Mensheviks
faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party
The Mensheviks were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) which split with Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903. Mensheviks held more moderate and reformist views as compared to the Bolsheviks, and were led by figures including Julius Martov and Pavel Axelrod.
The initial point of disagreement was the Mensheviks' support for a broad party membership, as opposed to Lenin's support for a smaller party of professional revolutionaries. The Bolsheviks gained a majority on the Central Committee in 1903, although the power of the two factions fluctuated in the following years. Mensheviks were associated with Georgi Plekhanov's position that a bourgeois-democratic revolution and period of capitalism would need to occur before the conditions for a socialist revolution emerged. Some Mensheviks, notably Alexander Potresov, called for the party to suspend illegal revolutionary work to focus more on trade union work (legal since 1906) and elections to the Duma; this was condemned by Lenin.
In 1912, the RSDLP formally split into Bolshevik and Menshevik parties.
History of the split
1903–1906
At the 2nd Congress of the RSDLP in August 1903, Julius Martov and Vladimir Lenin disagreed, firstly, with regard to which persons should be in the editorial committee of Iskra, the Party newspaper; secondly, in regards to the definition of a "party member" in the future Party statute:
Lenin's formulation required the party member to be a member of one of the Party's organizations
Martov's only stated that he should work under the guidance of a Party organization.
Although the difference in definitions was small, with Lenin's being more exclusive, it was indicative of what became an essential difference between the philosophies of the two emerging factions: Lenin argued for a small party of professional revolutionaries with a large fringe of non-party sympathizers and supporters, whereas Martov believed it was better to have a large party of activists with broad representation.
Martov's proposal was accepted by the majority of the delegates (28 votes to 23).
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