Martov and the October Revolution

Steve Downs

World Bolshevism
By Julius Martov
Introduction by Paul Kellogg
Translated by Paul Kellogg and Mariya Melentenyeva
 AU Press, 2019, U.S. Distribution by University of Chicago Press,
192 pages, $30.99 paperback.(1)

VICTOR SERGE, IN the article cited in the previous review of Truth Behind Bars, noted:

“In order to be fair I add that the Mensheviks, the Socialist-Revolutionaries, the anarchists, and some opposition communists, like Sapronov and Vladimir Smirnov demonstrated a clairvoyance in this regard (predicting prior to 1927 what Stalin would make of the revolution —SD) that must be recognized today as admirable and that served only to render them unpopular, since they went against the general sentiment and the sincerity of the party.”(2)

One of the most clear-sighted of those clairvoyants was Julius Martov of the Left Mensheviks. In Truth Behind Bars, Paul Kellogg introduced us to Martov and some of his writings on the October Revolution. Like Lenin and Trotsky, Martov was a party organizer, a Marxist theoretician, and a propagandist. Very few of his writings are available in English, however.

As a small step toward remedying that, Kellogg has (with Mariya Melentenyeva) translated a 1919 work of Martov’s, titled World Bolshevism. In this booklet Martov presents a critique of Bolshevism and, in the process, sketches out an argument about the social forces involved in the October Revolution.

At the start of the 20th century Martov had been, alongside Lenin, an editor of Iskra, the newspaper that tried to provide a political and organizing center for the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party. When the split in the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party between the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks occurred in 1903, Martov became a leader of the Mensheviks.

When World War I began, like the Bolsheviks, he opposed the war and was a key leader of the anti-war Menshevik-Internationalists, or Left Mensheviks. The Internationalists did not split from the Mensheviks but, instead, worked to win the party over to their position.

In the course of their political agitation against the war and czarism, the Mensheviks built a strong base in the small Russian proletariat. But Martov is probably best remembered, to the extent he’s remembered at all, for walking out of the meeting of the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets on the day the Bolsheviks led the overthrow of the Russian government.

The Peasant in Uniform

Kellogg highlights Martov’s argument that the primary social force supporting the Bolsheviks in seizing power in October was “the peasant-in-uniform,” not the working class. For Martov the “peasant-in-uniform” was a new, but temporary, social class that had been created by the war.

In the course of WWI, millions of peasants (and a far smaller number of industrial workers) had become severed from the process of production. The roots of this new class, according to Martov, were found in that separation from production and their experiences of several years in the trenches.

Martov described the politics of these peasants-in-uniform as “the communism of consumers.” In addition, he describes the soldiers as “anti-parliamentarian,” which he says was “quite understandable in a social environment not shaped, as in the past, through the school of collective defense of its interests, but in the present drawing its strength and influence exclusively from the possession of weapons.”

He applies this analysis to movements of soldiers in England and Germany as well, concluding that “in both cases it is a question of a particular corporate consciousness nourished by the certainty that possession of weapons and the ability to use them makes it possible to control the destinies of the state.” (World Bolshevism, 43)

He then concludes that “this view comes into fatal and irreconcilable conflict with the ideas of democracy and with parliamentary forms of government.” (44)

Martov In His Own Words

Martov’s World Bolshevism is remarkable. Written in 1919 and only 80 pages long, it presents not only the theory of a temporary new class to explain the nature and trajectory of the October revolution, but also attempts to explain the spread of “Bolshevik” ideas to Western Europe, which had a more developed working class and more limited peasantry than Russia did.

Martov underlines the effects of the war on working-class organization and politics — not just in Russia — and the consequent maximalism, hostility to parliamentarism, and readiness to resolve differences through force of arms.

If this was all that Martov did in this book, it would still be worth a read. However, he also discusses the Marxist theory of the state in the transition to communism.

This includes observations, at times sarcastic, on soviets and how they are treated, by World Bolshevism, as the model form of organization of political power almost regardless of the level of political and economic development of the society.

