>>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 03/04/01 06:52PM >>>
While reading L H Haimson's 'The Making of Three Russian revolutionaries' I
came across this curious interview he conducted with
Lydia Dan, wife of the eminent Menshevik leader, one-time colaborator of Lenin
who became his mortal enemy.
It cast's an interesting light on the much discussed question of what the
split between Mensheviks and Bolsheviks was really all about. Lydia Dan puts
it in terms of 'control from below': the Mensheviks believed in 'bottom-up'
democracy, but Lenin evidently didn't.
((((((((((((
CB: You buy this based on the statement of the wife of his mortal enemy ? The first
comment she makes, by the way, seems to imply the opposite, i.e. , Lenin sees a role
for types of people that she seems to disdain in an elitist way. Secondly, a central
issue in _What is to be done ?_ is Lenin arguing that workers should be involved in
politics and the Mensheviks (Economists , anyway) arguing that they shouldn't, but
should be represented by the intellectuals in politics.
(((((((((
This, Dan, Martov and others thought,
was unreasonable, when you were asking people, as she puts it, to 'risk their
necks'. But what it really came down to, of course, was that the Menshevik
middle-class socialists had too many refined and delicate sensibilities to do
anything so crass as give orders to workers. They preferred to discuss, and
take votes on resolutions. Lenin and the Bolsheviks had no such scruples; they
were interested in making history. The crises, wars and appalling suffering
inflicted by capitalism on the masses was all the justification they needed.
This goes to the heart of crucial questions about dictatorship v. democracy in
the workers' movement. Here is the excerpt from Haimson:
H[aimson]: Did Martov insist in 1905, when you spoke to him, that Lenin had a
moral approach that was ultimately entirely different from that of the
Mensheviks, and that this was one basis for the split?
D[an]: In no way was that a basis for the split. You remember that in Gogol's
"The Inspector General" the hero Khlestakov has a servant names Osip, who
says, "Even a piece of string can be useful." It was frequently noted that,
for Lenin, as for Osip, everything could be useful - even a man who was a
piece of trash could be useful; in business anything can be useful. It was
discussed in these terms, but not as an explanation for the disagreements. And
still this inclination to use people who were not first rate or genuine did
exist. It became much more important later on, when there were expropriations
and so forth; then, disagreement reached such level, that the moral issue
could exert a great influence on political activity. But in 1903, this hadn't
happened yet, and these problems never went beyond a small circle of people.
H: When Martov talked to you personally and made comparisons with articles in
Iskra, what points did he emphasize, particularly at the beginning, as the
basis for the disagreements?
D: That is difficult to say. The basic issue, of course, was what the
Mensheviks spelled out later on: control from below [samoupravlenie] in the
party, self-government on the part of people engaged in such dangerous work
from which they derive no benefit, but simply risk their necks. If you were to
put people in such a position, you had to give them the feeling that they were
acting out of their own accord. They could be advised, but they could not be
told, what to do, which is what the Bolsheviks, and sometimes even the Iskra
people, did. But a great depends on the way you look at it. I dont think that
anyone had been reborn by the time the congress began; rather, each one was
developing those features that had existed before the congress, in their
rudimentary form, but had not interfered with the overall work. At some point,
these features could no longer be tolerated. But, I repeat, there was no
feeling at this time that we could never act in common with the Bolsheviks...
no-one said such things. But in 1911-1912 they did.[p182 -3 ]
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