Although the majority of the party’s new Central Committee were Bolsheviks, even they did not wish for the split to continue. Five of the six members of the Central Committee then in Russia wrote publicly that they did not approve of Lenin’s actions. They made clear that they wished to reconcile with the Mensheviks who ran Iskra and reforge party unity. As even Tony Cliff admits, “resistance to the split was wide-spread amongst the rank and file”.3 Yet Lenin was determined that the most constructive thing he could do to further the cause of socialism in Russia was pursue it to its bitter end. “It took months of Herculean effort”, Cliff noted admiringly, “actually to put in to effect the break between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks in a number of Russian cities”.4 The final break in Moscow did not take place until May 1905, just in time to prevent united social-democratic action in the 1905 Revolution.
Almost unnoticed by the émigré Marxists, Russia was moving ever closer to revolution. A period of relative economic prosperity, based on the state-led economic expansion of the 1890s, had come to an end, and unemployment had rocketed. In similar fashion to the UK in 2010-11, the first mass protests against unbearable conditions arose not from the trade unions but from a radicalised student movement. Between 1860 and 1914 the number of university students in Russia grew from 5,000 to 69,000, and the number of newspapers shot up from a paltry thirteen (almost all in St Petersburg and Moscow) to 856. This produced an increasingly politicised intelligentsia.
The trade unions, emboldened by mass student demonstrations, followed suit. On 1st May, 1900 there was a general strike in Kharkov in which, for the first time, explicitly political demands were made. From 1901 workers in other cities such as Moscow, Kiev and Tomsk began to participate in student demonstrations. When a “general strike” of 30,000 students took place during winter 1901-02, workers in Moscow joined in and helped to fight off armed Cossacks sent to disperse it. In 1903 a wave of political strikes spread throughout the Ukraine and Georgia–Baku, Tiflis and Odessa saw mass demonstrations and street fighting.
Even middle-class liberals began to organise. In 1903 the Union of Liberation was founded by senior members of the intelligentsia, led by the liberal academic Paul Miliukov. It relied heavily on Peter Struve, who formulated a political programme for constitutional reform in Russia. Under the influence of his journal Liberation, published in Germany, the Union adopted reformist policies, including the introduction of universal suffrage, self-determination for the nationalities of the Empire, and a variety of progressive social reforms such as unemployment and health insurance. Many radical students gravitated to the Union. Many also joined the SRs and the RSDLP. Although democratic reforms were clearly necessary, the Tsar and reactionaries such as Interior Minister von Plehve clung to the principles of autocracy.
In 1904 Russia declared war on Japan over a disputed territory, Port Arthur, in Manchuria, mainly because von Plehve wanted “a small, victorious war to stem the tide of revolution”. When Japan attacked Port Arthur, Russia’s military commanders assumed a quick victory over a nation they held in racist contempt. But the Baltic Fleet, having sailed halfway around the world to meet the enemy, was promptly sunk at the battle of Tsushima, losing eight battleships and 5,000 men to Japanese losses of three torpedo boats. A month later, when the SRs assassinated von Plehve, most of the country openly celebrated and the “Zemstvo Men” revived their call for a National Zemstvo Assembly.
Von Plehve’s successor, Prince Mirsky, a liberal reformer, wrote to Nicholas, “It is imperative to make peace, or else Russia will soon be divided into those who carry out surveillance and those who are under surveillance, and then what?” Upon taking up his post, Mirsky relaxed censorship, abolished corporal punishment and brought back Zemstvo men whom von Plehve had banished. Blocked at Court, he decided to convene a Zemstvo Assembly on his own authority and thus present the Tsar with a fait accompli.
On 6th-9th November, 1904 the Assembly, consisting of delegates from regional Zemstvos, met in several addresses around the capital and began to draw up plans for a new legislative body. It proved impossible to keep this a secret and messages of support flooded in. Mirsky presented the Tsar with a summary of the proposals of the Assembly, most important of which was the call for elected delegates from the Zemstvos to sit on the State Council (which Alexander II was considering just before his assassination) and a national Constituent Assembly with legislative powers. Nicholas’ response was that whilst he might expand the powers of the Zemstvos, he would never countenance a representative form of government.
The Social Democrats now had a choice. They could maintain socialist purity and refuse any working alliance with the liberals and the Zemstvo movement, or they could recognise the reality of Russia’s semi-feudal society and work towards a democratic capitalism, which as Marxists they still saw as the essential precondition for socialism. In November 1904, Iskra summed up the dilemma in a letter to party organisations. It admitted that in the Zemstvo liberals they had to “deal with the enemies of our enemy, who are not however willing or able to go as far in the struggle against him as is required by the interests of the proletariat”, but concluded that “within the limits of the struggle against absolutism, and particularly in its present phase, our attitude towards the liberal bourgeoisie is defined by the task of imbuing it with more courage and impelling it to join in those demands being put forward by the Proletariat led by Social Democracy”.5
Axelrod explained that this meant working on joint campaigns and demonstrations with Zemstvo liberals and sitting on the Zemstvo Assembly to advance the demands and goals of a liberal-democratic revolution. As against Lenin’s demand that socialists must not in any circumstances work with the liberals, the Mensheviks’ tactics were relevant policies for the time and place. If successful they might have strengthened the opposition and led to the establishment of a progressive republic like France or a constitutional monarchy like Britain. At the very least they would have avoided the pitfall of a divided opposition and the rallying of the forces of autocracy.
One of the autocracy’s more subtle ideas had been to establish “Police Unions”, i.e. to create the façade of a trade union themselves, secretly resourced and run by the police. Yet the “Zubatov unions” (named after the Okhrana Chief who initiated them) escaped control. One of these, the Assembly of Russian Factory and Plant Workers, was run by the Russian Orthodox priest Father George Gapon, who was unaware he was a mere pawn of the Okhrana. Although Zubatov was dismissed in 1903 when one of his unions organised a general strike in Odessa, the wheels he had set in motion refused to be halted. By 1904 Gapon’s union had 11,000 members, more than the entire RSDLP. He was in contact with Zemstvo liberals, who advised him to present a petition to the government. In his memoirs he recorded, “But I did not think that such a petition would be of much value unless it were accompanied by a large industrial strike”.6 In perhaps the greatest example of blowback in history, Gapon organised his followers to take part in a march to the Winter Palace to beseech the “Little Father”–the Tsar–for help in their distress.
In January 1905 over 120,000 workers were on strike in St Petersburg. Despite instructions to desist, on 7th February, 1905 thousands of protestors followed Gapon to the Winter Palace to present the Tsar with a “Humble and Loyal Address” asking him to remedy their many grievances. Organised by Gapon and a group of union activists and SRs, women and children were placed at the front to ensure that troops did not fire on the demonstration. This had no effect on the Cossacks sent to stop the march. As the procession approached the Narva Gates the cavalry charged the demonstration and killed 40 people. The demonstration then surged into the Nevsky Prospect, by now an angry crowd of 60,000. The troops guarding the Winter Palace panicked and fired, mowing down men, women and children. Over 200 were killed and nearly 800 wounded. As the protestors staggered away from the bloodbath, the refrain heard from hitherto loyal peasant-workers was, “There is no God, there is no Tsar”. The 1905 Revolution had begun.