Comminism

9 Pages 2306 Words

lutionary agitator and a convinced Marxist. He exhibited his new
faith and his polemical talents in a diatribe of that year against the
peasant-oriented socialism of the Populists led by N.K. Mikhiaiovsky
(Wren, 3).
While Marxism had been winning adherents among the Russian
revolutionary intelligentsia for more than a decade previously, a
claimed Marxist party was bit organized until 1898. In that year a
ÒcongressÓ of nine men met at Minsk to proclaim the establishment of the
Russian Social Democratic Worker's Party. The Manifesto issued in the
name of the congress after the police broke it up was drawn up by the
economist Peter Struve, a member of the moderate Òlegal MarxistÓ group
who soon afterward left the Marxist movement altogether. The manifesto
is indicative of the way Marxism was applied to Russian conditions, and
of the special role for the proletariat (Pipes, 11).
The first true congress of the Russian Social Democratic
Workers' Party was the Second. It convened in Brussels in the summer of
1903, but was forced by the interference of the Belgian authorities to
move to London, where the proceedings were concluded. The Second
Congress was the occasion for bitter wrangling among the representatives
of various Russian Marxist Factions, and ended in a deep split that was
mainly caused by Lenin -- his personality, his drive for power in the
movement, and his ÒhardÓ philosophy of the disciplined party
organization. At the close of the congress Lenin commanded a temporary
majority for his faction and seized upon the label ÒBolshevikÓ (Russian
for Majority), while his opponents who inclined to the ÒsoftÓ or more
democratic position became known as the ÒMensheviksÓ or minority
(Daniels, 19).
Though born only in 1879, Trotsky had gained a leading place
among the Russian Social-Democrats by the time of the Second party
Congress in 1903. He represented ultra-radical sentim...