Bolsheviks

gigatos | March 26, 2022

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Summary

The Bolsheviks were the radical wing (faction) of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party after it split into the Bolshevik and Menshevik factions (a half-joking nickname that had been popular in the early 20th century – Becky).

“Bolsheviks” began to be called after the Second Congress of the RSDLP the group that gained a majority in the elections to the Central Committee of the party. The Bolsheviks sought to create a party of professional revolutionaries, while the Mensheviks feared the criminalization of the party and tended toward legitimate methods of struggle against autocracy (reformism). Remaining on the basis of Marxism, Bolshevism at the same time absorbed elements of ideology and practice of the revolutionaries of the second half of the 19th century (S. G. Nechaev, P. N. Tkachev, N. G. Chernyshevsky) and had much in common with such domestic leftist radical currents as Narodnikism and anarchism. The Bolsheviks used the experience of the French Revolution, first of all the period of the Jacobin dictatorship, and their leader Vladimir Lenin contrasted the Bolsheviks-“Jacobins” with the Mensheviks-“Girondists.

The actual split occurred in 1912, when Lenin refused to seek compromise with other currents in the RSDLP and went to break with them. At the Prague conference in January 1912 (its delegates were mostly Bolsheviks), the exclusion from the party of the “liquidators,” who were oriented toward building a legal party, was proclaimed. The Bolsheviks actually became an independent party. In 1913, Bolshevik deputies to the State Duma withdrew from the merged Social Democratic faction and formed an independent Duma faction. Finally, the Bolsheviks became a separate party, the RSDLP(b) (the name of the party was not officially adopted at the congress or conference) in the spring of 1917. In contrast to the Bolsheviks, who called themselves by that name from the spring of 1917 until the 19th Congress of the VKP(b) ((b) in the names of the RCP(b), VKP(b), meant “Bolsheviks”), the word “Mensheviks,” first used by Lenin in articles of 1905, was always informal – the party called itself RSDLP, and from August 1917 to April 1918 RSDLP (united).

A number of researchers characterize the Bolsheviks as a radical-extremist political current.

The split of the RSDLP into Bolsheviks and Mensheviks occurred at the Second Congress of the RSDLP (July 1903, Brussels-London). At that congress two main groups of delegates stood out: Lenin”s supporters and those of Yu. The ideological differences between Lenin”s supporters and Martov”s supporters concerned four questions. The first was the question of including the demand for the dictatorship of the proletariat in the program of the party. Lenin”s supporters were for the inclusion of this demand, Martov”s supporters were against it (Akimov (V. P. Makhnovets), Pikker (A. S. Martynov) and the Bundovian Liber referred to the fact that this point was missing in the programs of the West European social-democratic parties). The second issue was the inclusion in the party program of demands on the agrarian question. Lenin”s supporters were for the inclusion of these demands in the program; Martov”s supporters were against their inclusion. Some of Martov”s supporters (the Polish Social-Democrats and the Bund), moreover, wanted to exclude from the program the demand for the right of nations to self-determination, because they believed that it was impossible to fairly divide Russia into national states, and that Russians, Poles and Jews would be discriminated in all states. In addition, the Martovtsy opposed that every member of the party should permanently work in one of its organizations. They wanted a less rigid organization, whose members could participate in party work at will. In the questions concerning the program of the party, Lenin”s supporters won; in the question of membership in organizations, Martov”s supporters won.

Lenin wanted a cohesive, militant, clearly organized, disciplined proletarian party. The Martovians stood for a looser association, which allows an increase in the number of party supporters, which was in accordance with the resolution of the 2nd Congress of the RSDLP: “social democracy must support the bourgeoisie as it is revolutionary or only oppositional in its struggle against tsarism.” They opposed strict centralism in the work of the party and the granting of greater powers to the Central Committee.

In the elections to the governing organs of the Party (the Central Committee and the editorial board of Iskra), Lenin”s supporters won a majority, while Martov”s supporters won a minority. What helped Lenin”s supporters to gain a majority was that some delegates left the congress. These were representatives of the Bund, who did so in protest against the fact that the Bund was not recognized as the sole representative of the Jewish workers in Russia. Two more delegates left the congress because of disagreement over the recognition of the foreign union of “economists” (a movement that believed that workers should limit themselves to trade union, economic struggles against capitalists) as the party”s representative abroad.

