The Mensheviks: Socialists Who Lost to Lenin

We often think of the Russian Revolution as a binary conflict between the Bolsheviks and the Tsar, but there was another massive socialist force that dominated the early months of 1917. This episode explores the Mensheviks, the moderate socialists who believed Russia needed a bourgeois democracy before socialism could arrive. We look at Julius Martov, their intellectual leader, and how they initially held more power than Lenin in the Petrograd Soviet. Yet, through a series of strategic missteps and ideological rigidity, they lost ground to Lenin’s radical decree on land and peace. Discover why the majority became the minority, how internal divisions over the war effort accelerated their downfall, and what their defeat meant for the future of Russian politics. From the debates at the Smolny Institute to the final consolidation of Bolshevik power, this is the story of the revolutionaries who chose principle over power.

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