In this section, in words that are reminiscent of Trotsky’s 1904 warning,* Martov writes:

“The transitional revolutionary state, according to theory, in contrast to the bourgeois state, should be an organ for the ‘coercion of the minority by the majority’ — an organ of majority rule [vlast]. In reality, it turned out to be the same organ of minority rule [vlast] (of a different minority, of course).

“Realization of this fact leads to an open or covert replacement of the power of the soviets [councils] with the power of a particular party. Little by little, the party becomes the principal state institution, the core of the entire system of the ‘republic of soviets [councils].’”

Martov then provides a succinct statement of the “substitutionism” that is central to Kellogg’s book:

“The ‘soviet system’ turns out to be a means of putting in place and maintaining in power a revolutionary minority that seeks to defend those interests of the majority that the latter either has not recognized as its own or has not recognized as its own sufficiently so as to defend them with maximum energy and determination.” (World Bolshevism, 68)

It’s important to note that Martov’s conviction that a temporary new class was the main social force backing the Bolsheviks does not mean that he thought the Russian working class didn’t support the overturn. He makes this clear in World Bolshevism, when he writes:

“In the specific conditions of contemporary Russia, this party dictatorship primarily reflects the interests and sentiments of the proletarian sections of the population….After 3 July 1917, we saw that Lenin envisaged the direct dictatorship of the Bolshevik Party, thereby bypassing the Soviets. We see now that in some places such a dictatorship is fully realized through the channels of revolutionary committees and party cells. All of this does not prevent it from retaining the strongest connection with the proletariat, in class terms reflecting above all the interests and aspirations of the urban working class.” (WB, 70)

This recognition of working-class support for the Bolsheviks presented an enormous dilemma and challenge to Martov. Just a few weeks after the overthrow of the provisional government, in a letter to Axelrod, another leading Menshevik, Martov wrote,

“The time has come when conscience forbids us Marxists to do what seems to be our duty — stand by the proletariat even when it is wrong. After tormenting hesitations and doubts I have decided that the better course in the present situation is to ‘wash one’s hands’ and temporarily step aside rather than play the role of opposition in the camp where Lenin and Trotsky determine the fate of the revolution.

“This is the situation. It is tragic. For, after all, what is going on is a victorious uprising of the proletariat; that is, almost the entire proletariat stands behind Lenin and expects the overturn to result in social emancipation — realizing all the while that it has challenged all the anti-proletarian forces. Under these conditions it is almost unbearable not to stand in the ranks of the proletariat, even if only in the role of opposition.”(3)

What Were the Options?

In The Bolsheviks Come To Power, Alexander Rabinowitch describes the situation when the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets convened in Petrograd on the evening of October 25, 1917.

He writes that Martov called “for the creation of a united, democratic government acceptable to the entire democracy.” Toward that end, “he recommended selection of a special delegation to initiate discussions with other political parties and organizations aimed at bringing to an immediate end the clash which had erupted in the streets.” (BCTP, 292)

Lunacharsky (speaking for the Bolsheviks) stated that “the Bolshevik fraction has absolutely nothing against the proposal made by Martov.” And “the congress documents indicate as well that Martov’s proposal was quickly passed by unanimous vote.” (BCTP, 293)

Almost immediately after approval of Martov’s proposal, speakers from the majority blocs of the SRs and the Mensheviks got up to denounce the Bolsheviks and walked out of the meeting. This highlighted the problem Martov and the Menshevik-Internationalists had faced for months: They had pushed their comrades (from other Menshevik factions) in government to demand that the capitalist parties end the war and begin land redistribution.

When the government would not do so, the Menshevik-Internationalists had pushed their comrades to break with the capitalist parties altogether and leave government. Now, when the question of forming a broad government of parties in the Soviet, a government of socialist parties, was put on the table — and broadly endorsed within the Soviet — the moderate socialists walked out of the Soviet.

