Talk:Mensheviks

RE: Organizations and people who predicted the collapse of the USSR

I added Mensheviks to [[Category:Organizations and people who predicted the collapse of the USSR]] because of this reference, which talks about organizations and people who felt the Soviet Union would collapse:

Shortly after the (Soviet) revolution , Bertrand Russell and Rosa Luxemburg, supporters of revolution second to none, wrote with deep regret that it was impossible that the Bolsheviks would succeed in building the kind of society they professed to believe in. Kautsky and the Mensheviks predicted even more emphatically that the whole experiment would end in disaster.

Laqueur, Walter (1996). The Dream that Failed : Reflections on the Soviet Union. USA: Oxford University Press. ISBN: 0195102827. p. 188

Signed:Travb 13:25, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Well, it is certainly true that the Mensheviks predicted that Lenin's experiment would collapse (see, e.g., Sukhanov's account where he confronts Kamenev on October 25, 1917), but so did everybody else in 1917-1922 or thereabouts. Shouldn't we limit the category to a later period, when the USSR looked stable, to make it more useful? Ahasuerus 14:26, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't know. I was thinking about that too. But when is the cut off? Travb 14:53, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

I would think that any predictions made during the Russian Civil War in 1918-1920 or the uprisings and famines in 1921-1922 would be too common to be notable. Then we have the famous intra-Party infighting in 1923-1927, although otherwise the regime looked fairly stable. Then the deterioration of the economy in 1928-1929, which led to the upheavals of 1930-1933, with more rebellions, famine, etc. Then we have a more stable economy in 1934-1939, but on the other hand, the Great Purge is under way from late 1934 on, the eradication of the old Bolshevik elite, accounts of gigantic conspiracies, etc. And then it's WWII time, with stunning Soviet defeats in 1941-1942.

So I guess anything pre-1945 would be of questionable notability. Hm, which reminds me that back in 1951 Collier's Weekly dedicated a whole issue to the "coming nuclear war with the USSR", which predicted a Soviet defeat after 2 years of fighting, an occupation of the former Soviet Union by UN forces and a re-establishment of democracy under UN auspices. I should probably dig it up and add it to the Colliers article. Ahasuerus 15:14, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Facinating. you know your stuff. I think I will go with post-WWII, Cold War as cut off. Good call.Travb 15:41, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Article is up for deletion

I would like your comments: Wikipedia:Categories_for_deletion#Category:Organizations_and_people_who_predicted_the_collapse_of_the_USSR On every page I post this on, many people start passionate conversations about this. Travb 05:02, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

2 questions

• Was 'Socialist Messenger' in English? If not, was was the Russian name?
• What was the name of the Menshevik party after the 1912 split?

--Soman 08:41, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Mensheviks VS. Bolsheviks

I have 4 questions about both the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks.

1. Since the Bolsheviks were atheists, were the Mensheviks religious or were they also atheist or were they both?

2. Would Mikhail Gorbachev, his reforms and his supporters be classed as Menshevik?

3. What makes the Mensheviks different from the Bolsheviks?

4. Just like Marx, Lenin, Stalin, and Trotsky were all members of the Bolsheviks movement, was there anybody who was part of the Mensheviks movement?

Note: While i am not signed in right now, my contribution number is 71.116.23.185 apparently, but my page is User:Chamaoloan so if you want to answer me there, you can, thanks.

Thank you.

71.116.23.185 (talk) 08:10, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

User:Chamaoloan 04:02, 26 April 2008 (EST)

1. I don't know for certain, but I would be willing to bet that the vast majority of Mensheviks were also atheists. Religion was not the main point of contention between them and the Bolsheviks.

3. (better to answer them in this order). There were differences, but both Bolsheviks and Mensheviks were Marxists. Marx believed that society progresses from serfdom (like Russia pre First World War) to capitalism (like contemporary Britain, France or America). After capitalism has developed, there is a revolution, and the establishment of a vaguely-defined "dictatorship of the proletariat". After this, the state withers away and communism is established.

Now, the Mensheviks believed that, since Russia still had serfdom, it would need to progress to full-blown capitalist democracy before anyone could think of establishing communism. However, the Bolsheviks believed that Russia could bypass the capitalist stage by forging an alliance between the proles (city-dwelling, industrial wage-labourers) and the peasants. The proletariat was not yet large enough to establish a government of its own, so the country would actually be run by the elite workers & intellectuals, the Party.

