Mensheviks, Proparty

a current within Menshevism that never became a full-fledged organization. The Proparty Mensheviks opposed the Liquidators and favored the maintenance of an underground party, but they also wanted to retain their Menshevik platform. The current emerged in 1908 and was led by G. V. Plekhanov, who left the editorial board of Golos sotsial-demokrata, the Liquidators’ organ, and resumed publication of the anti-Liquidator Dnevnik sotsial-demokrata. In 1909 groups of Proparty Mensheviks were founded abroad and in Russia.

Although Plekhanov condemned organized Liquidationism, he did not mention its programmatic and tactical disagreements with the party. Nevertheless, the Bolsheviks formed a bloc with the Proparty Mensheviks in order to rally all the party forces around a principled platform for a joint struggle against the Liquidators. In a number of party organizations in Russia (in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Sormovo, Ufa, and Odessa) the Pro-party Mensheviks worked with the Bolsheviks, contributing to Bolshevik publications such as Rabochaia gazeta, Zvezda, Mysl\\ and Sotsial-demokrat (the party’s central organ) and participating in the work of the Russian Organizational Commission. They also took part in the work of the Sixth (Prague) All-Russian Conference of the RSDLP (1912), which purged the party of the Liquidators. The existence of a Bolshevik-Proparty Menshevik bloc induced workers who had supported the Mensheviks to accept the Bolshevik platform. Some Proparty Mensheviks, including V. P. Zatonskii, la. D. Zevin, B. I. Magidov, A. F. Radchenko, G. I Chudnovskii, and D. M. Shvartsman, later joined the Bolshevik Party. But the Proparty Mensheviks abroad, who were headed by Plekhanov, refused to recognize the legality of the Prague Conference and broke with the Bolsheviks. In 1912 they began publishing the factional newspaper Za partiiu. World War I led to the disintegration of the Proparty Menshevik groups abroad. Plekhanov came out for the defense of the homeland, and other Proparty Mensheviks joined various Menshevik groups.