Martov refused to work in the Iskra editorial board (Plekhanov, Lenin, Martov) elected at the congress at Lenin”s suggestion because of the failure to include members of the Labor Liberation group. After six issues, Lenin also left the editorial board, after which Plekhanov restored the editorial board of Iskra to its former, pre-election composition, but without Lenin (G. V. Plekhanov, Yu. O. Martov, P. B. Axelrod, V. I. Zasulich, A. N. Potresov). Then the Mensheviks also gained a majority on the Central Committee because of Plekhanov and the Bolsheviks Krasin and Noskov siding with them.

Lenin reacted to this by issuing “Step Forward, Two Steps Backward,” in which he criticized the Mensheviks” views on the organizational structure of the party and developed the doctrine of the party as the advanced, most conscious unit of the working class, and the Bolshevik faction as a whole by preparing for the 3rd Congress of the RSDLP (at which it hoped to overthrow the pro-Menshevik Central Committee). At the end of 1904, the Bolsheviks established their factional center, the Bureau of the Majority Committees, and began publishing their first factional newspaper, Vpered, which opposed the newspaper Iskra, which had become Menshevik in 1903.

The main differences in the lines of the Third Congress and the conference were two. The first difference was the view of who was the driving force behind the revolution in Russia. The Mensheviks believed that the revolutionary proletariat should act in coalition with the liberal bourgeoisie against the autocracy. According to the Bolsheviks, this force was the proletariat, the only class which benefited from the complete overthrow of the autocracy. The bourgeoisie, on the other hand, was interested in preserving the remnants of the autocracy in order to use it to suppress the workers” movement. From this some differences in tactics followed. First, the Bolsheviks stood for a strict separation of the labor movement from the bourgeois movement, because they believed that their unification under the leadership of the liberal bourgeoisie would facilitate its betrayal of the revolution. They considered its main goal to be the preparation of an armed uprising, which should bring to power a provisional revolutionary government, which would then convene a Constituent Assembly to establish a republic. Moreover, they considered a proletariat-led armed uprising to be the only way to obtain such a government. The Mensheviks did not agree with this. They believed that the Constituent Assembly could also be convened peacefully, for example, by decision of the legislative body (although they did not reject its convocation after an armed uprising). An armed uprising they considered appropriate only in the unlikely event of a revolution in Europe at that time.

The Mensheviks were ready to be satisfied with an ordinary bourgeois republic as the best outcome, the Bolsheviks advanced the slogan of a “democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry,” a particular highest type of parliamentary republic in which capitalist relations had not yet been eliminated, but in which the bourgeoisie was already pushed out of political power.

The split was not yet perceived as something natural, and the IV (“Unification”) Congress (April 1906, Stockholm) eliminated it. At the congress the question of the agrarian program came up. The Bolsheviks advocated the transfer of land into the ownership of the state, which would give it to the peasants for free use (nationalization), the Mensheviks – for the transfer of land to the local authorities, which would rent it to the peasants (municipalization). The Mensheviks constituted a majority at this congress. On practically all questions the congress adopted resolutions which reflected their line (municipalization of land instead of nationalization, participation in the Duma instead of dictatorship of the proletariat, condemned the December uprising), but the Bolsheviks succeeded in passing a decision to replace the March wording of the first paragraph of the Party Charter with the Lenin wording.

The indecisive actions of the Menshevik Central Committee elected at the Fourth Congress allowed the Bolsheviks at the Fifth Congress of the RSDLP to take revenge, to gain predominance in the Central Committee, and to fail the Menshevik proposals for a “workers” congress” in which social-democrats, SRs and anarchists would attend, and for trade union neutrality, that is, that trade unions should not fight politically.

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Role in Revolutionary Terror in the First Russian Revolution

