Iulii Martov, the Leader Who Lost His Party in 1917: A Second Look at Martov on the 70th Anniversary of His Death

Iulii Martov, the Leader Who Lost His Party in 1917: A Second Look at Martov on the 70thAnniversary of His DeathAuthor(s): Israel GetzlerSource: The Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 72, No. 3 (Jul., 1994), pp. 424-439Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4211550 .

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SEER, Vol. 72, No. 3, July I994

Jul ii Martov, the Leader Who Lost

His Party in I 9 I7 A second look at Martov on the 70th anniversary of his death

ISRAEL GETZLER

THOUGH the Martov of I 9 I 7 may not seem a major figure, he still looms large in any attempt to understand the magnitude of the tragedy of the Russian revolution, and perhaps increasingly so these days when the question of alternatives to Lenin and the October revolution is again being studied.' I shall limit myself here to an examination of how and why he lost his party and of what that tells us about his personality and leadership in the 19 I 7 revolution.

Thanks to glasnost', extracts of the intimate letters that Martov wrote in I9I 7 to his close friend Nadezhda Kristi were published last year,2 while the protocols of the Petrograd Soviet and of its Executive Commit- tee for 191 7 are now accessible and being prepared for publication3 - I shall be drawing extensively on them here.

In brief: I shall be arguing that on the two major issues of 1917 the question of power, or what kind ofgovernment should rule revolutionary Russia, and what to do about the war inherited from tsardom Martov's policies, arrived at after some fateful hesitancies, were a credible alternative to the stubborn coalitionism of official Menshevism under Iraklii Tseretelli and Fedor Dan, as well as a plausible left-wing social democratic alternative to Lenin's new maximalist Bolshevism that was hell-bent to plunge backward, exhausted Russia headlong into 'socialism'. But, at the same time, I maintain that Martov's personality,

Israel Getzler is employed in the Department of Russian Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

1 SeeJonathan Frankel, '1917: The Problem of Alternatives' in Edith Frankel, J. Frankel and B. Knei-Paz (eds), Revolution in Russia: Reassessments of I917, Cambridge and New York, 1992, pp. 3-I3; P. V. Volobuev (ed.), Rossiia 1917 god, vybor istoricheskogo puti, Moscow 1982; idem (ed.), Oktiabr' I9I7: Velichaishee sobytie veka ili sotsial'naia katastrofa?, Moscow, I99I.

2 G. loffe, 'Iulii Martov. Iz pisem 19I 7 goda', Svobodnaia mysl', i99i, no. i6, pp. 26-39: the Martov letters are in the Rossiiskii tsentr khraneniia i izucheniia dokumentov noveishei istorii (f. 362, op. i, d. 5I).

3 Tsentral'nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Oktiabr'skoi revoliutsii i sotsialisticheskogo stroitel'stva Leningrada (TsGAORL), now incorporated in the State Archive of the Russian Federation (GA RF). My thanks are due to Dr Bella D. Galperina and Professor Vitalii Startsev for permitting me to consult their draft edition of the protocols of the Petrograd Soviet from I April to 5 May 1917 to be published soon as the second volume in their projected five-volume edition of the protocols of the Petrograd Soviet, the first of which (covering the period 27 February to 31 March I 91 7) appeared in I 992 as Petrogradskii sovet rabochikh i soldatskikh deputatov v I9I7 godu. Dokumen(y i materialy, Leningrad, I991 .



IULII MARTOV 425

with its many virtues and fatal weaknesses, notably his indecisiveness, ruled him out as a political leader on a par with Miliukov and Kerenskii, Tseretelli and Dan, and, in the end, Lenin and Trotskii.

Martov arrived back in Russia as late as 9 May, the last of all major revolutionaries and party leaders: Lev Kamenev and Stalin arrived on I 2 March, Tseretelli on I 8 March, Dan at the end of March, Plekhanov on 31 March, Lenin on 3 April, and Victor Chernov on 8 April; true, Trotskii came as late as 4 May - but he had been arrested and interned by the British. The circumstances of Martov's return tell us a great deal about him as compared with Lenin confronting the very same situation: both had been stranded in Switzerland, aching to return to Russia in revolution as soon as possible and watching in frustration as their respective party comrades in Petrograd pursued policies of which they heartily disapproved. The idea of returning to Russia via Germany, in a deal which exchanged Russian revolutionaries for interned German and Austrian civilians, was Martov's, not Lenin's. He broached it on I9 March (that is 6 March according to the Gregorian calendar), four days after he and Lenin received news of the overthrow of the tsar, during a large meeting of Russian and Polish Zimmerwaldists in Berne, and ten days later discussed the plan again privately with Lenin. As he reported to Kristi:

Lenin stated categorically: we must forthwith accept the German autho- rities' offer and travel; were we to enter into long drawn-out negotiations with Petrograd about the deal, Miliukov would torpedo the enterprise. We [Martov, Pavel Axelrod, Alexander Martynov, Semen Semkovskii, i.e. the Menshevik leadership abroad] insisted strenuously that this was out of the question: we cannot arrive in Russia as Germany's gift to the revolution, for that will be tantamount to appearing before the people of Russia with a Parvus-like halo. We must do everything possible to compel the Russian government to agree to the exchange so that we can travel free of worry.4

Lenin agreed, though reluctantly, to give Martov two weeks in which to try - via the Executive Committee and Kerenskii - to get the Russian government's approval of the deal. But on 9 April (28 March), Lenin, together with some nineteen Bolsheviks, six Bundists and five other internationalists, boarded the so-called 'sealed train' which took him through Germany. As we know from Lenin's cable and letter to Iakov Ganetskii of 30 March, he trusted neither Miliukov nor Ker- enskii, and certainly not the English who 'will never let me through, but will rather intern me; Miliukov will do us down'.5 Nor was he afraid of taking the serious risk of arriving in Petrograd with that 'Parvus-like halo'.

