The title question is a hard one for any honest student of Soviet history who has to rely on reference sources without an intimate knowledge of what this question really means. Approaching a question like this, our first task is to make sure that all terms in it are properly defined. The name of ‘Trotsky’ here points to a concrete historical person, no confusion about it, but the term ‘Menshevik’ is quite another story. We cannot proceed with an answer before we are clear about its definition. And here right away we run into a big problem. But first things first. Let us rush through them now.
According to my Webster’s Dictionary, “Menshevik was originally a member of the minority faction of the Social Democratic Party of Russia, who fought the more radical majority faction (Bolsheviki) from 1903 on.” Britannica sums up the term "Mensheviks" as the “non-Leninist wing of the Russian Social-Democratic Worker’s Party, which evolved into a separate organization.” Wikipedia provides the following definition:
"The Mensheviks were a faction of the Russian revolutionary movement that emerged in 1904 after a dispute between Vladimir Lenin and Julius Martov, both members of the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party. The dispute originated at the 2nd Congress of that Party, ostensibly over minor issues of Party organization. Martov’s supporters, who were in the minority in a crucial vote on the question of party membership, came to be called Mensheviks, derived from the Russian word menshinstvo, minority, whereas Lenin’s adherents were known as Bolsheviks, from bolshinstvo, majority."
Later in this entry, I will demonstrate that all these so-called definitions are horribly flawed and misleading. But before I do that, let us leave them at that for a short while and address the question whether Trotsky was a “Menshevik” (whatever it means!), or not. Trotsky himself categorically denies it in his writings, but every reputable source speaks against him in this matter. Here is Wikipedia again:
"Trotsky was initially a supporter of the Menshevik Internationalist faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party… He joined the Bolsheviks immediately prior to the 1917 October Revolution, and eventually became a leader within the Party."
My 1975 Britannica says this:
“At the Second Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party, held in Brussels and London in July 1903, Trotsky sided with the Menshevik faction advocating a democratic approach to socialism against Lenin and the Bolsheviks, rejecting Lenin’s dictatorial methods and organizational concepts aiming at immediate revolution… In 1907, after a second exile to Siberia, Trotsky once again escaped abroad… He remained active in Russian Social-Democratic émigré circles as a celebrated but isolated figure on the left wing of the Menshevik faction. As such, he engaged in intermittent polemics with Lenin and the Bolsheviks over organizational and tactical questions… Trotsky hailed the outbreak of revolution in Russia in February [1917] (March, new style) as the opening of the permanent revolution he had predicted… Trotsky reached Petrograd in mid-May [1917] and assumed the leadership of a left wing Menshevik faction… Following the abortive July Days uprising, Trotsky was arrested in the crackdown on the Bolshevik leadership carried out by Alexander Kerensky’s liberal government. In August, while still in jail, Trotsky was formally admitted to the Bolshevik Party…He was also elected to membership on the Bolshevik Central Committee. Trotsky was released from prison in September… and shortly afterward he was elected chairman of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies when the Bolsheviks… established a majority in it…”
Reading through this seriously confusing pile of information, numerous questions must be popping up, and we may just as well give up and resign to the authority of the sources, finding further investigation virtually impossible, unless we have an inside track on this subject, which our sources have failed to provide.
So, here is our inside track.---
What is a Menshevik? It is ridiculous to represent the Mensheviks as a legitimate party or as a party faction. It is a disservice to the historical memory of Russian Social-Democracy to do so. Menshevik, both singular and plural, is a fake word, a word of contempt and derision invented by Lenin, to distinguish it from another invented word, Bolshevik. Having joined the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party, Lenin sabotaged it by sheer trickery. Using a clever technicality, he declared himself, an audacious upstart, the majority, while all those respectably established, yet sorely inexperienced in dirty games, Russia’s Social Democrats were dubbed “the minority,” although they constituted an overwhelming majority vis-à-vis Lenin’s crowd.
Thus in actual terms Bolshevik, Majority, meant Lenin and his followers, while Menshevik, Minority, meant (in Lenin’s eyes, mind you, and in the eyes of Lenin’s Bolshevik followers) all those poor souls of Russia’s doomed Social-Democracy who somehow failed to recognize Lenin as their Great Leader, and obstinately refused to follow him.
Needless to say, none of the established Social-Democrats ever called themselves by Lenin’s term of abuse, and thus, there was never any “Menshevik” fraction in Russian Social Democracy. Alas, subsequent Soviet history was written by the victors, and the Western historians preoccupied with “bigger issues” saw nothing better for themselves than to simply follow the Bolshevik suit.