On February 7, 1905, closely associated with the Bolshevik A. E. Karelin, G. A. Gapon addressed an “Open Letter to the Socialist Parties of Russia”, in which he urged them to unite in the fight against autocracy. The letter was sent to the International Socialist Bureau and circulated to all interested organizations. To ensure representation of the revolutionary parties, Gapon held preliminary talks with their leaders. Gapon met with representatives of the Mensheviks, the Bolsheviks (Plekhanov and Lenin), the Bund, the Liberation Union and various national parties and insisted on the use of terror and joint preparation of an armed uprising by all revolutionaries, which, given the mood of the workers, the leaders of the Social-Democrats were forced to agree to. Given the need to compete in terms of extremist revolutionary activity with the Social Revolutionary Party, which was “famous” for the activities of its Militant Organization, after some hesitation the Bolshevik leader Lenin, under Gapon”s influence, developed his position on terror. The Bolsheviks refused to create a united militant organization with other parties, as Gapon had proposed, or, as Gershuni insisted, to supply militants to the above-party Combat Organization of the Social Revolutionaries, but, like the Social Revolutionaries, who widely practiced terror, the Leninists created their own militant organization (known as the “Combat Technical Group”, “Technical Group under the Central Committee”, “Military Technical Group”). As the researcher of the problem of revolutionary terrorism Anna Geifman notes, Lenin”s protests against terrorism, formulated before 1905 and directed against the Social Revolutionaries, are in sharp contradiction with Lenin”s own practical policy, which he developed after the beginning of the Russian revolution “in the light of new challenges of the day. Lenin called for “the most radical means and measures as the most expedient,” for which purpose, Anna Geifman quotes documents, the Bolshevik leader proposed to create “detachments of the revolutionary army… of all sizes, starting with two or three men, should arm themselves with whatever they can (rifle, revolver, bomb, knife, knuckles, stick, rag with kerosene to set fire to…),” and concludes that these Bolshevik detachments were essentially no different from the terrorist “combat brigades” of militant Social Revolutionaries.

Lenin, under the changed conditions, was now ready to go even further than the Social Revolutionaries, and, as Anna Geifman notes, even went to the apparent contradiction of Marx”s teachings for the terrorist activities of his supporters, arguing that the fighting squads should take every opportunity to work actively, not delaying their actions until the general uprising began.

Lenin essentially gave the order to prepare terrorist acts, which he himself had earlier condemned, calling on his supporters to attack townspeople and other civil servants; in the fall of 1905, he openly called for the murder of police and gendarmes, Black Hundreds and Cossacks, the bombing of police stations, pouring boiling water on soldiers and sulfuric acid on policemen. The Bolshevik leader”s followers were not long in coming, for example, in Yekaterinburg terrorists under the personal leadership of Yakov Sverdlov constantly killed supporters of the Black Hundred, doing so at every opportunity.

As one of Lenin”s closest colleagues, Elena Stasova, testifies, the Bolshevik leader, having formulated his new tactics, began to insist that they be put into practice immediately and became “an ardent supporter of terror.

To the credit of the Bolsheviks” terrorist acts there were also many “spontaneous” attacks on government officials, for example, Mikhail Frunze and Pavel Gusev murdered Uryadnik Nikita Perlov on February 21, 1907, without an official resolution. They also had high-profile political murders to their credit. It is even alleged that in 1907 the Bolsheviks murdered the “uncrowned king of Georgia”, the famous poet Ilya Chavchavadze – probably one of the most famous national figures of Georgia of the early 20th century.

The Bolsheviks also had high-profile assassinations in their plans: Governor General Dubasov in Moscow, Colonel Riman in St. Petersburg, and the prominent Bolshevik A. M. Ignatiev, close personally to Lenin, even proposed a plan to abduct Nicholas II himself from Peterhof.The Bolshevik terrorist group in Moscow planned to bomb the train carrying troops from St. Petersburg to Moscow to suppress the December Revolutionary uprising. The plans of the Bolshevik terrorists included the capture of several grand dukes for subsequent bargaining with the authorities, who were already close at that time to the suppression of the December uprising in Moscow.

Some Bolshevik terrorist attacks were directed not against officials and police, but against workers with political views different from those of the Bolsheviks. Thus, on behalf of the St. Petersburg Committee of the RSDLP, an armed attack was carried out on the “Tver” tea house, where workers of the Nevsky shipyard, who were members of the Union of the Russian People, were meeting. At first two bombs were thrown by Bolshevik fighters, and then those running out of the teahouse were shot with revolvers. The Bolsheviks killed two workers and wounded 15.

As Anna Geifman notes, many Bolshevik speeches, which at first could still be regarded as acts of “revolutionary struggle of the proletariat,” in reality often turned into ordinary criminal acts of individual violence.Analyzing the terrorist activities of the Bolsheviks during the first Russian Revolution, historian and researcher Anna Geifman concludes that for the Bolsheviks terror was an effective and often used at different levels of the revolutionary hierarchy”.

