search for some books

https://www.marxists.org/archive/martov/index.htm

https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2010s/2017/no-1358-october-2017/pamphlet-review-the-state-and-the-socialist-revolutionpamphlet-reviewjulius-martovs-state-and-socialist/

Just gone to the Menshevik pile of books that I have read although sometime ago.

I think the best  that are not anti Menshevik are

The Mensheviks After October by Brovkin.

He keeps writing good books on the Russian revolution.

There is

The Soviet Revolution by the left Menshevik Raphael Abramovitch

Which is mostly a criticism of the Bolshevik revolution by a Menshevik

Half of it is an attack on Stalinism and thus not that interesting.

An important book if not a easy read is.

The Origins of Bolshevism by Theodore Dan

He became the “Leader” of the exiled

Mensheviks by the 1930’s

There was ;

From the Other Shore by Andre Liebich

Just found a book review from New York Times !

”From the Other Shore” raises the question of what would have happened if the Mensheviks had prevailed in 1917. Would they have gone the route of the Bolsheviks, laying the groundwork for the repressive totalitarianism to follow? Or would they have found another path — committing themselves to a radical transformation of Russian society while at the same time respecting (as far as possible in difficult circumstances) the political liberties of their opponents? If we could answer that question, we would be better able to untangle Marxism from Leninism, Leninism from Stalinism, and assign to or absolve each of its share of responsibility for the gulag.

Although Liebich identifies closely with Martov’s group, he avoids the temptation of reading back into its history an early and absolute division from the Bolsheviks. Rather, he sees a ”broad continuum” linking the two factions until the Revolution, nothwithstanding their disputes. Mensheviks and Bolsheviks were, after all, at least technically members of the same party until 1912. Mensheviks and Bolsheviks alike were intimately acquainted with the inside of the Czar’s prisons and penal camps (and nothing works quite as effectively as a common enemy to encourage unity). In 1914 Menshevik and Bolshevik delegates to the Duma, the Russian parliament, stood together in opposing the war — a courageous decision, and something that distinguished both groups from most of their western European comrades. It was thus not surprising that factional lines proved permeable. Trotsky was not the only Bolshevik leader with a Menshevik past, and some Menshevik leaders were former Bolsheviks.

Faced after November 1917 with the stark choice of supporting the new Soviet Government or siding with the counterrevolutionaries, the Mensheviks chose the role of loyal opposition. The Bolsheviks had no use for opposition, loyal or otherwise, but their crackdown on the Mensheviks over the next few years was gradual and inconsistent. All the important Menshevik leaders except Martov were eventually imprisoned, but, as Liebich notes, they were treated quite leniently by later standards: they maintained their political organization within prison and ”guards were told to go away when they intruded on a Menshevik meeting.” By 1922, however, most of the Menshevik leaders had been forced to leave Russia. Martov died abroad in 1923, but others kept the Menshevik cause alive in exile — in Germany until the rise of Hitler, then in France until the Nazi occupation and finally in New York.

In time, the dimensions of the totalitarian terror in their former homeland became apparent. Although information from within the Soviet Union was quite limited, the Mensheviks had the advantage of knowing many of the principal actors personally. (Andrei Vyshinsky, the chief prosecutor during the Moscow show trials in the 1930’s, was a former Menshevik; there were grim jokes in exile circles that his persecution of the old Bolsheviks represented the Mensheviks’ revenge on those who had driven them from Russia.) Some of the Mensheviks, like David Dallin, eventually secured reputations among the leading Kremlinologists of their generation. Ironically, the last surviving Menshevik, Boris Sapir, died in December 1989, on the eve of the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Liebich asks us to see the Mensheviks as something more than political losers. They stand, he writes, ”at the very heart of the crisis of Marxism.” Our judgment of them as political actors and thinkers — as a possible alternative leadership for a revolutionary Russia — can help determine whether Marxism has any legitimate claim as a serious and honorable political tradition or deserves nothing better than its current consignment to the dustbin of history.

The Mensheviks Edited; Leopold Haimson

Includes stuff written by old post 1930 mensheviks.

Apparently there is loads of stuff in German

I can discuss it,

Another focus for speculation could be if  Nationalist Ukraine and Menshevik Georgia had retained their independence

As we can see Lenin became famous due to the Russian revolution because the aptest one within the Bolshevik was Nikolai Bukharin, several concepts propagated by the Bolsheviks and Lenin were elaborated by Nikolai Bukharin

The Bolshevik thinker who came closest to Marx’s ideas was Bogdanov, both politically and philosophically.

Most of the rest were much the same as Lenin, including Stalin, Trotsky and Bukharin. Perhaps Lunacharsky was similar to Bogdanov.

Some more recent books by/about Bogdanov:

The Philosophy of Living Experience: Popular Outlines Alexander Bogdanov (ed. D. G. Rowley). Brill (2016)

Molecular Red: Theory for the Anthropocene McKenzie Wark. Verso (2016)

Red Hamlet: The Life and Ideas of Alexander Bogdanov James D. White. Brill (2018)

• This reply was modified 4 years, 7 months ago by LBird.