Apprendisti Storici

The word “Menshevism” (translated in Russian “minority”) indicates one of the two factions of the Russian Social Democratic Party which emerged in 1903, with the other far-left Marxist faction, following a dispute between Julius Martov, the leader of the mensheviks, and Vladimir Lenin who was, logically, the leader of the other one. As the russian tranlastion of this term suggests the Martov’s supporters were in the minority, even if neither side held a consistent majority over the course of the entire Second Congress. They were Orthodox-Marxists more positive towards the liberal opposition and the peasant-based Socialist Revolutionary Party, in favor of gradual reforms and convinced that the Revolution should be a bourgeois product and that the task of the proletariat was to exert revolutionary pressure on the liberal and radical bourgeoisie. (Virginia Giovannetti 5al)