In addition to individuals specializing in political assassinations in the name of the revolution, there were people in social-democratic organizations who carried out tasks of armed robbery and confiscation of private and state property. Officially, such a position was never encouraged by the leaders of social-democratic organizations, with the exception of one of their factions – the Bolsheviks – whose leader Lenin publicly declared plunder to be an acceptable means of revolutionary struggle. According to A. Geifman, the Bolsheviks were the only social-democratic faction in Russia that resorted to expropriations (so-called “ecce”) in an organized and systematic manner.

Lenin was not limited to slogans or simply acknowledging the Bolsheviks” involvement in militant activities. Already in October 1905, he declared the necessity of confiscating state funds and soon began to resort to “ecce” in practice. Together with two of his then closest associates, Leonid Krasin and Alexander Bogdanov (Malinovsky), he secretly organized a small group within the Central Committee of the RSDLP (which was dominated by the Mensheviks), which became known as the “Bolshevik Center,” specifically to obtain money for the Leninist faction. The existence of this group “was hidden not only from the eyes of the tsarist police, but also from the other members of the Party.” In practice, this meant that the Bolshevik Center was an underground organ within the Party, organizing and controlling expropriations and various forms of extortion.

In February 1906 Latvian Social Democrats, close to the Bolsheviks, carried out a major robbery of the State Bank branch in Helsingfors, and in July 1907 the Bolsheviks carried out the famous Tiflis expropriation.

Bolsheviks close to Leonid Krasin in 1905-1907 played an important role in acquiring explosives and weapons abroad for all the Social Democrat terrorists.

Between 1906 and 1910, the Bolshevik Center led the execution of a large number of “exos,” recruiting performers from uncultured and uneducated, but eager to fight young people. The results of the Bolshevik Center activities were robberies of post offices, train station cash desks, etc. Terrorist acts in the form of derailing trains with subsequent robbery were organized. The Bolshevik Center received a constant inflow of money from the Caucasus from Kamo, who since 1905 organized a series of “exos” in Baku, Tiflis and Kutaisi, and was actually the head of the militant “technical” group of Bolsheviks. Formally, the head of the militant organization was Stalin, who did not personally take part in terrorist acts, but was in full control of the activities of the organization, in the practical plane led by Kamo.

Kamo”s fame came from the so-called “Tiflis expropriation” on June 12, 1907, when the Bolsheviks threw bombs at two postal carriages carrying money from the Tiflis City Bank on the central square of the Georgian capital. As a result, the militants stole 250,000 rubles. At the same time the Bolsheviks killed and wounded dozens of passers-by.

Kamo”s Caucasian organization was not the only militant group of the Bolsheviks; several combat units operated in the Urals, where since the beginning of the 1905 revolution the Bolsheviks had carried out over a hundred expropriations, attacking postal and factory offices, public and private foundations, artels and liquor stores. The largest action was on August 26, 1909, a raid on a mail train at the Miass station. During the action, the Bolsheviks killed 7 guards and policemen, stole bags of about 60,000 rubles and 24 kg of gold. The work of Kerensky”s lawyer, who later defended several of the participants in the raid of the militants, was paid for by the same stolen money.

The actions of the militant Bolsheviks did not go unnoticed by the leadership of the RSDLP. Martov proposed that the Bolsheviks be expelled from the Party for their illegal expropriations. Plekhanov called for fighting “Bolshevik Bakuninism,” many party members considered Lenin and Co. to be common crooks, and Fyodor Dan called the Bolshevik members of the Central Committee of the RSDLP a company of criminals.

The irritation of the Menshevik leaders toward the “Bolshevik Center,” already ready to strike at it, increased manifold after the tremendous scandal that proved extremely unpleasant for the entire RSDLP when the Bolsheviks attempted to swap the money expropriated in Tiflis by Kamo in Europe. The scandal turned the entire RSDLP into a criminal organization in the eyes of Europeans.On the other hand, when the Russian Mensheviks tried to carry out expropriations from Georgian manganese industrialists, amidst a complete breakdown of the police, the Bolshevik-affiliated Georgian Social Democrat Stalin and his group during the 1905-1907 revolution actually served as the security branch of the police department, returning money to the robbed and deporting the Mensheviks to Russia. Among the radicals of all strands of the RSDLP, embezzlement of party money was practiced, but especially among the Bolsheviks, who were more often involved in successful acts of expropriation. The money went not only into party coffers, but also into the personal purses of the militants.

In 1906-1907 the money expropriated by the Bolsheviks was used by them to create and fund a school of combat instructors in Kiev and a school of bombers in Lviv.

