prevailed 44–11. From then on, the Mensheviks had at least one representative in the Provisional Government until it was overthrown by the Bolsheviks during the
With Mensheviks and Bolsheviks diverging, Mensheviks and non-factional social democrats returning from exile in Europe and United States in spring-summer of 1917 were forced to take sides. Some re-joined the Mensheviks. Others, like
, joined the Bolsheviks. A significant number, including
and Adolf Joffe
, joined the non-factional
-based anti-war group called
, which merged with the Bolsheviks in August 1917. A small but influential group of social democrats associated with
) refused to join either party.
This split in the party crippled the Mensheviks' popularity, and they received 3.2% of the vote during the
Russian Constituent Assembly election
in November 1917 compared to the Bolsheviks' 25% and the Socialist Revolutionaries' 57%. The Mensheviks got just 3.3% of the national vote, but in the Transcaucasus they got 30.2%. 41.7% of their support came from the Transcaucasus. In Georgia
about 75% voted for them.
The right wing of the Menshevik party supported actions against the Bolsheviks, while the left wing, the majority of the Mensheviks at that point, supported the Left in the ensuing Russian Civil War
. However, Martov's leftist Menshevik faction refused to break with the right wing of the party, resulting in their press being sometimes banned and only intermittently available.
The Mensheviks opposed
, and in 1919 suggested an alternative programme.
During World War I
, some anti-war Mensheviks had formed a group called
.They were active around the newspaper
and took part in the Mezhraiontsy
formation. After July 1917 events in Russia, they broke with the Menshevik majority that supported continued war with Germany
became the hub of the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party (of Internationalists). Starting in 1920, right-wing Mensheviks-Internationalists emigrated, some of them pursuing anti-Bolshevik activities.
Menshevism was finally made illegal after the
of 1921. A number of prominent Mensheviks emigrated thereafter. Martov went to Germany
, where he established the paper
and, in 1923, died. The Messenger
moved with the Menshevik center from Berlin
in 1933 and then in 1939 to New York City
, where it was published until 1965.
The Great Events of the Great War: A.D. 1917. By
Charles Francis Horne. National Alumni [printed by J.J Little & Ives Company, 1920.
Lenin. By Mark Aleksandrovich Aldanov. E. P. Dutton, 1922.
The Mensheviks After October. By Vladimir N. Brovkin.
Cornell University Press, 1991
The Mensheviks in the
Revolution of 1917. By John D. Basil. Slavica Publishers, 1983.
The trial of the Mensheviks: the verdict and sentence passed on the participants in the
organization of the Mensheviks. By Antonov-Saratovsky, Soviet Union. Prokuratura. Centrizdai, 1931.
and the Mensheviks: the persecution of socialists
under Bolshevism. By
Vera Broido. Gower, 1987
The Mensheviks in the
Russian Revolution. By Abraham Ascher. Cornell University Press, 1976
Burbank, Jane (1985-01-01). "Waiting for the People's Revolution: Martov and Chernov in Revolutionary Russia 1917-1923".
Cahiers du Monde russe et soviétique.
(3/4): 375–394. JSTOR 20170079.
Smith, S. A. (2002-02-21).
The Russian Revolution: A Very Short Introduction. OUP Oxford. p. 17.
Lenin, V.I (1903).
Second Congress of the League of Russian Revolutionary Social-Democracy Abroad. Moscow. pp. 26–31, 92–103.
Johnpoll, Bernard K.
The Politics of Futility; The General Jewish Workers Bund of Poland, 1917-1943. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1967. pp. 30-31
"Lenin: 1906/ucong: Statement in Support of Muratov's (Morozov's) Amendment Concerning a Parliamentary Social-Democratic Group".
Oliver Henry Radkey, The Election to the Russian Constituent Assembly
What is to be done: The Menshevik Programme July 1919 | Spirit of Contradiction. Spiritofcontradiction.eu (2012-08-11). Retrieved on 2013-07-26.
Liebich, Andre (1995-01-01). "Mensheviks Wage the Cold War".
Journal of Contemporary History.
(2): 247–264. doi:10.2307/261050.
Geschichte der sozialistischen arbeiter-internationale: 1923 - 19. Berlin: Dt. Verl. d. Wissenschaften, 1985. pp. 336-337
- Abraham Ascher (ed.),
The Mensheviks in the Russian Revolution.
Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1976.
- John D. Basil,
The Mensheviks in the Revolution of 1917.
Columbus, OH: Slavica Publishers, 1983.
- A.M. Bourguina,
Russian Social Democracy: The Menshevik Movement: A Bibliography.
Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, 1968.
- Vera Broido,
Lenin and the Mensheviks: The Persecution of Socialists Under Bolshevism.
Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1987.
- Vladir Brovkin.
Dear Comrades: Menshevik Reports on the Bolshevik Revolution and the Civil War. Hoover Press, Mar 1, 1991.
- Vladimir Brovkin, "The Mensheviks' Political Comeback: The Elections to the Provincial City Soviets in Spring 1918,"
vol. 42, no. 1 (Jan. 1983), pp. 1–50. In JSTOR.
- Vladimir N. Brovkin,
The Mensheviks After October: Socialist Opposition and the Rise of the Bolshevik Dictatorship.
Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987.
- Ziva Galili,
The Menshevik Leaders in the Russian Revolution: Social Realities and Political Strategies.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989.
- Leopold H. Haimson
(ed.), The Mensheviks : From the Revolution of 1917 to the Second World War.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974.
- Leopold H. Haimson,
The Making of Three Russian Revolutionaries: Voices from the Menshevik Past.
Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
- André Liebich (de),
From the Other Shore: Russian Social Democracy after 1921.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997.