WI the Mensheviks and Right SRs stay
- Thread starter LHB
- Start date
I am no fan of the Bolsheviks, but I find this incredibly doubtful. The reason why the Bolsheviks were able to dominate and centralize power was precisely because they were effectively the only game in town. The Left SRs were a splinter group, and so they had very weak organization. Hence, their dissolution into the Bolsheviks by hook and crook.
A situation where the Mensheviks and SRs accept Lenin's proposal of an all (socialist) party government would be different. Not to say it couldn't go that way, but I'd consider that to be a lower probability outcome than say, a Bolshevik led national patriotic front ruling an authoritarian alt Soviet Union* (the lack of leftist infighting would greatly change the outcome of the Civil War).
Wolfpaw
Banned
They rejected it because they saw it for what it was; a naked power grab by Lenin and the Bolsheviks. Any coalition (left or right) forged in the writhing hell of an Imploding Russia is going to wind up being ruled by that faction with the fastest trigger finger, which was always the Bolsheviks.
Do you think the issue was Lenin himself or the policies the Bolsheviks supported?
Based on my knowledge, the Bolsheviks never had any chance of winning by popular support; which they were aware of, and as a result, were forced to take the most direct course whenever possible. This would likely include this situation, where they would by whatever means try and seize control.
You're making a fundamental mistake in attributing too much agency to the Bolsheviks, or any party in the revolution or civil war. By and large, they were all being swept along by events. Even the October Revolution itself was something that happened more or less due to impulse at the base, not the party leaders acting coherently or decisively.
They built a myth of their vanguardism because it supported their later rule, but the fact is they were as much puppets of forces beyond anyone's control as anyone else.
Given the "Bolshevik" is an amazingly successful piece of propaganda - they were only the majority on the board of the paper, or something - I'd say that letting them be frozen out and having Mensheviks (how they ever let themselves be labelled 'minority', I'm sure I don't know) and SR working together to run the country really ought to be possible at some point.
At what point you'd have to do that, I don't know. I don't know enough details to know if the 2nd Congress is early enough, say.
They very much were the majority among urban workers by October, 1917. And ultimately, when it came to political power in the country it was the workers who mattered most. The peasants were too geographically dispersed and too disorganized to really be decisive actors as a class. That's why the peasant based SRs never really had any hope of ruling the country without the cooperation of an urban party. And the Mensheviks lost their chance to be the urban party by opposing negotiated settlement with the Germans and ultimately supporting the imperialist war.
Sure, but wiki says the split happened at the 2nd congress in 1903.
Edit. Oops different second congress.
I suspect strongly you are right, then.
Wolfpaw
Banned
The only agency I'm giving to the Bolsheviks over others in the situation is their itchy-trigger fingers and their open policy of one-party rule. Historically the Bolsheviks proved more willing to liquidate any and all potential rivals through terroristic methods than either the Mensheviks or SRs did. Liquidation of any and all rivals is an inevitability of Bolshevik rule; they themselves were rather frank about this. It also gives whichever faction overemploys said trigger-finger an edge in any civil war as apocalyptic as the one consuming Russia.