Radicals attracted minors to terrorist activities. This phenomenon intensified after the 1905 violence. Extremists used children to perform a variety of combat tasks. Many militant groups, especially the Bolsheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries, trained and recruited minors, uniting future juvenile terrorists in special youth cells.The involvement of minors (in the Russian Empire the age of majority was 21) was also due to the fact that it was easier to convince them to commit political murder (because they could not be sentenced to death).

The terrorists passed on their experience to their fourteen-year-old brothers and other children, giving them dangerous clandestine assignments.The youngest terrorist helper was a four-year-old girl, Lisa, daughter of F. I. Drabkina, known as “Comrade Natasha.” This Bolshevik took her child for cover when she was transporting rattlesnake mercury.

On the morning of February 13, 1907, the manufacturer and revolutionary Nikolai Schmit was found dead in solitary confinement in Butyr prison, where he was held.

According to the authorities, Schmit suffered from a mental disorder and committed suicide by opening his veins with a hidden piece of glass. The Bolsheviks, however, claimed that Schmit was killed in prison by criminals on the orders of the authorities.

Nikolai”s sisters and brother became the administrators of the inheritance. By the time of his death, the youngest of the sisters, Elizaveta Schmit was the mistress of Viktor Taratuta, treasurer of the Moscow Bolshevik organization. Taratuta, who was wanted, arranged Yelizaveta”s fictitious marriage in the spring of 1907 to the Bolshevik Alexander Ignatyev. This marriage allowed Yelizaveta to enter into inheritance rights.

But the youngest heir to the Shmitov fortune, the 18-year-old Alexei, had guardians who reminded the Bolsheviks of Alexei”s rights to a third of the inheritance. After threats from the Bolsheviks, an agreement was made in June 1908 under which Alexei Schmit received only 17,000 rubles and both of his sisters gave up their shares of the total sum of 130,000 rubles in favor of the Bolshevik party.

The Bolshevik Nikolai Adrikanis married Catherine Schmit, the eldest of Nikolai Schmit”s sisters, but, having received the right to dispose of his wife”s inheritance, Adrikanis refused to share it with the Party. After threats, however, he was forced to give half of his inheritance to the Party.

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1907-1912

After the defeat of the revolution, the underground structures of the RSDLP suffered heavy losses as a result of constant failures, as well as the departure from the revolutionary movement of thousands of underground workers. Some of the Mensheviks wanted to break with underground work forever, and they proposed to transfer their work to legal organizations – the State Duma faction, trade unions, health insurance funds, etc. Proponents of this current were called “liquidators,” that is, people ready to liquidate the old illegal Social-Democratic Party. They included A. N. Potresov, P. B. Axelrod, V. O. Levitsky (Martov”s brother), F. A. Cherevanin, P. A. Garvey. The “liquidators” were opposed by groups of Mensheviks, called “Menshevik-partisans,” who demanded to preserve the illegal Social-Democratic Party at all costs (Plekhanov became their leader).

A breakaway wing of the Bolsheviks (the so-called “otzovists”) demanded only illegal methods of work and the recall of the Social-Democratic faction in the State Duma (the leader of this group was A.A. Bogdanov). They were joined by “ultimatists,” who demanded an ultimatum to the faction and its dissolution in the event of failure to fulfill this ultimatum (their leader was G. A. Aleksinsky). Gradually these factions rallied into the group “Forward”. The dissociation of the Bolsheviks from the Ozovists ended on June 17, 1909, at a meeting of the expanded editorial board of the newspaper Proletarian.

The Bolshevik opponents dealt them the most painful blow in 1910, at the plenum of the Central Committee of the RSDLP. Because of the conciliatory position of Zinoviev and Kamenev, who represented the Bolsheviks at the plenum, and also because of the diplomatic efforts of Trotsky, who received a subsidy for them to publish his “non-faction” newspaper Pravda, which had been published since 1908 (not to be confused with the Bolshevik newspaper Pravda, whose first issue came out on April 22 (May 5), 1912) the plenum took an extremely unfavorable decision for the Bolsheviks. It ruled that the Bolsheviks should dissolve the Bolshevik Center, that all factional periodicals should be closed, and that the Bolsheviks should pay the sum of several hundred thousand rubles allegedly stolen by them from the party. The Bolsheviks and Menshevik Party members have, for the most part, complied with the decisions of the plenum. As for the liquidators, their organs, under various pretexts, continued to come out.