4Martov to Nadezhda Kristi, 30 March I91 7, Svobodnaia mysl', i99i, no. i6, p. 33. S Lenin to Ia. S. Ganetskii, 30 March I9I7, Lenin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 49,

Moscow, I 964, pp. 418-19.



426 ISRAEL GETZLER

As for Martov, he wrote to Kristi that he was suspicious of 'the Miliukov gang which internally had granted complete freedom but externally had erected a tighter cordon than existed before', and that he already knew that the English 'filter through only social patriots' and that thus he had not taken up a booking on a boat from Newcastle that his friend S. D. Shchupak had arranged for him from Paris. He would rather 'spare no effort to secure agreement for the exchange deal'6 and indeed bombarded his Petrograd comrades for weeks on end with his resolutions and cables, but got nowhere. The final cable, which Martov received from Petrograd as late as the end of April, fully confirmed Lenin's fears and assessment of the situation: it advised Martov and the political emigres to desist from travelling through Germany as that 'would make a very sad impression: but we hope to secure permission for you to travel via England', the cable was signed by Nikolai Chkheidze, Matvei Skobelev, Tseretelli and Dan.7

Thus, six precious weeks had passed since Martov had cabled Kerenskii urging him to secure government agreement to the exchange deal. Worse still, it had been four weeks since he had cabled the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet that, 'in view of the absolute impossibility of travelling through England for some months to come', they should therefore pressure Kerenskii 'to the point which alone can solve the problem', adding that 'if he does not want to and cannot force through the acceptance of our project of exchange' then Martov and his associates would seek other ways of 'returning to Russia, to fight in your ranks for the cause of international socialism'.8

But, as it appears from the protocols of the Executive Committee, while the return of the emigres was on its agenda throughout April,9 it had taken a less than lukewarm interest in the exchange deal, possibly because of the serious trouble that Lenin's return through Germany had caused: Miliukov had obliquely denounced it as an 'act inimical to the Russian state',10 while the press took advantage of the Lenin affair to vilify the Petrograd Soviet. Thus all the Executive Committee went into battle for was to have the government - and through it the French and British allies - agree to 'allow all [political] emigre's, whether [blacklisted] in the "control lists" or not, to return unhindered to Russia'." Moreover, the Executive Committee seems still to have been

6 Martov to Nadezhda Kristi, 30 March 191 7, Svobodnaia mysl', i99i, no. i 6, pp. 32-33. 7 A. S. Martynov, 0 men'shevizme i bol'shevizme, Moscow, 1923, pp. 7-8. 8 Rabochaia gazeta, 2 April 19 I 7, no. 28. 9 Session of 5 April 19I7 of Executive Committee of Petrograd Soviet, report of A. G.

Zurabov on the application of the government's 'control lists' and their revalidation by Miliukov in instructions to Russian consuls abroad. 10 Report of Iurii Steklov at session of Executive Committee of Petrograd Soviet, 5 April

19I 7. 11 Ibid.



IULII MARTOV 427

trying to arrange a return for the emigres in batches of fifty per month via England while still hoping to speed this process up to larger batches and weekly transports.12 What the Executive Committee apparently did not do was to inform Martov that the exchange deal had been buried - 'breathed its last' (zaglokh) as the minutes laconically put it. 13

Deciding at last to ignore the advice of his comrades in Petrograd, Martov, with the help of his friend Robert Grimm, a leading Swiss socialist and secretary of the Zimmerwald movement, secured passage through Germany for himself and another 256 revolutionaries under the same conditions as Lenin's advance party, in a so-called 'sealed train'.

But before thev travelled, Martov sent an irate cable to the Executive Committee:

Bv rejecting the exchange plan you condemn us to remain here until the end of the war. All hopes of travelling through England make no sense as this is impossible for the mass of immigrants [presumably for financial reasons, I.G.]. We reject privileges for the few, not to mention that so far you have been unable to safeguard us against the arbitrariness of England. After the incident with Trotskii we cannot trust the government. Neither the government nor you yourselves give the reasons why our project is unacceptable. We point out that in spite of our efforts two months have passed and we have not received our amnesty. Responsibility for this must fall on the government. In these circumstances it is our duty to try, through socialists of neutral Switzerland, to secure permission to travel through Germany ... considerations of a diplomatic character and fear of slanderous interpre- tations must yield to our imperative duty to participate in the great revolution. Your political duty is to defend our decision, necessitated by circumstances, and ignore the self-interested demagoguery of the chauvinists. 14

Lenin, as we know, had been very angry with his comrades in Petrograd, notably Kamenev and Stalin, who had joined in the revolutionary honeymoon and were pursuing policies almost indistinguish- able from those of the Mensheviks. His first act on arriving was to tell his Bolsheviks to fence themselves off from the Mensheviks, so that Kamenev, after some initial resistance, was effectively isolated and soon capitulated.