Ultimately, the Menshevik-Internationalists also walked out of the Soviet that night. This was the occasion for Trotsky’s famous remark, “You are miserable bankrupts, your role is played out; go where you ought to go: into the dustbin of history.” (Quoted in BCTP, 296)

Martov’s faction returned and took their seats in the congress the next day. Martov — along with other Mensheviks and members of the Left SRs — were expelled from the Central Executive Committee in June, 1918.

Before October

Kellogg’s reintroduction of Martov is welcome and thought-provoking, but I wish he had given more information on what the Menshevik-Internationalists were arguing for in the months leading up to October. To what extent do they represent the road not taken for the Russian Revolution? What did Martov call for in the summer and fall of 1917?

In czarist Russia, Martov and the Mensheviks, along with the Marxist movement more generally, held that the coming revolution would be a “bourgeois revolution,” which they believed was necessary to create the conditions for the development of a modern industrial economy that would, in turn, create the conditions upon which a future working-class movement could build socialism.

For Marxists of all stripes, the overthrow of czarism in February, 1917 presented the opportunity to realize the necessary bourgeois revolution.

Martov and the Menshevik-Internationalists opposed participation in the Provisional Revolutionary Government (PRG). Other Menshevik factions did not, however, and there were Menshevik ministers in the government from April, 1917. Martov’s faction, from their base in the Petrograd and Moscow Soviets, tried to push the PRG to carry out two basic steps of a bourgeois revolution — initiate land reform and end the war.

After elements of the Kadets (the main capitalist party) supported General Kornilov’s counter-revolutionary uprising in August, Martov opposed their further participation in government and called for a government accountable to the “revolutionary democracy”— that is, the working class, the peasantry and the urban and rural petit bourgeoisie.

For Martov, one of the main arguments against the Bolshevik plans for an insurrection was that this would cause the urban and rural petit bourgeoisie to abandon the revolution and side with the big capitalists and landowners and the counter-revolution.

In mid-September, the Mensheviks adopted resolutions opposing Kadet participation in the government cabinet. Nevertheless, the cabinet established on September 25 included both Mensheviks and Kadets. Less than a month later, the Bolsheviks led the overthrow of the PRG and established a government based upon the Soviets.(4)

Although I have sympathy for Martov’s criticisms of the new Soviet government, I find myself asking about the real options in the fall of 1917.

In a situation where the PRG was unable/unwilling to address the fundamental tasks of land redistribution and ending the war; when the threat of counter-revolutionary action by big capitalists, landowners and much of the army’s officer corps was very real; and with the German army threatening Petrograd, Martov and the Menshevik-Internationalists continued banking on the Constituent Assembly — which would not convene until January, 1918 — providing the basis for a government of “the revolutionary democracy.”

Was this a viable strategy? Could the revolution hold out until then?(5) That was the “almost unbearable” fateful question that Martov, in his own words, could not resolve.

*“In the internal politics of the Party these methods lead, as we shall see below, to the Party organization ‘substituting’ itself for the Party, the Central Committee substituting itself for the Party organization, and finally the dictator substituting himself for the Central Committee.” from Trotsky’s Our Political Tasks.

Was this a viable strategy? Could the revolution hold out until then?(5) That was the “almost unbearable” fateful question that Martov, in his own words, could not resolve.

*“In the internal politics of the Party these methods lead, as we shall see below, to the Party organization ‘substituting’ itself for the Party, the Central Committee substituting itself for the Party organization, and finally the dictator substituting himself for the Central Committee.” from Trotsky’s Our Political Tasks.

Notes

1. AU Press offers online and PDF versions of Truth Behind Bars and World Bolshevism for free at their website. https://www.aupress.ca/books/120285-truth-behind-bars/ and https://www.aupress.ca/books/120288-world-bolshevism/
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2. Lenin’s Heir (1945), https://www.marxists.org/archive/serge/1945/05/lenins-heir.htm
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3. Letter to Axelrod quoted in the The Mensheviks, 103.
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4. From The Mensheviks in 1917, Leo Lande’s contribution to The Mensheviks, edited by L Haimson.
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5. See David Mandel. “The October Revolution: Its Necessity & Meaning,” https://againstthecurrent.org/atc192/p5181/
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March-April 2025, ATC 235