Lenin realized that a full-fledged struggle against the liquidators within one party was impossible, and decided to transfer the struggle against them into the form of an open struggle between the parties. He organizes a series of purely Bolshevik meetings which decide to organize a party-wide conference. On May 27, 1911, Lenin”s supporter Nikolai Semashko, who was a member and treasurer of the Overseas Bureau of the Central Committee of the RSDLP, “destroyed” this body – he left it, taking with him both the cash and cash books, and documents relating in particular to the illegal transport of party publications in the Russian Empire. From June 10 to 17, Lenin, together with Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev, held a “meeting of the Central Committee members” in Paris, which effectively completed the split of the all-party centers. At this meeting, with the votes of three Bolsheviks (Lenin, G. E. Zinoviev and A. I. Rykov) and two Poles (J. Tyszka and F. Dzerzhinsky), an Organizing Commission was established, whose purpose was to prepare a Party (in fact, “purely Bolshevik”) conference.

Such a conference was held in January 1912 in Prague. All but two Menshevik Party delegates were Bolsheviks. Opponents of the Bolsheviks later claimed that this was the result of a special selection of delegates by Bolshevik agents and the security section of the police department, which believed that it would be better to control organized Bolsheviks with agents of the security section embedded in their leadership than motley and poorly disciplined Mensheviks. The conference expelled the Menshevik liquidators from the party and stressed that foreign groups not subordinate to the Central Committee could not use the name of the RSDLP. The conference also withdrew support from L. D. Trotsky”s newspaper Pravda, published in Vienna.

The Mensheviks organized a conference in Vienna in August of that year to counterbalance the Prague conference. The Vienna conference condemned the Prague conference and created a rather patchwork formation, referred to in Soviet sources as the August Bloc. But they considered themselves simply the former RSDLP. They did not add the letter (m) to the name.

1912-1917

After the formation of the RSDLP(b) as a separate party, the Bolsheviks continue both legal and illegal work, and do so quite successfully. They manage to create a network of illegal organizations in Russia, which, despite the huge number of provocateurs sent by the government (even the provocateur Roman Malinovsky was elected to the Central Committee of the RSDLP(b)), carried out propaganda and propaganda work and introduced Bolshevik agents into legal workers” organizations.

In the elections to the IV State Duma the Bolsheviks won 6 out of 9 seats from the workers” curia. In 1913 Bolshevik deputies to the State Duma withdrew from the united Social Democratic faction and formed an independent Duma faction led by Roman Malinovsky. After Malinovsky, fearing exposure, resigned as a deputy in May 1914, the faction was headed by Grigory Petrovsky.

With the outbreak of World War II, government repression of the Bolsheviks pursuing a defeatist policy intensified: in July 1914 Pravda was closed, in November of that year the members of the Bolshevik faction in the State Duma were exiled to Siberia. Illegal organizations were also closed down.

The ban on the legal activities of the RSDLP(b) during World War I was caused by its defeatist position, that is, open agitation for the defeat of the Russian government in World War I, the propaganda of the priority of the class struggle over the international one (the slogan “turning the imperialist war into a civil war”).

As a result, the influence of the RSDLP(b) in Russia was negligible until the spring of 1917. In Russia they carried out revolutionary propaganda among soldiers and workers, and issued more than 2 million copies of anti-war leaflets. Abroad, the Bolsheviks took part in the Zimmerwald and Quintal Conferences, which in their adopted resolutions called for the struggle for peace “without annexations and contributions,” recognized the war as imperialist on the part of all warring countries, and condemned the socialists who voted for war budgets and participated in the governments of warring countries. At these conferences the Bolsheviks led the group of the most consistent internationalists, the Zimmerwald Left.

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Legal publishing activities of the Bolsheviks

From December 1910 to April 1912 the Bolsheviks published in St. Petersburg newspaper “The Star”, published first weekly, then 3 times a week. On April 22 (May 5), 1912 the daily workers” newspaper Pravda began publication.

From December 1910 to April 1911 a monthly philosophical and socio-economic magazine “Thought” was published in Moscow, five issues were published. The last, fifth issue was confiscated, and the magazine was closed.