Martov had at least as good a reason as Lenin to be on the spot as soon as possible to make sure that his party did not go astray. As he complained in a letter to Kristi of 5 April:

Information about diverse patriotic statements attributed to Chkheidze, Skobelev and other Mensheviks is accumulating. The sources of the

12 Session of Executive Committee of Petrograd Soviet, 28 April 1917. 13 Ibid. 14 Rabochaia gazeta, 4 Mav 1917, no. 47.



428 ISRAEL GETZLER

information are questionable. Perhaps there is not even a word of truth in them, simply awkward phrases taken out of context which contradict the entire speech or article. Still, I am plagued by doubts and the knowledge that I am powerless to prevent a possible major shift towards 'revolutionary patriotism' oppresses me terribly.15

Two weeks later, and with his misgivings weighing on him even more heavily, Martov and Axelrod used a letter of greetings to the new Menshevik newspaper Rabochaia gazeta to exhort their Petrograd comrades 'now heading the movement' to 'energetically and consistently pursue a policy of complete class independence' both in 'external and internal affairs', and not permit the proletariat to be side-tracked by 'the unprincipled demagoguery of chauvinists' which would reduce to but 'pitiful bankruptcy' the 'brilliant start' that the revolution had made. 'We expect you not to permit yourselves to be deflected by compromises ... from that line which we, on your behalf, have for two years represented among our European comrades.'16

Martov placed his hopes on those whom, in a letter to Karl Kautskii on 25 March, he called 'the first reserves from Siberia'17 - Tseretelli, the hero and martyr of the Second Duma, and Dan, his brother-in-law and irreplaceable second-in-command and chief-of-staff, and their associates. But his hopes were misplaced for they had been good Zimmerwaldists, 'standing on the same ground'18 with Martov and Axelrod, only as long as it was tsarist Russia that waged war. Now it was their revolutionary Russia which, they believed, had to be defended. Thus, they turned into so-called 'revolutionary defencists' who, in the later part of March, assumed leadership of the Menshevik partv and of the Petrograd Soviet, and, following the All-Russian Conference of Soviets early in April, became, together with their SR allies, the leaders of all soviets. They then committed these bodies to shouldering responsibility for raising the fighting capacity of the army, for both 'defensive and offensive operations', a policy which in due course led to the ill-fated Kerenskii offensive, which could never have been launched without soviet support.19

Worse still, in the aftermath of the April Crisis, their feeling of responsibility prompted them to prop up the faltering Provisional

15 Martov to Nadezhda Kristi, 5 April 1917, Svobodnaia mysl', I99I, no. i6, p. 33. 16 'Privetstvie Rabocheigazete ot Aksel'roda, Martova, i ikh edinomyshlennikov v Tsiurikhe',

Rabochaia gazeta, i 8 April I 9 I 7. no. 34. 17 Martov to Karl Kautskii, 25 March I917, unpublished letter, Kautskii Archives,

International Institute for Social Historv, Amsterdam. 18 F. I. Dan to P. B. Akselrod, 25 March qI915. Theodore Dan. Letters i899- 946, Amsterdam, I985, pp-312-13. 19 Alexander Kerenskii, interviewed bv I.G. in Stanford in I 966, claimed he had delaved his

departure for the front bv two days in the hope of receiving a resolution bv the Congress of Soviets, then convening in Petrograd, in support of 'mv offensive'; 'but what did Tseretelli give me? A milk and water resolution!'



IULII MARTOV 429

Government by joining it as junior partners. They cavalierly ignored Martov's furious cable sent from Copenhagen on i May: 'Our opinion: any participation in a coalition government impermissible.20 Martov.' The new coalition government was formed on 5 May, but Martov arrived only on 9 May. 'Something irreparable has happened', he wrote to Kristi on 22 May:

Our comrades who, since the beginning of the revolution, have drifted from the Zimmerwald line into a very questionable mishmash of inter- nationalism and the duty to 'defend the revolution' and 'loyalty to the allies' have committed the ultimate stupidity: they havejoined the government on the basis of a simple promise that the question of a revision of the war's aims will be raised with the allies, whereas what they should have insisted on was that the government raise the question of immediate peace. When we arrived, the decision had already been sanctioned by the vast majority of the All-Russian Menshevik Conference.21

In fact it was taken during the morning sesSion, only three hours before Martov's arrival.

At the evening session of the conference, Martov lashed out at the leadership for committing the sin of Burgfrieden by joining the government and urged in so many words a reversal of the decision.22 Just how isolated he now was. not only from the Menshevik leadership whose policies he had fiercely denounced, but also from the large majority of delegates, became painfully clear on I I May. Martov's small group of Menshevik Internationalist delegates (some seventeen in all) had declared that they 'cannot bear responsibility for the decisions of the conference and will not regard themselves as bound by them'. Martov asked permission to mrake a statement from the platform. At that moment pandemonium broke loose, accompanied by shouts of 'Down with him!', 'Out with him!'. 'We don't want to hear him!' It was not, however, on the Internationalists' declaration that Martov wanted to speak, but rather to announce, on Axelrod's behalf, that he who had been elected to the Central Committee of the Party wished to be relieved of that dutv. Only with great difficulty did the chairman calm what became an anti-Martov demonstration, as one of the most vociferous stood up to say: 'When I left for this conference, I was the envy of everyone because I was to be privileged to see our leaders. Now I have seen them and I envy all those who stayed at home.'23

Yet it seems to me that had Martov, like Lenin, been there early in April, he would have had at least a fighting chance of challenging

20 Rabochaia gazeta, 6 May I 917, no. 49. 21 Martov to Nadezhda Kristi, 22 Mav 1917, Svobodnaia mysl', IggI, no. i6, p.34. 22 Report of Menshevik Conference in Novaia zhizn', I 0 May 1917, no. I 9. 23 Novaiazhizn', I3 Mav I917, no. 22.



