Tendencies in Russian Social Democracy¶
Core Argument¶
Digest: Tendencies in Russian Social Democracy
This chapter argues that the First World War acted as an unsparing test for Russian Social Democracy, stripping away all pretence and exposing the true character of every tendency. The patriotic wave that swept Europe claimed many casualties, including the anarchist theoretician Prince Kropotkin, who abandoned mutual aid for mutual destruction. In Russia, however, the balance of forces differed from the rest of the International: Bolshevism, the revolutionary wing, was immeasurably stronger thanks to Lenin’s prior struggle against opportunism, while reformism remained a weak and sickly plant. The war cruelly laid bare the chronic ideological instability of the Mensheviks, who splintered into conflicting trends ranging from the ultra-nationalist defencism of Plekhanov to the left-centrism of Martov.
The most dramatic case was Plekhanov, Lenin’s old mentor, who adopted such rabid chauvinism that he remained isolated even among his own faction. Plekhanov justified his position with sophisms, claiming that proletarians resisting Austro-German imperialism were conducting an international class struggle. Lenin, initially unable to believe the betrayal, confronted Plekhanov in open debate at the Maison du Peuple, reminding the audience of the anti-war resolutions of Stuttgart, Copenhagen and Basel, and calling for the conversion of the imperialist war into a struggle against the ruling classes. Lenin was the only speaker to oppose Plekhanov and faced a hostile Menshevik majority.
Far more dangerous, Lenin recognised, were the disguised chauvinists like Kautsky, who concealed their betrayal behind hypocritical Marxist sophistry. The Mensheviks stood to the left of most groups in the International due to Bolshevik pressure, adopting a centrist position that soon split. The majority, led by Axelrod’s Organising Committee, maintained an ambiguous Kautskyite stance, calling for unity with Plekhanov and Alexinsky while advising the Duma fraction to vote against military credits. Martov’s left wing, the Menshevik-Internationalists, held a genuinely internationalist position, refusing to accept the bourgeoisie as an ally of the working class. Lenin hoped for an alliance with Martov, for whom he maintained deep personal affection, but Martov halted halfway, refusing to conduct a struggle against Kautsky.
Trotsky, though not formally in any faction, took a consistent internationalist revolutionary stand from exile in Paris. With Monatte and Rosmer, he published Nashe Slovo, which campaigned for the Zimmerwald Conference and maintained an anti-imperialist struggle until banned by the French government. The chapter polemicises against the Stalinist classification of Trotsky as a ‘centrist’ during this period, insisting his position on the war differed in no fundamental sense from Lenin’s. What separated them was not political line but the question of party unity: Trotsky, supported by Lunacharsky, sought to unite all internationalist elements from Lenin to Martov, a project that foundered on Martov’s refusal to break with the Defencists. The Inter-District Group (Mezhraionka), dating from 1913, played an important but underappreciated role, adopting the slogan ‘war upon war’ independently of the Bolsheviks and building cells in eleven enterprises before being wiped out by arrests in February 1915. In 1917, the Mezhraiontsy joined the Bolshevik Party together with Trotsky.