In fact, even though the Mensheviks liked to identify themselves with the labor movement, both factions preferred to run the movement without worker interference: the Bolsheviks on principle, the Mensheviks in response to the facts of life.83 Martov correctly noted this phenomenon, but did not draw from it the obvious conclusion that in Russia a democratic socialist movement, run not only for the workers but also by them, was not feasible.
Given these similarities, one might have expected the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks to join forces. But this did not happen: notwithstanding spells of amity, the two drifted apart, fighting each other with all the passion of sectarians of the same faith. Lenin missed no opportunity to distance himself from the Mensheviks, castigating them as traitors to the cause of socialism and the interests of the working class.
This bitter animosity was due less to ideological than to personal reasons. By 1906, in the wake of the Revolution’s collapse, the Mensheviks agreed to adopt Lenin’s program calling for a centralized, disciplined, and conspirational party. Even their tactical views were not dissimilar. Both factions, for example, supported the abortive Moscow uprising of December 1905. In 1906, they were at one in condemning as a breach of party discipline the notion of a Workers’ Congress, advocated by Akselrod.84 Given the minute, often scholastic differences separating the two factions, the principal obstacle to reunification was Lenin’s overweening lust for power, which made it impossible to work with him in any capacity other than as a subordinate.
During the interval between 1905 and 1914, Lenin developed a revolutionary program that differed from that adopted by the other Social-Democrats in respect to two important issues: the peasantry and the ethnic minorities. The differences derived from the fact that whereas the Mensheviks thought in terms of solutions, Lenin’s concern was exclusively with tactics: he wished to identify and exploit sources of discontent for the purpose of promoting revolution. As we have noted, he had concluded even before 1905 that in view of the numerical insignificance in Russia of industrial workers, the Social-Democrats had to attract and lead into battle every group opposed to the autocracy, except for the “bourgeoisie,” which he considered “counterrevolutionary”: after the battle had been won, there would be time for settling accounts with these temporary allies.
The traditional view of the Social-Democrats concerning the peasantry, following that of Marx and Engels, held that with the possible exception of the landless proletariat, it was a reactionary (“petty bourgeois”) class.85 However, observing the behavior of Russian peasants during the agrarian disturbances of 1902 and even more in 1905 and noting the contribution which their assaults on landlord property had made to the capitulation of tsarism, Lenin concluded that the
From observations and talks, Lenin was led to the unorthodox opinion that the Social-Democrats had to promise the peasant all the landlord property, even if this meant reinforcing his “petty bourgeois,” “counterrevolutionary” proclivities: the SDs, in effect, had to adopt the agrarian program of the SRs. In his program the peasant now replaced the liberal “bourgeoisie” as the principal ally of the “proletariat.”87 At the “Third Congress” of his followers, he moved and passed a clause calling for peasant seizure of landlord property. After he had worked out the details, the Bolshevik program came out in favor of nationalizing all the land, private as well as communal, and transferring it for cultivation to the peasants. Lenin adhered to this program in the face of Plekhanov’s objections that the nationalization of land encouraged the “Chinese” traditions of Russian history which led the peasant to view land as state property. The agrarian platform, however, would prove of great value to the Bolsheviks in neutralizing the peasantry in late 1917 and early 1918, during the critical phase in the struggle for power.
