Explain why the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks Split in 1903

Both parties also disagreed whether Russia was ready for a revolution and who would be leading this revolution.  The Bolsheviks view was that the bourgeoisie and the proletarian stages of the revolution would be merged into one while the Mensheviks believed that Russia was not even ready for a proletarian revolution yet.  Both parties agreed that a revolution would come eventually but the Mensheviks took the stand that there would be a long period where a middle class democratic government would be in charge.  When this party would be in charge the workers would develop and class and revolutionary consciousness until eventually they were ready for a revolution.  They wanted to see the workers develop effective trade unions to defend their own interests.  This is very much the Marxist, or communist view.  Lenin believed that there should be a revolution straight away.

The Mensheviks believed that, for the government to be effective, they would need to co-operate with other political parties and the trade unions in order to get appropriate wages and better conditions for the working class.  However, Lenin wanted to treat the workers even worse and did not want to co-operate with the existing political parties.  He wanted to make sure that the living and working conditions of the workers continued to degrade so that they would become even more dissatisfied with the government.  He believed that this dissatisfaction would drive the proletariat revolution to overthrow capitalism.  Lenin saw the activities of the trade unions as simple distractions.

Both parties got their main support from the working class.  However, the Bolsheviks seemed to attract the younger and more militant workers who liked to have some form of discipline, have firm leadership and quite simple slogans.  The Mensheviks attracted a range of different type of works and members of the intelligentsia.  They also attracted a lot more non-Russians especially Jews and Georgians.

In the Second Congress, Plekhanov was defeated by Lenin.  Lenin and his followers had forced the party to decide whether to follow Plekhanov’s idea of a broad-based party which was open to all revolutionaries or his own idea of a small, tightly knit and very exclusive party.  Plekhanov’s followers were named the Mensheviks, or the minority party and Lenin’s followers were names the Bolsheviks.  However, at the time when tsarist government fell in 1917, the Mensheviks were always the side with the most members while the Bolsheviks were the side with the fewer members.