Reunification¶
Core Argument¶
The chapter "Reunification" examines the period following the 1905 Revolution, when the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) formally reunited despite deepening factional antagonisms. The core argument is that the revolution had temporarily pushed the Mensheviks to the left, creating a genuine basis for organisational unity from below, but that this unity was fragile and ultimately unsustainable because the fundamental political divergence between revolutionary Marxism and opportunism remained unresolved.
The chapter provides substantial evidence of the party’s continued vitality under reactionary conditions. Drawing on Osip Piatnitsky’s memoirs, it shows that the Moscow organisation still operated on the elective principle, with factory committees, district committees, and city conferences electing the Moscow Committee through 1906 and most of 1907. The party maintained its mass links through legal and semi-legal fronts: trade unions, co-ops, workers’ insurance societies, and especially clubs. These clubs, the chapter argues, became the central hubs of party work—distributing propaganda, hosting Duma deputies’ reports, holding meetings, and developing into veritable “colleges of Marxism.” By the winter of 1906–7, club programmes included physics, mathematics, and technology alongside historical materialism and the history of socialism. Eva Broido’s memoirs are cited to show how evening schools supplemented the clubs, which were frequently closed by police but survived precariously until 1914.
The narrative thrust traces the spontaneous unification from below that occurred throughout late 1905, as Bolshevik and Menshevik organisations merged without waiting for leadership directives. By December 1905, a united Central Committee existed, a joint newspaper (Partiniye Izvestiya) was launched with three Bolsheviks and three Mensheviks on its editorial board, and a unification congress was announced. However, the chapter stresses that the December armed uprising had already knocked the fighting spirit out of the Menshevik leaders, who were retreating rightwards.
A notable polemic runs against the hagiographic Soviet historiography that portrayed Lenin as an omniscient leader who foresaw every step. The chapter insists that Lenin’s support for reunification was neither a sham nor a manoeuvre: he was genuinely unsure whether a complete break would be necessary, only reaching that conclusion in 1912. His approach combined extreme flexibility on organisational and tactical questions with implacable firmness on principle. The chapter thus argues against both the Stalinist myth of Lenin’s infallible foresight and against any reading that reduces Bolshevism to a predetermined trajectory.
The Fourth “Unity” Congress in Stockholm (April 1906) is analysed as a distorted reflection of the party’s real strength. The Mensheviks dominated with 62 delegates to the Bolsheviks’ 46, partly because Bolshevik strongholds in large-scale industry were harder hit by repression. The chapter lists the Bolshevik delegation, noting the presence of an obscure young Georgian delegate, Koba (Stalin). The Mensheviks used their majority to take all five seats on the editorial board of the Central Organ and seven of ten Central Committee seats. The main debates covered the agrarian programme, the Duma, armed uprising, partisan activity, trade unions, and party rules—all of which exposed the fundamental divide: reformism versus revolution, class collaboration versus independent proletarian policy. The Mensheviks’ capitulation to the liberal bourgeoisie, which had surrendered to constitutional monarchism, is presented as the decisive betrayal that made genuine unity impossible.