Julius Martov was a Russian revolutionary, Menshevik leader. During World War I Martov was a central figure in the pacifist movement.
Martov remained a democrat in theory and practice, who foresaw the pitfalls of the Bolshevik attempt to impose socialism by force on a reluctant society, but he had no clear alternative to offer. He was even mourned by the Bolsheviks as “their most sincere and honest opponent."
Background
The grandson of Alexander Zederbaum, a leading Hebrew writer of the Enlightenment school, Martov was born in Constantinople, where his father represented a Russian steamship company. Both his parents were assimilated Jews, strongly versed in European culture. In 1877 the family moved to Odessa. Julius, who suffered from a pronounced limp and fragile health, sought solace in reading.
When he was only seven years old he was deeply affected by the Odessa pogrom of 1881 and always remembered the experience. After the pogrom, his family moved to Saint Petersburg where Martov began to dream of a revolution that would create a just Russian society.
Education
Attending the University of Saint Petersburg, he became active in revolutionary student circles.
Career
In 1892 he was arrested for proclaiming extreme Jacobin views but was released after three months. Identifying himself with the radical Petersburg Union of Struggle for Emancipation of Labor, he was rearrested and sent into a two-year exile, which he spent in Vilna. There Martov urged the creation of a separate Jewish workers’ organization to lead the Jewish workers to economic, civil and political emancipation. Yiddish, he felt, should be the language of the Jewish labor movement.
Returning to Saint Petersburg in 1895, Martov joined Lenin as cofounder of the Union of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class. They sought to conduct economic agitation in the shipyards and factories; however Martov was again arrested and this time exiled to Siberia (1896-1899). On his return, he reestablished contact with Lenin and helped him found the Marxist journal. Iskra.
During the coming years, Martov was one of Lenin’s closest collaborators. At this stage Martov reversed his earlier stand on the Jewish question. He now opposed the national “separatism” of the Bund, believing that this, like Zionism, obstructed the common struggle against chauvinism and anti-Semitism. He led the attack against the Bund at the Second Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Workers’ party (1903), which led to the Bund’s leaving the party. The absence of the Bund gave Lenin a very small majority who were called Bolsheviki (majorityites) whereas Martov’s group opposing Lenin’s bid for domination of the party became known as Mensheviki (minorityites).
The Mensheviks advocated a broad, inclusive worker’s party and opposed Lenin’s scheme of a narrow party of professional revolutionaries. Martov- opposed the extensive powers of control Lenin demanded and favored the western European concept of a social-democratic class party engaged in open political struggle. These differences became more apparent during the 1905 revolution.
From 1906 to 1912, Martov was in exile, mainly in Paris, where he edited the Menshevik paper, Golos Soisialdemokrata. However, he continued to cooperate with the Bolsheviks on many issues. He was opposed to some of the Bolshevik terrorist tactics, but waited unil 1911 to publish an open attack in order to avoid splitting the movement.
Returning to Saint Petersburg (Petrograd) in 1917 he advocated the establishment of a popular-front government. Martov played only a minor part in the October 1917 revolution finding himself torn between his dislike of bolshevism and the possibility of counterrevolution from the right.
Immediately after the Bolshevik revolution, Martov and the Mensheviks were forced out of the Soviet Congress by Leon Trotsky who cried out, “You are pitiful isolated individuals, you are bankrupts, your role is played out. Go where you belong from now on — into the dustbin of history!”
During the next three years Martov acted as the “conscience of the Revolution.” He supported the struggle against the White Russians and the allies and became he leader of a semiloyal opposition that tried to make the Bolsheviks respect their own constitution and denounced Bolshevik terror. In June 1918 Martov and his colleagues were expelled from the Central Executive Committee and the Menshevik newspapers were closed down. The Menshevik party was finally outlawed in 1920. However, Lenin allowed Martov to leave Russia. He settled in Berlin leading the Mensheviks in exile, assisting the underground Menshevik remnant in Russia, and editing the Socialist Courier.
Views
Quotations:
We, the few Jewish students, were confronted on all sides by a spontaneous view of ourselves as an “inferior” race rather than with anti-Semitic hatred. The others, sons of petty bourgeois Jews, carried this burden passively, attempted to survive unnoticed. I. who had been brought up in a Russified and liberal milieu, was incapable of surrendering without a struggle. Exacerbated by the whole order of school life, my sensitiveness became a disease.
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
The “Hamlet” of democratic socialism, a man of great intellectual gifts whose failure was essentially one of will-power.
Edmund Wilson on Julius Martov