430 ISRAEL GETZLER

Tseretelli's 'political line of the Executive Committee'24 and of pre- venting his comrades from joining the government: both the Petrograd and Moscow Menshevik party organizations had all along been dead set against coalition, as were the Georgian Mensheviks and the Tiflis Soviet and, on their behalf, Noe Zhordania sent a sharp cable to the Petrograd Executive Committee protesting against coalition.25 Tseretelli and Dan, who in the end tilted the balance in favour of coalition, were themselves in doubt and had initially voted against entering coalition.26 Skobelev had to be pushed very hard to accept a ministry. Chkheidze, who early in April pledged to fight coalition to the bitter end when Leontii Bramson and his trudoviki tried to put it on the Soviet's agenda, now tried at least to veto Tseretelli's entry into the government,27 while Tseretelli himself wanted to be merely a minister- without-portfolio and only very reluctantly agreed to accept the insig- nificant Ministry of Posts and Telegraphs. Moreover, entry into coalition was against long-accepted Menshevik doctrine and its self-denying ordinance which prescribed social democratic abstention from power in Russia's bourgeois revolution, an argument Martov and Axelrod could surely have used effectively to keep the Mensheviks from coalition. It was clearly one thing to try to prevent the entry of his comrades into a 'bourgeois' government, but quite another to campaign for their recall after they had joined it.

Martov's dilemma now was whether to split the party, as his Petrograd supporters led by Iurii Larin urged, or to remain in the party as the provincial delegates demanded. Martov decided on something in between: to form his supporters into an opposition faction within the party, in the hope that they could reconvert the back-sliding revolutionary-defencist majority in time for the Menshevik congress planned for late July, when Tseretelli had pledged that 'all questions will be under review again' - the only concession Martov had managed to wrest from Tseretelli and Dan.28 Since Martov had antagonized Tseretelli, much of his strategy for recapturing the party was to depend on Dan. So hard did Martov work in reconverting his former second-in-command that Dan complained to Sukhanov that he was even a 'defencist' every day until four in the morning when he

24 Tseretelli and Dan, strengthened bv the overwhelming support that their policies had received both in the Petrograd Soviet and at the Conference of Soviets (29 March to 3 April I917), began on i April to present those policies as 'the political line of the Executive Committee', see protocols of session of Executive Committee, i April 1917. 25 Bor'ba, 5 Mav 1917, no. 2; P. 0. Gorin (ed.), Organizatsiia i stroitel'stvo sovetov rabochikh

deputatov v I917 godu, Moscow, 1928, p. I 96. 26 I. G. Tseretelli, Vospominaniia o fevral'skoi revoliutsii, vol. i, Paris and La Haye, i963,

pp. 132-33; Nik Sukhanov, Zapiski o revoliutsii (hereafter Sukhanov), vol.3, Berlin, Petersburg and Moscow, 1992, p. 399. 27 Ibid., p. 423; session of Executive Committee, 2 April I917. 28 Martov to Nadezhda Kristi, 22 Mav 1917, Svobodnaia mysl', I99I, no. i6, p. 35.



IULII MARTOV 43 I

had to defend his position against Martov's unrelenting nightly onslaughts 29

A harsher reception and the final break with Tseretelli awaited Martov at the First Congress of Soviets in June where his faction of Menshevik Internationalists numbered only thirty-five out of the total I ,O90 delegates. That congress, seeing itself as 'Russia's first revolutionary parliament',30 marked the peak of the Tseretelli group's domi- nant role in the soviets and its ascendency in Russia at large.

Right at the outset of the Congress, Martov launched his protest against the Provisional Government-ordered deportation of Robert Grimm for being implicated in some German peace offers. The deportation, he said, was an attack on Zimmerwald and a retreat from the Petrograd Soviet's Address to the Peoples of the World of I4 March. Seething with anger, he turned on Tseretelli charging him with having been in league with Prince Georgii Lvov and Mikhail Tereshchenko in supporting Grimm's deportation and thus having high-handedly gone behind the back of the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet to whom he was responsible. This attack on Tseretelli, the acclaimed leader of the 'revolutionary democracy', was, as Martov soon found out, widely seen as little less than lese-majeste, and when, amidst the din of the uproar, he asked the assembly: 'Have you really given Tseretelli the right to deport any citizen?' the answer was a resounding 'Yes! [Daem!]'.