On Lenin”s initiative instead of the closed journal “Thought” in St. Petersburg from December 1911 to June 1914 was published a monthly socio-political and literary journal “Education”, 27 issues were published. The circulation of some issues reached 5,000 copies. Foreign editorial board headed by Lenin was in charge. The practical work on publishing was carried out by the editorial board in Russia. Since 1913 fiction department was headed by M. Gorky. The magazine was closed by the government.

From October 26, 1913 to July 12, 1914, and from February 20, 1915 to March 1918, a weekly magazine “Questions of Insurance” was published in St. Petersburg. It came out 80 issues. During the First World War the only legal Bolshevik publication in Petrograd. The magazine was issued under the guidance of the Central Committee and fought for the development of the insurance movement and health insurance funds. It also highlighted issues of insurance abroad. Circulation 3-5 thousand copies.

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Class composition of the Bolsheviks by the time of the revolution

Jane McDermid and Anna Hilliard cite the following data:

Before Lenin”s arrival

In February 1917, the Party numbered about 25 thousand people (according to revised data – about 10 thousand). In the period up to October of that year, its numbers grew to about 300,000.

The February Revolution came as much of a surprise to the Bolsheviks as it did to other Russian revolutionary parties. Local party organizations were either very weak or not formed at all, and most Bolshevik leaders were in emigration, prison, or exile. Thus, V. I. Lenin and G. E. Zinoviev were in Zurich, N. I. Bukharin and L. D. Trotsky in New York, and I. V. Stalin, Y. M. Sverdlov and L. B. Kamenev in Siberian exile. In Petrograd, the Russian Bureau of the Central Committee of the RSDLP(b), which included A. G. Shlyapnikov, V. M. Molotov and P. A. Zalutsky, was in charge of the small party organization in Petrograd. The Petersburg Committee of the Bolsheviks was almost completely defeated on February 26, when five of its members were arrested by the police, so that the leadership was forced to take over by the Vyborg District Party Committee.

On the day of February 27 (March 12), 1917, when the Provisional Executive Committee of the Soviet of Workers” Deputies was formed, there were no Bolsheviks on it. Concentrating their main forces in the streets, the Russian Bureau of the Central Committee and other Bolshevik organizations underestimated other forms of influence on the developing movement and, in particular, missed the Taurida Palace, where the petty-bourgeois party activists had concentrated and who took over the organization of the Soviet. Only two Bolsheviks, A. G. Shlyapnikov and P. A. Zalutsky, were included in the initial 15-member executive committee of Petrosoviet. On March 9 (22), 1917 Bolshevik fraction of Petrosoviet was organizationally formed (about 40 people, by the end of March – 65 people, by the beginning of July – about 400). Direct links between Lenin, being in Zurich, and party organizations in Russia did not exist, so effective coordination of party politics was out of the question. If on the question of the war the Bolshevik leadership in the capital generally agreed with Lenin (in the resolution of the Russian Bureau of the CC RSDLP(b) of March 7 (20), 1917 it was stated that “the main task of revolutionary social-democracy is still the struggle for turning this anti-people imperialist war into a civil war of the peoples against their oppressors – the ruling classes”, with which the Petersburg committee agreed), on the question of the government there was no such unity among the Petrograd Bolsheviks. In the most general terms, the position of the Russian Bureau of the Central Committee was almost identical with Lenin”s categorical rejection of the Provisional Government, while the approach of most members of the St. Petersburg Committee differed almost nothing from that of the SR-Menshevik majority in the Petrograd Soviet leadership. At the same time, the Vyborgsky District Committee of the Bolsheviks took an even more leftist position than Lenin and the Russian Bureau of the Central Committee – on its own initiative, it began to call for an immediate seizure of power by the workers.

Immediately after the revolution, the Petrograd Bolshevik organization concentrated its efforts on practical matters – legalization of its activities and organization of a party newspaper (March 2 (15), 1917, at the meeting of the Russian bureau of the Central Committee it was entrusted to V. M. Molotov). Soon after, the city committee of the Bolshevik party occupied the Kshesinskaya mansion; several district party organizations were established. (March 5 (18), 1917 the first issue of Pravda newspaper, the joint organ of the Russian Bureau of the Central Committee and the St. Petersburg Committee, was published. (March 10 (23), 1917 the St. Petersburg Committee established the Military Committee, which became the core of the RSDLP(b) permanent military organization. In early March 1917 Stalin, L. B. Kamenev and M. K. Muranov, who were in exile in the Turukhan region, arrived in Petrograd. By right of the oldest members of the party they took over the leadership of the party and the Pravda newspaper until Lenin”s arrival. Since March 14 (27), 1917, the newspaper “Pravda” began to be published under their leadership, immediately making a sharp turn to the right and taking up the position of “revolutionary defensiveness”.

