From chapter 2 of the Roman Malinovsky biography: As leader of the Bolshevik group in the Duma, Malinovsky was the prime mover in the splitting of the united Social Democratic fraction despite the fact that this action clearly violated the mandate given him by his Moscow electors.77 Throughout 1913 he led the six Bolshevik deputies in a constant fight with their seven Menshevik counterparts over such issues as representation on Duma commissions, equal speaking rights before the house, appointment of fractional secretaries, and the choice of agitational slogans. Relations became so strained that the two groups had to meet at 7 a.m. in order to have enough time to hammer out the day’s assignments.78 In the early fall of 1913 the Bolshevik Central Committee agreed that a formal split was essential;79 this policy was duly approved by the police80 and executed by Malinovsky in November 1913. In addition to engineering the split, he provided the police with all the fraction’s files for overnight perusal,81 allowed them to listen in on private meetings of the Bolshevik caucus,82 and probably told them about planned demonstrations by the fraction.83 But Malinovsky’s Duma activities also posed difficulties for the police. As the fraction’s leader and best orator, he was expected to deliver militant speeches denouncing the government from texts often sent from abroad or composed by the combined fraction. When the police saw these texts they frequently demanded that he “change, shorten or soften”84 them in actual delivery. Thus he was forced to skip over passages concerning the “peoples’ sovereignty” in his inaugural address to the Duma and to omit entirely fifteen lines from a joint declaration in 1914. In the first instance he pleaded “nervousness” and in the second he tried to provoke the chairman’s intervention so as to escape suspicion by his colleagues.85
full: http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2012/10/05/roman-malinovsky-biography-part-two/ _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