Martov then turned to the large Menshevik fraction: 'You, my past comrades in revolution', he appealed, 'are you with those who give carte blanche to their minister to deport any category of citizen?' The answer he got was 'Tseretelli is not a minister, but the conscience of the revolution! [noise, applause].' Thus far the text of the protocols.31 According to Sukhanov, who was there, 'A storm then broke loose that turned into a patriotic howl. Martov stood there, ruffled, his slight, meek, somewhat awkward and anything but bellicose figure heroically confronting the voracious, screeching monster.' Even Trotskii, no particular,friend of Martov, could stand it no longer and with the cry 'Long live the honest socialist Martov!' he rushed to the platform.2 As for Tseretelli and Skobelev, though their replies did not so much as touch on the issues that Martov had raised, their explanations aroused 'rapturous, never-ending applause'. Nevertheless, when Tseretelli spoke of himself as 'a minister of the Russian Revolution', Anatolii Lunacharskii sneered: 'Minister of Posts and Telegraphs!' Tseretelli

29 Sukhanov, vol. 4, p. 38. 30 Pervyi vserossiiskii s"ezd sovetov rabochikh i soldatskikh deputatov, vol. i, Moscow and Lenin-

grad, I 930, p. xxvii. 31 Ibid., pp. 3 1-34- 32 Sukhanov, vol. 4, pp. 227-28.



432 ISRAEL GETZLER

however snapped back: 'A minister of posts and telegraphs is also a minister of the Russian Revolution, and I am telling you that a minister of the Russian Revolution knows his duties; revolutionary Russia needs a strong state power, comrades, a state power which doesn't run every minute for instructions.'33

As for Martov, he now realized, as he wrote to Kristi, that 'for the majority of the assembly names such as Axelrod and Martov have no meaning', while 'our internationalist position is to them that very same Bolshevism which they understand as "separate peace" and "civil war" '.3 Still, he did not leave it at that. Instead, he moved a resolution requesting the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet and the socialist parties to 'investigate the conduct of their comrades- ministers' (i.e. Tseretelli and Skobelev).35

From then on, Martov was to play the role of effective critic of Tseretelli's policies, especially on coalitionism and on peace and war. But until theJuly Days all he could offer as an alternative was to recall the social democratic ministers from the government, which was tantamount to a return to the dual power of the first phase of the revolution.

As the government prepared for the June offensive, Martov's alternative, urged by him at the Congress of Soviets, was an ultimatum to the Allies to start peace negotiations. When Tseretelli interjected: 'Suppose they reject your ultimatum?' Martov snapped back: 'Then Russia will leave the Alliance and, if attacked, will wage separate war.'36 He fiercely denounced the offensive which to him meant that Russia, effectively out of the hostilities since March, would now voluntarily go back into a war that was bound to end 'in Sedan'.37

It took Martov a long time to abandon his taboo on power. Indeed, in response to a letter from Kristi in April I9I7, in which she raised the question of a socialist 'seizure of power', Martov explained that even in Russia's present revolutionary situation, where a proletarian assump- tion of power was feasible because it would be supported by the peasantry and by the peasant soldiers, it was still undesirable.

The peasants may give their support to the seizure of power by socialists, but they will expect from them such things as an end to their poverty, together with the preservation of their small-holdings, and a 'war to the finish', etc., etc. Thus such an adventure would either end in a tragic Krach when they wake up to it that they have made a mistake, or, more likely, in our doing what Engels termed 'the work of another class'.

33 Pervyi vserossiiskii s"ezd sovetov rabochikh i soldatskikh deputatov, vol. I, p. 35. 34 Martov to Nadezhda Kristi, I7June 1917, Svobodnaiamysl', iggi, no. i6, pp. 35-36. 35 Peruyi vserossiiskii s"ezd sovetov rabochikh i soldatskikh deputatov, vol. I, p. 38. 36 Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 89-92. 37 Martov to Nadezhda Kristi, 17 June 1917, Svobodnaia mysl', I99I, no. I6, p.36; Pervyi

vserossiiskii s"ezd sovetov rabochikh i soldatskikh deputatov, vol. 2, pp. 89-92.



IULII MARTOV 433

The role of the socialists must remain one of an implacably critical opposition, Martov urged.38 Indeed, as late as June, Martov was still demanding the recall of the socialist ministers from the coalition government: 'the Soviet must exert control over a purely bourgeois government' .39

But then came the government crisis caused by the walkout of the Kadet ministers on 2 July, ostensibly over concessions on Ukrainian autonomy made to the Ukrainian Rada. This, Martov urged, meant that 'the entire organized bourgeoisie had walked out on state power':

History demands that we take power into our own hands and I believe that the entire revolutionary democracy of Russia will support us. That government of the democracy will take Russia to the Constituent Assembly, but, above all, it will take Russia out of the war which is strangling the revolution and its achievements.40

But then came the July Days and Martov's call for a democratic, popular front type of government was drowned out by the Bolshevik war cry 'All Power to Soviets!' of the violentJuly Days demonstrations. Those demonstrations, in turn, gave Tseretelli the opportunity to dismiss Martov's proposal on the grounds that it represented a major change in policy over which the provincial soviets must be consulted.41 He then promptly enabled Kerenskii to form a second coalition government, and on worse terms than the first: its socialist ministers were no longer to be responsible to the soviets.

