Trotsky’s Break with the Mensheviks¶
Core Argument¶
This chapter traces Trotsky’s political evolution away from Menshevism, arguing that the break was not a matter of temperament or organisational preference but of fundamental political and philosophical divergence. Trotsky himself insisted that Bolshevism was above all “a philosophy of history and a political conception”, not a question of being ‘hard’ or ‘soft’. The decisive issue was the attitude toward liberalism. Trotsky’s article in Iskra in March 1904, which characterised liberals as “half-hearted, vague, lacking in decision and inclined to treachery”, directly provoked Plekhanov to demand his removal from the editorial board, ending his active collaboration with the Mensheviks.
The chapter presents Trotsky’s so-called ‘conciliationism’ not as a softness toward class enemies but as a desire to reunite the party on principled grounds—a position shared by many inside Russia, including leading Bolsheviks. On the question of the liberals, Trotsky writes that he was “with Lenin unreservedly”. The Mensheviks’ backing of the Zemstvo banquet campaign, which Trotsky saw as a dead end, crystallised the split in September 1904. He spent the whole of that year arguing with Menshevik leaders on two axes: the attitude toward liberalism and the need for unity with the Bolsheviks.
The chapter then shifts to the crisis inside the Bolshevik camp itself. The majority of Bolshevik ‘committeemen’—practicos like Krzhizhanovsky, Krassin, and Noskov—failed to grasp the principled stakes of the split. They regarded the émigré disputes as squabbles and, after Plekhanov’s defection, leaned toward conciliation on Menshevik terms. In summer 1904, the triumvirate of Krassin, Noskov, and Galperin issued the “July declaration”, effectively surrendering to the minority, accepting the legitimacy of the new Iskra editorial board, censoring Lenin’s writings, and prohibiting agitation for a Third Congress. Lenin was forced to break all relations with them.
Despite this apparent Menshevik triumph at the top, the chapter argues that the real balance of forces was different at the grassroots. An increasing number of Russian party committees declared for a new congress. Lenin convened a conference of 22 Bolsheviks in Switzerland in August 1904, issuing the appeal To the Party, which diagnosed the crisis as a transition “from the circle form to party forms” and identified the class forces behind the split: the intelligentsia’s individualistic anarchism versus the proletariat’s discipline. By autumn, 12 of 20 voting committees backed a congress. A new leading team emerged—Bogdanov, Lunacharsky, Olminsky—and the first truly Bolshevik newspaper, Vperyod, was launched on 22 December 1904, with funds scraped together from personal sacrifice. The chapter closes by noting the contrast with Menshevik resources: control of Iskra, access to wealthy sympathisers, and unscrupulous use of financial pressure against Bolshevik supporters.