No wonder that Trotsky would refuse to identify himself as a former “Menshevik,” which was tantamount to calling himself a renegade. Being called an “Anti-Leninist” was another matter, although after the Bolshevik Revolution triumphed in Russia, he would try to deny that characterization too.
Now, as to the straight question whether Trotsky had been a Menshevik prior to the Bolshevik Revolution,--- yes, he had, according to the exact meaning of the word Menshevik. Interestingly, Britannica’s definition of “Menshevik” above, despite its overall conspicuous inadequacy, has stumbled closer to the truth than any other source, by using the keyword “non-Leninist” in its definition.
Staying with Britannica, here is a curious fact of sorts. As it moves from earlier to later editions, it does not change the text too much in its revisions, unless it is warranted by the Zeitgeist, scientifically and politically speaking. Much of my 1975 text on Trotsky is being repeated verbatim in its most recent online edition, but a few cuts and changes have been made. Among them are the omissions of the following portions of the text quoted above:
“…rejecting Lenin’s dictatorial methods and organizational concepts aiming at immediate revolution…"
"...As such, he engaged in intermittent polemics with Lenin and the Bolsheviks over organizational and tactical questions…”
I am not anxious to speculate why Britannica would make these particular cuts, except to note that the cuts, whether deliberately or inadvertently, reduce the rather embarrassing emphasis on Trotsky’s anti-Leninism, with its corollary implication that it is hard to imagine how this Lenin’s nemesis of long standing could ever be considered as his potential successor…
My last question in this entry is this: Why was Trotsky, an established anti-Leninist figure, so easily allowed to join Lenin’s Bolsheviks, immediately attaining top positions in the Party? It is no secret that Lenin was a vengeful unforgiving egomaniac, yet he did not seem to mind his sworn enemy’s meteoric rise. Those of my readers who have not read my Trotsky posts yet, are urged to read them in conjunction with this discussion, but the straight answer should be this. Trotsky was welcomed to the party of the victors to be used, that is, to take the blame for anything that might go wrong with the Revolution. After all, back in 1905 already, Pavel Milyukov had identified (unfairly, I must say) “Trotskyism” as the scary Jewish face of Russia’s radicalism; and now, every ethnically-Russian Bolshevik (plus Lenin, who, although of mixed ethnicity, cared about it only inasmuch as he could use it as an effective weapon, plus Stalin, who, although ethnically a Georgian, was a consummate Russian Great-Power chauvinist at heart, plus quite a few others, in similar veins)--- was prepared to take full advantage of this newest, yet by no means novice, arrival.
According to my Webster’s Dictionary, “Menshevik was originally a member of the minority faction of the Social Democratic Party of Russia, who fought the more radical majority faction (Bolsheviki) from 1903 on.” Britannica sums up the term "Mensheviks" as the “non-Leninist wing of the Russian Social-Democratic Worker’s Party, which evolved into a separate organization.” Wikipedia provides the following definition:
"The Mensheviks were a faction of the Russian revolutionary movement that emerged in 1904 after a dispute between Vladimir Lenin and Julius Martov, both members of the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party. The dispute originated at the 2nd Congress of that Party, ostensibly over minor issues of Party organization. Martov’s supporters, who were in the minority in a crucial vote on the question of party membership, came to be called Mensheviks, derived from the Russian word menshinstvo, minority, whereas Lenin’s adherents were known as Bolsheviks, from bolshinstvo, majority."
Later in this entry, I will demonstrate that all these so-called definitions are horribly flawed and misleading. But before I do that, let us leave them at that for a short while and address the question whether Trotsky was a “Menshevik” (whatever it means!), or not. Trotsky himself categorically denies it in his writings, but every reputable source speaks against him in this matter. Here is Wikipedia again:
"Trotsky was initially a supporter of the Menshevik Internationalist faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party… He joined the Bolsheviks immediately prior to the 1917 October Revolution, and eventually became a leader within the Party."
My 1975 Britannica says this:
“At the Second Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party, held in Brussels and London in July 1903, Trotsky sided with the Menshevik faction advocating a democratic approach to socialism against Lenin and the Bolsheviks, rejecting Lenin’s dictatorial methods and organizational concepts aiming at immediate revolution… In 1907, after a second exile to Siberia, Trotsky once again escaped abroad… He remained active in Russian Social-Democratic émigré circles as a celebrated but isolated figure on the left wing of the Menshevik faction. As such, he engaged in intermittent polemics with Lenin and the Bolsheviks over organizational and tactical questions… Trotsky hailed the outbreak of revolution in Russia in February [1917] (March, new style) as the opening of the permanent revolution he had predicted… Trotsky reached Petrograd in mid-May [1917] and assumed the leadership of a left wing Menshevik faction… Following the abortive July Days uprising, Trotsky was arrested in the crackdown on the Bolshevik leadership carried out by Alexander Kerensky’s liberal government. In August, while still in jail, Trotsky was formally admitted to the Bolshevik Party…He was also elected to membership on the Bolshevik Central Committee. Trotsky was released from prison in September… and shortly afterward he was elected chairman of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies when the Bolsheviks… established a majority in it…”
Reading through this seriously confusing pile of information, numerous questions must be popping up, and we may just as well give up and resign to the authority of the sources, finding further investigation virtually impossible, unless we have an inside track on this subject, which our sources have failed to provide.