Martov's political predicament was also, as he complained to Kristi, compounded by 'the cooling off of personal relations with comrades I was connected to by party work over many years; now, except those from Zurich, they are all in the other camp'.42 By mid-August Martov realized that he had failed to convert the Menshevik majority. While it is true that at the mid-August Menshevik congress one third of the delegates supported Martov, it is equally true that two-thirds of the Menshevik party had moved to the right, towards class collaboration or, in Tseretelli's favourite expression, 'co-operation with the living forces of the country'. That was highlighted at the State Conference on 15 August when, in response to the widely applauded conciliatory speech of Aleksandr Bublikov, leader of the industrialists, Tseretelli rose and, as the protocols report, he and Bublikov 'shook hands amidst a resounding ovation'.43

38 Martov to Nadezhda Kristi, 20 April I91 7, Svobodnaia mysl', I99I, no. i 6, p. 33. 39 A. Shliapnikov, Semnadtsatyi god, vol. 4, Moscow and Leningrad, I93 I, p. I 50. 40 Ibid., p. 294; Novaia zhizn', I 2 July 1917, no. 72; Izvestiia, 6July I 91 7, no. i I o. 41 Sukhanov, vol. 4, pp. 4I7-i8, 443-44. 42 Martov to Nadezhda Kristi, 9 October 1917, Svobodnaia mysl', I99I, no. i6, p. 37. 43 Gosudarstvennoe soveshchanie, Moscow and Leningrad, 1930, p. 269.

14



434 ISRAEL GETZLER

Martov's policy of remaining in the Menshevik party while fiercely criticizing its leadership and exposing its policies did not merely play into the hands of the Bolsheviks, it also boomeranged on his own Menshevik Internationalist faction, many of whose Petrograd members went with Larin - he claimed to have taken I,ooo workers with him - when he joined the Bolsheviks in late August in protest, as Martov put it, 'against our coexistence with the defencists'.4

If Martov's conception of a government of the democracy had had any chance of being accepted, then it was in the wider forum of the Democratic Conference in mid-September. It convened a fortnight after the Kornilov putsch which certainly discredited the Kadets who were regarded as being in sympathy with, if not implicated in, it. Martov, the sharpest critic of coalitionism, was elected by a majority both as spokesman of the Menshevik faction (Tseretelli was elected spokesman of the minority) and of the Soviet curia (Dan was spokesman of the minority). Thus, the predominant mood at the conference was very much against a repetition of the experiment of coalition with the Kadets. Moreover, leading Bolshevik spokesmen at the Conference, such as Kamenev, were pledged not to overthrow a 'homogeneous democratic ministry', should it emerge from the Conference: 'We will support it in so far as it pursues a democratic policy and leads the country to the Constituent Assembly', they declared.45 And when Lenin, from his hiding place in Finland, sent two letters to prod the party into readying itself for the seizure of power, an emergency session of the Central Committee resolved not to circulate the letters and, according to Bukharin, even to burn them.46

That anti-coalition mood was initially translated into a series of narrow majorities voting against coalition with the Kadets, and of somewhat more comfortable majorities voting for the principle of coalition in the abstract. When the final voting was taking place on I 9 September, a resolution approving coalition in principle was passed by 766 to 688 votes, with thirty-eight abstentions; but an amendment specifically to exclude the Kadets was passed by 595 to 493, with seventy-two abstentions. Since the amendment to exclude the Kadets - the only real candidates for coalition - made nonsense of the vote for coalition in principle, right and left combined when the final consolidated resolution was put to the vote, defeating it roundly by 8 I 3 to I83 votes with eighty abstentions. That meant that Tseretelli had

44 Martov to Nadezhda Kristi, g October I 9 I7, Svobodnaia mysl', I99I, no. i6, p. 37; Martov to P. B. Axelrod, 30 December I917, unpublished letter, Nicolaevsky Collection, Hoover Institution, Stanford. 45 Rabochaia gazeta, 2I September 19I7, no. I66; A. Rabinowitch, The Bolsheviks Come to

Power, New York, I 976, p. I 84. 46 Ibid., p. i8i.



IULII MARTOV 435

again thwarted Martov, this time by his control of the Central Execu- tive Committee of Soviets (TsIK) which had sent out the invitations and given the co-operatives and the municipalities - known to favour coalition - more than their fair share of representation at the expense of the soviets and the trade unions who opposed coalition. Tseretelli and his associates took advantage of the fiasco that marked the conference's end to enable Kerenskii to form a third coalition government, 'the worst ever' as Rafael Abramovich put it. This was Tseretelli's parting gift to the Russian February revolution, for he soon departed for the Caucasus, returning only after the October revolution for the opening of the Constituent Assembly from which he was

wrongly as it happened - convinced he would not return alive. With the Democratic Conference proving demonstratively unable to

produce an alternative to coalitionism, Lenin, Trotskii and the large majority of Bolshevik leaders began in earnest to prepare for the seizure of power, to coincide with the opening of the Second Congress of Soviets planned for 25 October.

