THE TASK OF THE BOLSHEVIKS and the proParty Mensheviks in roconsolidating the illegal REDLP had boot accomplished by the cod ol 1911 -although by this time Pleshanov himself had deserted to the liquidators. This reconsolidarion war finalised at the Soch Party Congress held in Prague in January 1912. Ar this congress there was mot a political split with Menshevism as such COME CLIENTS A AC have seen, Lenin worked for the Congress with a section of the Menshevika. The split was not with ebose who defended Menshevik politics but with the liquidators who refused to accept the Party. The Resolation of the Congret proclaimed:
The former members of the Central Committee, Mikhail, Yuri and Roman, refused not only to join the Central Commitiee in the spring of 1910, but even to atiend a single meeting to co-opt new members, and bluntly declared that comsadered the existence of the Party Central Committee lo be "harmful", It was precisely after the Plenary Meeting of 1910 that the above meationed chief publications of the liquidators, Nasha Zaryn and Dyelo Zhizi definitely turned to liquidationism all along the line, and only "belittling"" contrary to the decision of the Plenary Meeting] the importance of the illegal Party. hut openly renouncing it, decluring that the Party was "extinct", thut the Party was already liquidated, that the idea of reviving the illegal Party 9T95 atopia", asing the columns of legally patilished magazines to heap slander and ahose on the illegal Parly, calling the workers to regard the mactes of the Party and its hierarchy as "dead", ele* *At a time when throughout Russia the members of the Party, Irrespective of factions, united to promote the immediate tosk of convening a Party conference, the liquidators, banded together in entirely independent groups, split umay from the local orgunisations even where the pro-Party Mensheviks predominated [Ekateriaoslar, Kies] and definitely refused to maintain say Party relutions with the local organisations of the RSDLP. The Conference declares chat by its condset the Nasha Zarya and Dydia Zhirni group has definitely placed Itself nutside the Parts, (52). Separation le was politically pernissible to defend Mensherik views within the Parry provided is organisational sincere was deepl -The Rusius Organising Commision which called the present conference... notified all Social Democrots of lix convucution and insited to the Conference all, willout a single exception, urganisations of nur Purty the Third International." (54)
conditions for admis into the Communist International codified the political break with Social Democracy. Whereas in 1912 opportunist Menshevik views were compatible with membership of the Party on the condition of acceptanor of discipline. onward, with the definitive betrayal of the working class by the Second International, Lenin demandod a complete organisational separation from all varieties the clet notical cositions of Mensessin - such as Communist International this policy could be extended in practice on an internationn scale Although the conditions for the building of revolutionary parties were enormously changed following the Russian Revolution of 1917, the study of the history of Bolshevism nevertheless provided the great school trom which all political forces drew conclusions. The question of whether Bolshevism had emerged as a Party in 1903 at the time of the Second Party congress, Do whether on the concrary it had been a faction of the RSDLP in the period prior 1o herween Trotsky and the rising Stalinist bureaucracy.
Myth In order to carry on their campaign against "Trotskyism', the bureaucracy had to portray Troisky as the most pronounced possible opponent of Lenin. In addition to endlessiy reprinting every criticism Lenin had made of Trousky in the period prior to 1917, the burenocracy invented the myth that, in the period following 1903. Lenin and Troisky bad been not merely members of different faetions of the samne party, the RSDLP, but chat they had actually been members of Starting with the distortions of Zinoviev's History of the Bolshevik Party, and pessing droogh the more straightforward falsifications of Salin's History of the CPSU (B] (Short Coursel, the myth was invented that the Bolsheviks had already formed an independent party in 1903. To create this myth the entire bisery of Bolshevisa had to be perverred and faisified in the campaign against Trotsky (see appendix).
For his part, Trotsky also turned to the history of Bolshevism for stody for a dual purpose. Ie the frie Place he exposed, notably in his famous testimony to the Dewey Commission on the Moscow trals, the and more Importantly, he utilised the experience of Balsheviat to desclop his own position in relation to the struggle with Scalinism withun the Comintern and then in the bouding of the Fourth Incersational, He made Lenin's method of simultaneous struggle for policical positien and for orgacisational unity and an undersanding of the conditions under which Lenin did favour a split uniquely his own, The founding document of the first conference of the International Left Opposition codifiod the experience of Bolsheviam as part of the organisational principles of Trotskvise.
"The International Lefe Opposition regards itself as • faction of the Comintern und its separale national sections as factions of die natient* Communist Such a historical catastrophe as the collapse of the Soviet state would, of course, sweep away with it the Third International too. Similarly the victory of fascism in Germany and the smashing of the German proletariat would hardly allow the Comintern survive the consequences of its disastrons policies. Bat who in the cump of resiption will today dare to say that the collapse of the Soviet power or the victory of Tuscism in Germany cannot be avoided or prevented? Not the Left Opposition in any erent.... Standing on the foundation of the Oclober Revolution and of the Third International, the Left Opposition rejects the Ides of parullel Communist Parties.' (54) firmly afterwards, shows how he bad absorbed the orgabisational lessons of Bolshevism Ir is of course impossible to mechanically apply the conclusions and positions of one situation to another Nevertheless, historical analysis does provide one al the viral elements of the raw material on whic revolutionary cheory and practice is based. The ver concrete analysis of the concrete siracion is made Through concepts which in part are forged from historical experience.
To show that the differences which separare revolutionaries in. Brisa today are qualitatively smaller than those which Lenin and Trotsky consid cred frily containable within a simple organisa: on is to