The February Revolution

Abstract

In 1914 the great majority of the socialist parties of the belligerent countries, faced with actual hostilities, proved incapable of putting into practice the resolutions against war which they had adopted while war still remained a question of theory. When put to the test by the outbreak of hostilities, international socialism suffered a blow from which it never recovered. With the exception of the representatives of two parties, the Russian and the Serbian, the socialists in the parliaments of the belligerent countries voted, on the grounds of self-defence, to support their governments’ war measures. In Russia, both the bolshevik and the menshevik deputies in the state Duma left the chamber and refused to vote the credits for the war. They were supported by the Trudoviki, the socialist revolutionary group in the Duma. Yet before long the Russian socialist parties proved to be far from united on the issue of defence. The Socialist Revolutionaries became, in the main, supporters of the war effort, with some exceptions such as Natanson (Bobrov), who had long been on the extreme left of his party, and Victor Chernov (Gardenin). Among the Mensheviks several trends appeared: the right wing became ‘defensist’; the left wing, which included Martov and Larin, preached various degrees of internationalism. Alexandra Kollontay, who was then among the most extreme internationalists of the menshevik party, co-operated throughout the war with the Bolsheviks, and formally joined them in 1917, The founder of Russian marxism, Plekhanov, and his small group which included Vera Zasulich and Deutsch, were no longer organizationally linked either with the Mensheviks or the Bolsheviks. They advocated victory over Germany.¹