When the Congress opened, Martov, on behalf of the Menshevik Internationalists and the Jewish Workers' Party Poalei Tsion, pro- posed that the first item on the agenda be 'the question of the peaceful resolution of the crisis' created by the Bolshevik insurrection. The proposal was greeted with stormy applause by the entire Congress, a majority of whose delegates understood 'All Power to Soviets!' to mean a broadly based government of the Soviet parties and not a narrow Bolshevik government. Lunacharskii, on behalf of the Bolshevik fraction, declared that the Bolsheviks had no objections - on the contrary, they were interested in all fractions expressing their opinions on how to find a way out of the crisis. Martov's proposal was then put to the vote and passed unanimously. At that crucial moment, Lev Khinchuk, on behalf of the Mensheviks, read out a declaration roundly denouncing the 'Bolshevik military conspiracy', to be echoed by Mikhail Gen- delman, on behalf of the SRs, and Genrikh Erlikh, on behalf of the Bundists. Then, to the catcalls of the Bolsheviks, they all stalked out of the hall,47 as much in fury as out of conviction that 'victorious Lenin could not last more than three days, not even in Petrograd'.48 That was a stab in the back for Martov who had entreated them 'not to walk out of the Congress', but to stand their ground and 'give Lenin a run for his money'. For when he then urged the formation of a commission of all socialist parties to negotiate the establishment of a 'government of the democracy', Trotskii pounced on the walk-out of the moderate

4' Vtoroi vserossiiskii s"ezd rabochikh i soldatskikh deputatov, Moscow and Leningrad, 1928, pp. 34-35, 37-38, 41-42; Sukhanov, vol. 7, 1923, p. I99; Martov to Axelrod. I9 November I9I7. 48 Ibid.



436 ISRAEL GETZLER

socialists to neutralize Martov's embarrassing proposal. John Reed saw Trotskii standing there with his 'pale, cruel face, letting out his rich voice in cool contempt'.49 But it was Sukhanov who recorded Trotskii's speteh:

Now, when our insurrection is victorious, you tell us: renounce your victory, make concessions, compromise; with whom, I ask, with whom ought we to compromise? With those wretched groups who have walked out or who are making this proposal? ... No! No compromise is possible here! To those who have walked out, and to those who make such proposals, we must say: you are pitiful isolated individuals; you are bankrupts; your role is played out; go where you belong from now on - into the dustbin of history!

'Then we shall leave!' Martov shouted amidst the stormy applause which greeted Trotskii's speech, and so saying, he too walked out accompanied by his supporters.50

At the end of October, Martov, together with Abramovich, made further attempts to negotiate with moderate Bolsheviks the formation of a broadly based socialist government ranging from the Popular Socialists (NS) to the Bolsheviks. But on 2 November, in a night session of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party (recognized by Lenin

in the greatest understatement of I917 - as one of 'historical importance'), Lenin cracked the whip: there would be no more negotiations, he ruled, they had only been tolerated as 'a diplomatic cover for military action' .51

The last whisper of moderate Bolshevism, with its hankering after a broadly-based socialist coalition government, was silenced on I December I 9I7 when Lenin had the Provisional Bureau of the Bolshevik Fraction of the Constituent Assembly disbanded because of their 'bourgeois-democratic attitude to the Constituent Assembly which ignored the realities of class struggle and civil war'.52 Moreover, to make things worse for Martov, the Left SRs who had so far held out against Lenin's invitation to join the Council of People's Commissars (Sovnarkom), unless it co-opted representatives of all soviet parties, now joined the Sovnarkom as junior partners and basically on Bolshe- vik terms. This put paid to Martov's hopes that, with the help of the moderate Bolsheviks and the Left SRs, it would still be possible to prevent the consolidation of a Bolshevik minority dictatorship.

None the less, not for a moment would Martov consider throwing in his lot with the victorious Bolsheviks. As he explained 'in great detail'

49 John Reed, Ten Days That Shook the World, New York,, 1935, pp. 93-94. 50 Sukhanov, vol. 7, pp. 203-04. 51 Protokoly Tsentral'nogo Komiteta RSDRP (b) angust i9i7g.-fevral' IgI8g., Moscow, 1958,

p. 13 I; Leonard Schapiro, The Origin of Communist Autocracy, London, I956, p. 73. 52 Ibid., pp. I6o, 27-f80.



IULII MARTOV 437

in two letters to Kristi, and in earlier letters to Axelrod,53 the reason that he had remained in opposition to the new 'socialist regime' was

not only because of my deep conviction that it is senselessly utopian to impose socialism on an economically and culturally backward country, but also because of my innate inability to reconcile myself to that Arakcheevian conception of socialism and that Pugachevian understanding of the class struggle which are a natural product of that very attempt to plant a European ideal in Asian soil... What flourishes here is such a pseudo- socialism of'trenches and barracks', founded on an all-out 'primitivization' of life and the cult of the fist, pure and simple, not even of the 'horny fist', that one cannot help feeling guilty before every civilized bourgeois. And since reality has the better of any ideology, under the auspices of the 'state power of the proletariat' there is in practice such a riot of the specifically Russian vices of boorishness, crude, mean careerism, bribery, parasitism, debauchery and plain irresponsibility that one shudders to think how far the very idea of socialism will be discredited in the minds of the people, undermining its faith in its ability to create its history with its own hands. XVe are undoubtedly moving through anarchy towards some sort of Caesarism, founded on the entire people's loss of confidence in their ability to govern themselves.54

To sum up: having lost both his party and his right-hand man Dan to Tseretelli, Martov was no match for the major political leaders of I91 7, Miliukov, Kerenskii, Tseretelli and, in the end, Trotskii and Lenin. They were charismatic figures, great orators and consummate politi- cians, hell-bent on winning power and devoid of any doubt as to the wisdom of their policies, and they had political parties to back them up.