In early April, just before Lenin came to Russia from exile, a meeting of representatives of various currents of Social-Democracy was held in Petrograd on the question of unification. It was attended by members of the central bodies of the Bolsheviks, Mensheviks and national social-democratic parties, the editorial board of Pravda, Rabochaya Gazeta, Unity, the Duma fraction of Social-Democrats of all convocations, the executive committee of Petrosoviet, representatives of the All-Russian Soviet of Workers” and Soldiers” Deputies and others. By an overwhelming majority, with three abstentions from the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party, it was recognized as “essentially necessary” to convene a unifying congress of the social-democratic parties, which must be attended by all the social-democratic organizations in Russia.

The Return of Lenin

After Lenin returned from exile, the situation changed. Lenin sharply criticized the alliance with the “defenseists,” calling it “a betrayal of socialism. Lenin expressed his views in his article “April Theses. Lenin”s ideas seemed so extreme to the Russian Bolsheviks that the Bolshevik newspaper Pravda refused to print the article. In domestic policy, Lenin put forward the slogan “All Power to the Soviets!” which implied that the party refused to support both the Provisional Government and any parliamentary system that might succeed it. In foreign policy, a complete renunciation of war with Germany and the dissolution of the tsarist army as well as the police and civil authorities. On April 8, 1917, the Petrograd Committee of the Bolsheviks rejected the “April Theses” by 13 votes to 2.

During the unfolding polemic on the possibility of socialism in Russia, Lenin rejected all the critical arguments of the Mensheviks, Social Revolutionaries and other political opponents about the unreadiness of the country for a socialist revolution because of its economic backwardness, weakness, lack of culture and organization of the working masses, including the proletariat, about the danger of a split in the revolutionary and democratic forces and the imminence of a civil war.

Also read, history – War in the Vendée

Speech by Kornilov

Kornilov”s Rebellion (in Soviet historiography – Kornilov Mutiny, Kornilovschina) – unsuccessful attempt to establish a military dictatorship, undertaken by the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Army, General of Infantry L.G. Kornilov in August (September) 1917 in order to restore “firm power” in Russia and to prevent with the help of military force the arrival of the left-wing radicals (Bolsheviks) to power. The speech took place against a background of acute socio-political crisis in Russia and the fall of the authority of the Provisional Government. Under these circumstances, Kornilov demanded the resignation of the government and the granting of emergency powers to it, having put forward a program of “saving the homeland” (militarization of the country, the elimination of revolutionary democratic organizations, the introduction of the death penalty, etc.), which was largely supported by Minister-Chairman of the Provisional Government A. F. Kerensky, but its implementation was recognized as “untimely.

Seizure of power

Before the Great October Socialist Revolution, the Bolsheviks had spoken under the slogan “All Power to the Soviets!” After October 25, 1917, however, power was in the hands of the Bolshevik government – the Council of People”s Commissars (Sovnarkom), headed by Lenin. The Sovnarkom actually usurped the power of the VTsIK – the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, in the name of which the October Revolution was committed. It is believed that in this way the transition was made from the power of the people, represented by the Soviets, to the power of party committees unaccountable to the broad masses of workers.

During the Civil War, all opponents of the Bolsheviks in the former Russian Empire were defeated (with the exception of Finland, Poland and the Baltic states, which had gained independence). The RCP(b) became the only legal party in the country. The word “Bolsheviks” remained in the name of the Communist Party until 1952, when the 19th Congress renamed the party, called by then the VKP(b), the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Trotsky and his supporters used the self-name “Bolsheviks-Leninists.

In the first half of the 20th century, the term “Bolsheviks” was sometimes interpreted broadly and used in propaganda to refer to the political regime in the RSFSR and, later, in the USSR (See propaganda poster from the Soviet-Polish War).

The term “Bolo” was used by British servicemen to refer to the Red Army during the Russian Civil War.

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In Nazi propaganda

Nazi German propaganda claimed that Bolshevism was closely tied to the Jews. The derogatory term “Judeo-Bolsheviks” was invented and widely used to describe representatives of Soviet power.According to the memoirs of S. A. Oleksenko, secretary of the Kamyanets-Podolsky underground regional committee:

Sources