Topic on Talk:Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (1922–1991)

Although Lenin and many others first anticipated the two groups could merge again, the split ended up worsening and the two factions became separate parties: the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party (Mensheviks) and the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party (Bolsheviks).

The main differences between the groups were the following:

1. The Bolsheviks wanted an organisationally united party of serious revolutionaries while the Mensheviks wanted a more loose reformist party.

2. Both parties agreed that the next course of action was to overthrow the monarchy and carry out the so-called “bourgeois-democratic revolution”. This would make Russia a capitalist parliamentary democracy. However the Mensheviks argued that the class to lead the revolution was the bourgeoisie, the capitalist class, as the bourgeois class served this function in the French Revolution. The Bolsheviks disagreed, they thought the capitalists couldn’t be trusted to carry out the democratic revolution: they were weaker than the bourgeoisie in France at the time, they allied with the monarchy, and they feared the workers and peasants. In fact, Lenin argued that the Russian proletariat was much stronger and more developed than the French proletariat of the late 1700s and therefore should lead the democratic revolution, and not merely support it.

3. Lastly, the Mensheviks didn’t think Russia was ready for Socialism, in their opinion the workers could never take power in Russia until after a long time of capitalist and parliamentary development. Even though the debate about workers revolution and socialism would only come about fully later, this attitude relates to the Menshevik position that the workers shouldn’t lead the democratic revolution, but only support the capitalist class against the monarchy.