Martov was indifferent to personal power, instead believing in and practising collective leadership; he was too honest, decent and impul- sive to dissimulate. He could be brilliant and fascinating as a speaker in smaller assemblies, but not in the mass meetings of 1905 and 1917. His superb intelligence and his great talent as a writer were not of great use to him in I 917 when he had no newspaper under his control and, until late in September, had to rely on the hospitality of Gor'kii's Novaia zhizn. His loyalty to his friends, his reliance on and trust in political friends and colleagues, and his fairness even to political enemies such as the Bolsheviks under persecution in the post-July Days period, which totally ignored all political expediency, were no more political assets than was his great belief in the power of argument and persuasion.

Martov's letters to Kristi document a remarkable identity between his public statements and his private thoughts. While all his virtues make him one of the most attractive and loved figures of the Russian

53 Martov to Nadezhda Kristi, 30 December I 917, published in Martov i ego blizkie. Sbornik, New York, 1959, pp. 48-50. 54 'Nasha platforma', Sotsialisticheskii vestnik, 4 October 1922, no. 19 (4I).



438 ISRAEL GETZLER

revolutionary movement and of European socialism, they did not equip him for political leadership in 1 91 7.

Still, it seems to me that in 1917 Martov's broadly-based 'government of the democracy' - some sort of popular front government to which he came round only as late as the July Days - made far better sense than Tseretelli's single-minded and inflexible pursuit of co- operation with the so-called 'living forces of the country' which pro- duced one coalition government after the other marked by 'organized, collective inactivity'. I also believe that Martov's demand for an active peace policy which would not shy away from an ultimatum to the Allies would at least have prevented the disastrous Kerenskii offensive of June/July I 9 I 7 even if it could not have taken Russia out of the war- for no one, not even Lenin, would have dared to advocate a separate peace.

While this is neither the place nor yet the time for a second look at Martov's performance as leader of the Menshevik party in opposition (until the end of I 920) and in exile (until his death on 4 April I 923), his firm leadership and the general acceptance by his party of his complex but consistent two-pronged (dvuedinaia) semi-loyal, semi-implacable policy vis-a'-vis the Bolshevik dictatorship contrasts sharply with his failure to lead his party or even influence its policies in I 9 I 7.

One major reason for Martov's new ascendancy was the stark fact that it was a solidly beaten party and a much chastened revolutionary- defencist majority led by Dan that rallied to him at the Extraordinary Congress of the Menshevik Party early in December 1917. Moreover, his opposition to and fierce critique of the Bolsheviks' headlong plunge into socialism was fully in tune with the Mensheviks' time-hallowed understanding of the 'bourgeois' limitations of the Russian revolution and their abhorrence of minority dictatorship and the terror. His dual policy of supporting the Bolsheviks in the struggle against White restoration and foreign intervention while indicting and exposing the terrorist dictatorship made good sense to those who could neither bring themselves tojoin the Whites nor throw in their lot with the Bolsheviks. Led by Martov they sought desperately to find a place for themselves as an opposition within the Soviet system which, willy-nilly, they accepted 'as a fact of life though not in principle'.

True, quite a number of prominent Mensheviks, ranging from Ivan Maiskii on the right to Andrei Vyshinskii on the far left, did defect to the Bolsheviks, but they did so as individuals and at different times. Similarly, a small right-wing, including Alexander Potresov and Vladi- mir Levitskii (Martov's youngest brother), joined the anti-Bolshevik Union for the Regeneration of Russia, the Committee of Members of the Constitutent Assembly (KOMUCH) and other anti-Bolshevik coalitions. But none of this deflected Martov, his associates Dan and



IULII MARTOV 439

Raphael Abramovich, and the Mensheviks in general from their course and their conviction that a violent overthrow of the Bolshevik regime would not be followed by the victory of liberal-bourgeois or social democracy but rather by counter-revolution. That outcome they feared even more than they detested Bolshevism, which they regarded as not yet beyond redemption.

Possibly Martov's policy, aided by the special respect in which Lenin and many Bolsheviks held Martov, enabled the Menshevik party to survive, despite harassment and persecution, until late in I920 - no mean achievement. Even after 1920, when Martov had become the leader of a party that was to all intents and purposes in exile, the party continued to accept his revised dual policy, now far more implacable and far less loyal. That policy, expounded in his last major article, 'Our Platform', enjoined his Mensheviks not only to keep clear of all anti-Bolshevik coalitions but also to shun the Bolshevik regime -

which was in danger of degenerating even further into a Caesarist- Bonapartist dictatorship - while doing their best to prevent the Comintern taking over the socialist parties of the West.

Martov's 'line of social democracy' became, after his death, the guideline not only of the Mensheviks but also of the Labour and Socialist International which, at its foundation congress in May 1923,

adopted a two-pronged Menshevik resolution which determined its attitude to the Soviet Union until the Nazi-Soviet pact of August 1939."

It seems to me that Martov's success as leader of his party in opposition and in exile, and his lasting influence on the Mensheviks and on the Labour and Socialist International owed much to his personifying and expressing more than any other socialist leader that mixture of realism, despair and moral-humanitarian commitment with which Menshevism and European social democracy confronted the Bolshevik perversion of the Russian revolution. Small wonder then that they recognized in Martov the true conscience of the Russian revolution.

Julius Braunthal, Historg of the International i914-1943, London, I967, pp. 269-70, 338-39.



Documents

Iulii Martov, the Leader Who Lost His Party in 1917: A Second Look at Martov on the 70th Anniversary of His Death