2. I have never heard Gorbachev described as a Menshevik. The Mensheviks were defeated in the October Revolution and ensuing civil war, and then scattered around the globe. I do not think Gorbachev's reforms were Menshevik anyway. The Mensheviks wanted to establish democratic capitalism first and then democratic socialism/communism later. Gorbachev tried to introduce democracy to an already-existing state-controlled economy.

4. Martov was the leader of the Mensheviks. You can find him on wikipedia.

BillMasen (talk) 16:31, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Sorry for the late reply, but regarding question 4, Trotsky was a Menshevik for a period. --Soman (talk) 10:14, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Article has no references

This article cites no references. I propose deletion within 60 days if there are no references provided? = Nov 21st 2009 Dr Wong (talk) 12:24, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Its been over 60 days brother. 213.107.49.93 (talk) 09:24, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

There is a common misunderstanding that lack of reference is a criteria for deletion. That is not the case. --Soman (talk) 15:06, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

Split article

This article should be split, to separate between the term Menshevik and the Mensheviks as a faction of RSDRP on one hand, and the Menshevik party after 1912 on the other. --Soman (talk) 10:27, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Ok, i'll go ahead with the split. --Soman (talk) 22:23, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

I have now splitted the article into two. I removed the post-1912 material from this article. However, all of that material was unreferenced and I felt uncomfortable copying that over to the new article. Please check through the old versions of this page, and see if there are material that could be rescued from adding sources. --Soman (talk) 22:36, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

this article should definitely not be split in my opinion. that makes it unnecessarily confusing when they were essentially the same party with the same people. it doesn't need a whole article, just a section. also there is a section here for after 1917 which makes no sense if post-1912 is seperate. EmSim15 (talk) 04:27, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

I am going to go ahead and merge these two pages (Mensheviks and Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (Mensheviks)). Feel free to revert this if necessary. EmSim15 (talk) 04:33, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

Communism sidebar? Help me

{{helpme}}

Shouldn't this article display the Communism sidebar?

--Aboudaqn (talk) 04:25, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

Menshevik = minority?

It's been many years, but my reading was that the group that we know as Mensheviks were actually in the majority at the time, and that Lenin, in his typical disregard for democracy, labeled his opposition menshevik and his own, lesser group bolshevik in spite of his own minority position.Every time Lenin would lose a vote, he's split from the alliance and announce his own group the only legitimate one. MarkinBoston (talk) 20:01, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

Menshevik in a nutshell

What is the difference between the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks?. Is this a valid comparison? I mean this article is still obscure when it comes understanding its relationship between the Bolsheviks. Komitsuki (talk) 18:20, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: page moved. Andrewa (talk) 11:04, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

---

Menshevik → Mensheviks – Why is this not plural, Wikipedia is not a dictionary, this a page about the definition of word, it's an encyclopedic page about the Russian revolutionary movement. Charles Essie (talk) 20:16, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

• Support per standard practice at Wikipedia for such entities (WP:PLURAL's "groups or classes of specific things"). —  AjaxSmack  02:30, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Difficulty making sense of some text.

I'm struggling with one of the paragraphs. I'll paste the relevant part:

This split in the party crippled the Mensheviks' popularity, and they received 3.2% of the vote during the Russian Constituent Assembly election in November 1917 compared to the Bolsheviks' 25% and the Socialist Revolutionaries' 57%. The Mensheviks got just 3.3% of the national vote, but in the Transcaucasus they got 30.2%. 41.7% of their support came from the Transcaucasus.

Question 1: The 3.2% and 3.3%. Are these definitely different counts? ie, "vote during the Russian Constituent Assembly election" is a different count from "of the national vote"? If not, please remove one of the duplicates.

Question 2: How is the 30.2% count different from the 41.7% count? Oh, hang on, I think I see this one now. However, it's jarring in the extreme and could be made a lot clearer, I feel. It would be good if someone could edit so that the sentences are not so hard to get one's head around. --bodnotbod (talk) 01:45, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

Why the separate article?

Why is this article separate from the Mensheviks one? This doesn't really make sense as there was mostly continuation. Not to mention there are 58 translations of the other page and only 2 of this one. The content of the Russian page includes all periods. EmSim15 (talk) 04:08, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

 Note: Discussion about this proposed merge ongoing on Talk:Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (Mensheviks) (keep discussion in one place). –Vipz (talk) 21:15, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

Merger discussion

Discussion about merging Mensheviks and Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (Mensheviks). I propose merging these two pages, or creating something else, in order to have a more easy to follow, concise, and comprehensive article on what menshevism is, what it stood for, and its history. This would also allow unity between the Russian and English pages. — Preceding unsigned comment added by EmSim15 (talk • contribs) 16:28, 4 May 2023 (UTC)