Atlas / Comparisons / Bolsheviks vs Mensheviks
Bolsheviks and Mensheviks
Measured distance across six axes
Different families with real common ground. They agree within three points on EC, CU, ID. They diverge by eight points or more on AU, CH.
Axis by axis
| Axis | RSDLP(b) | RSDLP(m) | Gap | Reading | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| EC · Economic organisation | −09 | −08 | 1 | Agrees | Effectively the same position. Not what an argument between them is about. |
| CU · Social and cultural order | −05 | −05 | 0 | Agrees | Effectively the same position. Not what an argument between them is about. |
| AU · Organisation of power | +08 | −04 | 12 | Diverges | Carries the disagreement. Any claim that these two are alike has to explain this. |
| SC · Scale of decision | +07 | +03 | 4 | Differs | Real difference, but not the dividing line. |
| ID · Rule of membership | −07 | −07 | 0 | Agrees | Effectively the same position. Not what an argument between them is about. |
| CH · Method and tempo | +10 | +02 | 8 | Diverges | Carries the disagreement. Any claim that these two are alike has to explain this. |
Each axis runs from −10 to +10; the distance is the straight-line separation across all six at once, out of a maximum of 49.0. How the scoring works →
The evidence behind the widest gaps
A distance figure is worth nothing unless the scores behind it can be checked. These are the artefacts supporting the axes that separate these two most.
RSDLP(b) · AU +08
Other parties, factions and the elected assembly were removed within four years.
- Documented act or statuteThe Constituent Assembly, in which the Socialist Revolutionaries held a majority, was dissolved by force after one sitting in January 1918.
- Documented act or statuteThe Cheka was established in December 1917, six weeks after the seizure of power.
RSDLP(m) · AU −04
Committed to an open mass party and a constituent assembly, and destroyed by the faction that was not.
- Programme textMartov's 1903 formulation would have admitted any member who assisted the party, against Lenin's requirement of participation in an organisation.
- Documented act or statuteThe party was banned and its leaders exiled or imprisoned by 1921.
RSDLP(b) · CH +10
An armed seizure of power against a provisional government, followed by civil war.
- Documented act or statutePower was taken by armed insurrection in October 1917 rather than through the election held the following month.
RSDLP(m) · CH +02
The defining difference from Bolshevism: power to be won through the constituent assembly, not against it.
- Documented act or statuteThe faction opposed the October seizure and walked out of the Second Congress of Soviets in protest.
What this comparison does not establish
Proximity means similarity of stated position. It carries no claim about competence, circumstance, scale of operation, or what either organisation actually did to the people under it. Two organisations can sit close together and produce entirely different histories, because those things are not on any axis and could not be.
Bolsheviks
1903–1924 · Russia
A disciplined vanguard party seizes power in the name of the working class and imposes socialism from above.
Mensheviks
1903–1921 · Russia
Russia must pass through a bourgeois-democratic stage; socialism cannot be decreed by a minority.
Distance is not the whole answer. Two organisations can sit the same distance apart for entirely different reasons, and the reason is the content of any claim about them. Open the comparison in the atlas to weight the axes yourself.
Open in the atlas