Liquidationism and Otzovism¶
Core Argument¶
Liquidationism and otzovism are presented as twin products of the same demoralisation that gripped the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) during the Stolypin reaction after 1905. The chapter argues that the petty-bourgeois intelligentsia, losing faith in the revolutionary potential of the working class, swung in two directions. Among the Mensheviks, this produced liquidationism: a mood of scepticism and doubt that expressed itself as a drive to abandon the illegal, underground Party and its revolutionary aims, and to subordinate the working class to the bourgeois liberals. The chapter identifies Potresov, Larin, Dan, Martynov, Axelrod, and Cherevanin as key figures who accused the Bolsheviks of extremism and advocated making the Duma the sole focus of activity, effectively abandoning the perspective of revolution. Others, like Zhordania, provided a ‘theoretical’ justification by arguing that the bourgeois-democratic character of the revolution required the bourgeoisie to lead it, a position the chapter dismisses as a scholastic caricature of Marxism that disguises a middle-class intellectual’s servile acceptance of big bourgeois rule. The chapter draws on letters from Potresov and Axelrod to demonstrate the collapse of morale, noting Axelrod’s suggestion in February 1908 that the Party should be considered from the perspective of its possible demise. By spring 1908, Mensheviks were disbanding underground organisations in Moscow, and by July, Martynov and Goldman were calling for the dissolution of the Central Committee in favour of an ‘information bureau’—a move Lenin characterised as the liquidation of the Party as a revolutionary force and adaptation to Stolypin’s laws.
The chapter’s core narrative thrust is that liquidationism found its mirror image on the left in otzovism (recallism) within the Bolshevik faction. This ultra-left trend, championed by Bogdanov, Alexinsky, Sokolov, Lyadov, and supported by Gorky, demanded the recall of the Party’s Duma deputies and a boycott of all legal work—trade unions, clubs, and the Duma itself. Lenin is shown waging an implacable struggle against this trend, which he correctly characterised as ‘liquidationism turned inside-out’. The chapter argues that under conditions of counter-revolution, refusing to use the Third Duma as a platform for revolutionary agitation would have reduced the Party to a sect. The polemic is directed simultaneously against the right-wing liquidationists and the ultra-left otzovists, with Lenin’s scorn reserved for the ‘weary’ intellectuals who justified their treachery with clever-sounding arguments. The chapter also defends Lenin’s concurrent struggle for Marxist philosophy against Bogdanov’s revisionism and ‘god-building’, insisting that dialectical materialism is the indispensable method of Marxism and that tolerating theoretical backsliding would have led to the liquidation of the Marxist party from within. The struggle against both liquidationism and otzovism is presented as the essential nature of the conflict between Bolshevism and Menshevism that culminated in the split of 1912.