Atlas / Organisations / Mensheviks
Mensheviks
RSDLP(m) · 1903–1921 · Russia · Social Democratic · Electoral party · coding confidence high
Each axis runs from −10 to +10, with zero a genuine mixed or balanced position rather than an absence of opinion. A score describes a stated position and a governing record; it is not a judgement of merit. What each score means →
Core principles
Russia must pass through a bourgeois-democratic stage; socialism cannot be decreed by a minority.
Economic model
Same long-run socialisation goals as the Bolsheviks, sequenced differently.
Organisation of powers
Broad, open, democratic party; constituent assembly; coalition with liberals.
Reading note
Nearly identical to Bolshevism on the economic axis and nearly opposite on authority and method. Suppressed by 1921.
Check a claim about Mensheviks. The interactive atlas measures the distance between any two organisations across all six axes and shows which ones carry the disagreement.
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All six cells are sourced. A rationale explains what the score is measuring and each artefact is something a third party can check without taking anyone's word for it.
EC · Economic organisation · scored −08
Coded within one point of the Bolsheviks: the disagreement was about sequence and method, not about ownership.
- Programme textBoth factions accepted the same Second Congress programme of 1903 on socialisation of the means of production.
CU · Social and cultural order · scored −05
Shared the Bolshevik cultural programme; the split was never about social questions.
- Programme textBoth factions campaigned on universal suffrage including for women, civil marriage and secular schooling.
AU · Organisation of power · scored −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.
SC · Scale of decision · scored +03
Favoured a democratic republic with substantial regional autonomy rather than centralised command.
- Documented act or statuteThe Georgian Menshevik republic of 1918–21 operated a parliamentary constitution until the Red Army invasion.
ID · Rule of membership · scored −07
Universalist on the same terms as classical Marxism.
- Programme textParty programme framed emancipation in class terms with no ascriptive criterion.
CH · Method and tempo · scored +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.
Where it came from, and what came after
- takes its doctrine fromClassical Marxism
Both Russian factions accepted the same 1903 party programme.
- split fromBolsheviks
The 1903 congress split on party membership rules and never reunified.
- was destroyed byBolsheviks
The Mensheviks were banned in 1921 and their leaders exiled or imprisoned.
Nearest organisations by measured distance
Straight-line separation across all six axes, out of a maximum of 49.0. Proximity means similarity of stated position, not endorsement and not resemblance in outcome.
- German Social Democracy (Erfurt)1.7
- La France Insoumise3.9
- Popular Front4.7
- Eurocommunism5.2
- Sumar / Podemos5.9
- Die Linke6.1
Countries
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Scores are revised on evidence, so a citation should carry the version it refers to. Version 4.3.1 is current; the revision log records every change.
Free to quote and reproduce with attribution. This is a synthesis rather than a peer-reviewed dataset — where an authoritative figure is needed, cite the Chapel Hill Expert Survey, the Manifesto Project or V-Dem.