"Just as though Socialism could be instituted by decree, and by shooting people in cellars!" *

Though it was no doubt prompted by these cheeky young scamps, it was still more by chance than by design that the last few days of September took on the air of an unofficial 'Menshevism Week' on the blog. So, before I forget, I should point you in the direction of following article that I posted on MySpace about a week ago.

'The Role of the Soviets in Russia's Bourgeois Revolution: the point of view of Julius Martov' originally appeared in the French language journal, 'Economies et societes, cahiers de l'ISMEA', just over thirty years ago, though readers of the Socialist Standard will recognise the author of the article, Adam Buick, as a longstanding writer and editor for the Standard.

Why publish it now? Why not? Martov is one of those historical figures that everyone who has ever chewed over 1917 has an opinion of and yet, when pushed, most people don't know a lot about him**, save that he was one of the main leaders of the Mensheviks; Trotsky tried to bin him; and Lenin wasn't really a bad man 'cos he allowed Rosebud Martov to go into exile. Despite nearly thirty years of political activism and writing that included being on the original editorial board of 'Iskra' in 1900 - alongside Lenin and Plekhanov, amongst others - right through to the appearance of the 'Socialist Messenger', the Menshevik journal founded by him and his co-thinkers whilst in exile in Berlin towards the end of his life, when one clicks on the Martov Section at the Marxist Internet Archive, you'll only find six articles available in English, and three of those make up his best known work, 'The State and the Socialist Revolution'.

There has been over the years a handful of historians who have written about Martov and the Mensheviks; from Israel Getzler's biography of Martov that originally appeared in '67 (and which was reprinted by Cambridge University Press a few years back) through to the works of such historians as Ascher, Brovkin, Haimson and Liebich in later years. However, possibly because of such factors as the lack of any modern left current taking up the mantle of the custodians of the Menshevik tradition - with the accompanying role of unearthing, translating and publishing those lost Menshevik texts from that period - through to the reality that some of the last dwindling number of the Mensheviks - the best known example being David Dallin - pioneered 'Sovietology' in the USA in the Cold War period, thus further compounding the image of Mensheviks in exile as being on the wrong side of the class war, it doesn't look like that we will be seeing anytime soon the appearance in English of further articles by Martov and his colleagues.

That's a shame 'cos the next time someone throws around 'Menshevik' as a pejorative label in a discussion or during a comment box ding dong , it would be nice to point them in the direction of a few primary sources that would help chip away at those inherited prejudices. I guess this essay will have to do for now.

*The title of the post is a quote attributed to Martov that is reproduced from Victor Serge's 'Memoirs of a Revolutionary'. It's only fair that I reproduce the full passage from the book, less I give the impression that Serge didn't have his criticisms of Martov:

"In 1919 I would visit another dissident, this time a Marxist, whose honesty and brilliance were of the first order: Martov, co-founder with Plekhanov and Lenin, of Russian Social Democracy, and the leader of Menshevism. He was campaigning for working-class democracy, denouncing the excesses of the Cheka and the Lenin-Trotsky "mania for authority". He kept saying, "Just as though Socialism could be instituted by decree, and by shooting people in cellars!" Lenin, who was fond of him, protected him against the Cheka, though he quailed before Martov's sharp criticism.
When I saw Martov he was living on the brink of utter destitution in a little room. He struck me at the very first glance as being aware of his absolute incompatibility with the Bolsheviks, although like them he was a Marxist, highly cultured, uncompromising and exceedingly brave. Here was a man of scruple and scholarship, lacking the tough and robust revolutionary will that sweeps obstacles aside. His criticisms were apposite, but his general solutions verged on the Utopian."

**Though I've read the Getzler biography, and the other historians mentioned in that paragraph, I include myself in that number. Naming our Boston Terrier mix, Martov, doesn't mean that I will be listing Martov as my specialist subject if and when I decide to apply to appear on Mastermind.