RE: [Marxism] Data Request [RSDLP membership figures]

["Richard Fidler" <rfidler@xxxxxxxxxx>]

The definitive work, in English, for the period up to 1907,
appears to be David Lane, "The Roots of Russian Communism: A
Social and Historical Study of Russian Social-Democracy
1898-1907". In particular, chapter 1: "The Membership and
Social Composition of Russian Social-Democracy".

In the excerpts below, Mattick and Liebman come up with
sharply differing figures for the membership in 1907:

There was of course a wide gap between the Bolsheviks'
intentions and their actual achievements. If statistics can
be trusted, around 1905 there were about 8,400 organized
Bolsheviks and most probably the same number of Mensheviks.
By 1906, membership had grown to 13,000 for the Bolsheviks
and 18,000 for the Mensheviks - "one may fairly safely
conclude that both factions comprised about 40,000 members
in 1907. [Thus] one ought not to view Russian Social
Democracy as something centered on the cafes of Geneva and
composed of an 'elite mostly in exile'" (11) [reference to
David Lane's book] But it is still astonishing that this
small number, spread over of Russia, should be considered
the "vanguard" of the revolution. Of course, a rapid growth
in numbers could be expected with increasing
industrialization, capitalization, and radicalization but
even so this growth was limited by the general backwardness
of Russian society.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/mattick-paul/1983/reform/ch0
4.htm

The decision to broaden Party membership - and notably, to
grant a more active role to working-class elements whose
role until then had been almost negligible - had a profound
effect on the nature of the Leninist organisation.  In 1905
the Bolshevik and Menshevik groups in Russia had a combined
membership of only 8400.  By 1907 the number had risen to
84,000 (46,000 Bolsheviks and 38,000 Mensheviks).  One year
after the outbreak of the revolution, Lenin, anticipating
the actual development of the revolutionary organisation,
had already, for the first time, described it as a "mass
party". This expression, however, referred not only to the
number of recruits, but also to the structures and methods
of action of the Party, concerning which Lenin stated.  "The
new form of organisation, or rather the new form of the
basic organisational nucleus of the workers' party, must be
definitely much broader than were the old circles.  Apart
from this, the new nucleus will most likely have to be a
less rigid, more "free", more "loose" organisation."

http://members.optushome.com.au/spainter/Liebman.html

Paul LeBlanc, in "Lenin and the Revolutionary Party", is the
only author I know who pays much attention to membership
statistics for the entire period up to 1917, although his
data is spotty and not altogether consistent. He cites
figures similar to Lane's for 1906 and the same figures as
Liebman for 1907 (p. 119), but later states (without citing
authority) that "At the Unity Congress of 1906, the RSDLP
recorded 148,639 members." (p. 169).

In a note at p. 126, he states: "However, Ernest Mandel
suggests that "the 1906-7 figures seem much inflated. Each
historian copies them from the previous one, but the
original source (presumably the figures submitted to the
London party congress) is never checked. . . . Probably they
include membership of unions and sickness benefit
associations which put themselves collectively under party
control, but are of course not identical with party
militants in the strict sense of the word" (letter to
author, May 14, 1986). Regardless of precise figures, the
dramatic growth of RSDLP membership and influence is beyond
dispute."

LeBlanc again, at p. 170:

"The survival of elements of the legal labor movement,
despite the periodic closing down or smashing of unions and
social-educational clubs by the authorities, was an
important step forward from the pre-1905 period. Thus,
although only 500 activists remained in the RSDLP's
underground cells of Petersburg, for example, there were
2,500 members of the legal labor movement who considered
themselves Social Democrats in that city during 1907. At the
same time, the existence of these two components of the
socialist workers' movement created new tensions within the
party. This was deepened as the tsarist repression became
more severe.

"The repression took an especially severe toll on the RSDLP
as a nationally organized entity. Zinoviev notes: "In
retrospect we can say quite unhesitatingly that in those
hard times the party as such did not exist: it had
disintegrated into tiny individual circles which differed
from the circles of the 1880s and early 1890s in that,
following the cruel defeat that had been inflicted upon the
revolution, their general atmosphere was extremely
depressed." By 1910, the party had perhaps 10,000 members.
Martov observed that it had "collapsed like a deck of
cards." Krupskaya wrote that "we have no people at all."
Trotsky commented that "formal organizations on the local
level are the exception rather than the rule." A Moscow
activist reported that "since the mass arrests and exiling
of our most active comrades in January 1909, organizational
work has been almost completely disrupted. The sick and the
weak remain-work is temporarily suspended." The situation
was the same in Petersburg, where a party member reported
that "beginning with 1907 things have gone from bad to
worse, temporarily recovering and then deteriorating again.
"The same was true through-out Russia up to 1912."

At p. 231:

"The Bolsheviks had had almost 6,000 members in Petrograd
immediately before the war. The disruptive effects of
repression left them with about 100 by December 1914. The
membership climbed to 1,200 by the end of 1915 then to 2,000
in the autumn of 1916, and 3,000 in the beginning of 1917.
And they were predominantly young, as the then
thirty-two-year-old Shlyapnikov later recalled: "The red
banner of the workers' movement passed out of the weakening
hands of the old men to a younger and more energetic
generation of workers. " Of the Petersburg committee in
1917, only one member was over forty, five were in their
thirties, and nine were in their twenties. "Despite their
youth," Hasegawa comments, "the Petersburg Committee members
had been arrested a total of forty-four times and exiled
eleven times proof that they were experienced revolutionary
leaders." A majority were workers. This was also true of the
Bolshevik party as a whole-by early 1917, the organization
throughout Russia had about 24,000 members, over 60 percent
of whom were workers."

p. 255:

"The open and mass character of the Bolshevik party is shown
by the fact that it grew from 24,000 in February to 80,000
in April, 240,000 in July, and 350,000 in October.  Of the
entire Russian working class, it is estimated that over 5%
had enrolled in the Bolshevik party by October; in Petrograd
7% of all industrial workers were Bolsheviks.  Workers
represented 61% of the Bolshevik membership.  Bolshevik
influence was, of course, considerably broader than its
membership, and the influence of the insurgent working class
was also powerfully felt - as we are seeing - in Bolshevik
ranks."

LeBlanc also cites extensive data on party press
circulation, trade union membership, etc. His emphasis is on
the Bolsheviks after 1906, however, with much less attention
to the Mensheviks.

-- Richard Fidler

-----Original Message-----
From: marxism-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:marxism-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of
mds
Sent: June 10, 2006 7:08 PM
To: Activists and scholars in Marxist tradition
Subject: [Marxism] Data Request

Dear Comrades,

I'm trying to find any sources detailing party membership of
the RSDLP
from its inception through to 1917, concentrating mainly on
the
Bolsheviks post 1903. The aim is to look at the relationship
between
party size and immediate tactics more closely.

Any suggestions (literature / web archives) would be most
appreciated.

CR,
Marc



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