Menchevism

A faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) between 1903 to 1912, and after 1912 as a party of that name. during the second congress of the RSDLP, a broad split appeared between Lenin and his supporters - Lenin preferred personal participation in a Party organisation while Martov and Axelrod preferred less stringent requirements for membership. Lenin, through his charismatic rhetoric and uncompromising programme was able to capture the majority of the votes in the party, hence, the name Bolshevik. The minority group were the Mensheviks.

the split between the two branches were long standing, and had to do with issues both pragmatic and based in history (the failed revolution of 1905) and theoretical (issues of class leadership, class alliances, and bourgeois democracy). The Bolsheviks felt that the working class should lead it in an alliance with the peasantry, where the Party acts as extreme revolutionary opposition, while the Menchevik vision was one of a bourgeois liberal revolution. The Menchevik vision was more along that of Western Democracies, and a gradualist approach to socialism.

Many Mencheviks left the party after the defeat of 1905 and joined more legal opposition organisations. After a while, Lenin's patience wore out with their compromising and in 1908 called the Mencheviks "liquidationists" and this eventually led to the Bolsheviks forming their own party in 1912. The Mensheviks further split in 1914 with the advent of the war. Most Mencheviks opposed the war, but a vocal right-wing minority supported it in terms of "national defence". After the revolution of 1917, most Mencheviks supported the war effort under the slogan "defence of the revolution". The left wing of the party, led by Martov[?], was strongly critical of this position, and was completely aghast at the party's decision to join a bourgeois socialist coalition government.

This split in the party crippled their popularity, and they recieved less than 3% of the vote compared to the Bolshevik's 20%. The right wing of the Menchevik party supported right-wing actions against the bolsheviks, while the left wing, the marjority of the Mencheviks at that point, supported the Left in the ensuing civil war.

The Bolsheviks won the civil war and subjected the Mencheviks to great repression. Menchevism were finally made illegal after the Kronstadt Revolution of 1921[?]. A number of Prominent Mensheviks emigrated thereafter. Martov went to Germany, where he died in 1923.