Confusion in the Ranks¶
Core Argument¶
This chapter dismantles the caricature of Lenin as a ruthless dictator cynically manoeuvring to concentrate power, instead presenting a figure who agonised over the split with Martov and repeatedly sought reconciliation. Krupskaya's memoirs provide the emotional core: Lenin's unfinished letter to Krzhizhanovsky, his refusal to post it, his pleasure when Martov took a correct line in Paris in 1910, and his sad remark, during his own final illness, that "they say Martov is dying too". The chapter insists that personal spitefulness was foreign to Lenin, who could recognise talent in others and did not easily give them up.
The evidence for Lenin's conciliatory efforts is substantial. Immediately after the Congress, he approached Martov for agreement; Martov's own letter to Axelrod records Lenin stating he was prepared to resign if the old Editorial Board decided it, and offering to work twice as hard as a collaborator. Krupskaya notes that Lenin 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. The chapter draws on Piatnitsky's memoirs to capture the bewilderment of the rank and file: "My logic was with the Majority, but my feelings, so to speak, were with the minority." Lunacharsky's recollection — "the news of the split hit us like a bolt from the blue" — reinforces the sense that the real significance of the division was unclear even to the principal protagonists.
The chapter's polemical thrust is directed against the Martovites, whose behaviour is characterised as reflecting "the hurt pride of individualist intellectuals unwilling to submit their personal inclinations to the will of the majority." The minority's campaign — setting up a 'Bureau of the Minority', publishing factional literature, boycotting party work — is presented as an "insensate attempt, unworthy of Party members" to disrupt the organisation. The chapter draws a line from the accidental bloc between the "softs" and the Economist right wing at the Congress to their gradual fusion, citing the Economist Akimov's malicious observation that even the Mensheviks admitted they could "learn a great deal from the Economists."
The narrative climax is Plekhanov's defection. Having initially sided with Lenin and denounced the minority, Plekhanov's nerve faltered: "I cannot fire against my own comrades. Better a bullet in the brain than a split." The chapter diagnoses this as a failure of will — Trotsky's image of "a watch with a broken spring" — and locates it in the "dead sea of émigré life that drags one to the bottom." Plekhanov's capitulation gave the minority control of Iskra, the League Abroad and the Party Council, leaving the Bolsheviks isolated and deprived of a voice, with Kautsky dismissing their claims because "Plekhanov and Axelrod we all know very well." The split, the chapter argues, was not yet political but temperamental — the "hards" versus the "softs" — though the germs of future division were already present in 1903.