So, here is our inside track.---
What is a Menshevik? It is ridiculous to represent the Mensheviks as a legitimate party or as a party faction. It is a disservice to the historical memory of Russian Social-Democracy to do so. Menshevik, both singular and plural, is a fake word, a word of contempt and derision invented by Lenin, to distinguish it from another invented word, Bolshevik. Having joined the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party, Lenin sabotaged it by sheer trickery. Using a clever technicality, he declared himself, an audacious upstart, the majority, while all those respectably established, yet sorely inexperienced in dirty games, Russia’s Social Democrats were dubbed “the minority,” although they constituted an overwhelming majority vis-à-vis Lenin’s crowd.
Thus in actual terms Bolshevik, Majority, meant Lenin and his followers, while Menshevik, Minority, meant (in Lenin’s eyes, mind you, and in the eyes of Lenin’s Bolshevik followers) all those poor souls of Russia’s doomed Social-Democracy who somehow failed to recognize Lenin as their Great Leader, and obstinately refused to follow him.
Needless to say, none of the established Social-Democrats ever called themselves by Lenin’s term of abuse, and thus, there was never any “Menshevik” fraction in Russian Social Democracy. Alas, subsequent Soviet history was written by the victors, and the Western historians preoccupied with “bigger issues” saw nothing better for themselves than to simply follow the Bolshevik suit.
No wonder that Trotsky would refuse to identify himself as a former “Menshevik,” which was tantamount to calling himself a renegade. Being called an “Anti-Leninist” was another matter, although after the Bolshevik Revolution triumphed in Russia, he would try to deny that characterization too.
Now, as to the straight question whether Trotsky had been a Menshevik prior to the Bolshevik Revolution,--- yes, he had, according to the exact meaning of the word Menshevik. Interestingly, Britannica’s definition of “Menshevik” above, despite its overall conspicuous inadequacy, has stumbled closer to the truth than any other source, by using the keyword “non-Leninist” in its definition.
Staying with Britannica, here is a curious fact of sorts. As it moves from earlier to later editions, it does not change the text too much in its revisions, unless it is warranted by the Zeitgeist, scientifically and politically speaking. Much of my 1975 text on Trotsky is being repeated verbatim in its most recent online edition, but a few cuts and changes have been made. Among them are the omissions of the following portions of the text quoted above:
“…rejecting Lenin’s dictatorial methods and organizational concepts aiming at immediate revolution…"
"...As such, he engaged in intermittent polemics with Lenin and the Bolsheviks over organizational and tactical questions…”
I am not anxious to speculate why Britannica would make these particular cuts, except to note that the cuts, whether deliberately or inadvertently, reduce the rather embarrassing emphasis on Trotsky’s anti-Leninism, with its corollary implication that it is hard to imagine how this Lenin’s nemesis of long standing could ever be considered as his potential successor…
My last question in this entry is this: Why was Trotsky, an established anti-Leninist figure, so easily allowed to join Lenin’s Bolsheviks, immediately attaining top positions in the Party? It is no secret that Lenin was a vengeful unforgiving egomaniac, yet he did not seem to mind his sworn enemy’s meteoric rise. Those of my readers who have not read my Trotsky posts yet, are urged to read them in conjunction with this discussion, but the straight answer should be this. Trotsky was welcomed to the party of the victors to be used, that is, to take the blame for anything that might go wrong with the Revolution. After all, back in 1905 already, Pavel Milyukov had identified (unfairly, I must say) “Trotskyism” as the scary Jewish face of Russia’s radicalism; and now, every ethnically-Russian Bolshevik (plus Lenin, who, although of mixed ethnicity, cared about it only inasmuch as he could use it as an effective weapon, plus Stalin, who, although ethnically a Georgian, was a consummate Russian Great-Power chauvinist at heart, plus quite a few others, in similar veins)--- was prepared to take full advantage of this newest, yet by no means novice, arrival.
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