Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 2.pdf/324

298 The bolševiki went so far as to rejoice at the (first) dissolution of the duma.

Despite these complications, quite a number of social democrats were elected to the first duma, and a still larger number to the second. In the later elections, however, the party was positively decimated. This did not induce the bolševiki to change their tactics. In the year 1906 a serious effort was made to reconcile the two factions, but without success, and the conflict between them subsequently became accentuated.

In the agrarian question, a matter of extreme urgency, and indeed in all questions, the bolševiki, pending the definitive collapse of absolutism, made a working program of their ultimate aim, whereas the men'ševiki were endeavouring, by critical methods and by their estimate of the existing situation and of the social and political forces of the day, to destroy the illusion of the bolševiki.

The members of the radical left wing of the bolševiki developed into anarchising socialists. In the name of orthodox Marxism they approved acts of expropriation, and they opposed the constitution and parliament, styling themselves or being known as otzovisty and ultimatisty. (The "otzovisty" are the "recallers," those who wish to recall from office their representatives in the duma. "Ultimatism," as a tactical method, meant that an ultimatum was to be presented to the members of the duma and to the party organisations in general, those that proved recalcitrant being terrorised by a boycott declared by the party executive.)

During this same period the men'ševiki, too, went through their political distemper. In their endeavour to be a purely proletarian party they penalised the intelligentsia, and the more extreme and radical section among them even demanded that the party should become wholly a mass movement, for leadership, they said, was improper and must be abolished (must be "liquidated," whence this trend was called "liquidationism").

The antipathy to the liberals was simultaneously displayed by the appearance of an anarchist trend which was theoretical rather than practical. This became conspicuous in 1904 in a polemic against the intelligentsia, and since Mahaev was its principal exponent it was denominated "Mahaevism."

The social revolutionaries, likewise, were torn by internal dissensions. Among them, too, there appeared a right and a