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its authority behind the paper, to pay Trotsky a regular subsidy
( 150 roubles a month) and to support him in every other
way. Trotsky's Bolshevik brother-in-law, Kamenev, was delegated
to serve on Pravda as the Central Committee's liaison
officer. The appointment was calculated to smooth co-operation,
for Kamenev had sincerely striven to overcome the division
inside the party.
It is easy to imagine the jubilation with which Trotsky
announced all this in Pravda.' A few weeks later, however, he
had to record that the attempt at reconciliation had broken
down, because-so he himself stated-the Mensheviks had
refused to disband their faction. This could not have greatly
surprised him; he had known all along their utter reluctance
to come to terms with the Bolsheviks, who had in the meantime
suspended their separate publication. This was the occasion
on which Trotsky, the champion of unity, should have spared
the offenders against unity no censure. Yet in Pravda he 'suspended
judgement' and only mildly hinted at his disapproval of
the Mensheviks' conduct. 2 In vain did Kamenev urge him to
take a firmer attitude. Trotsky resented this as an infringement
of his editorial independence and an attempt to use Pravda for
Bolshevik purposes. There followed the inevitable bickerings,
and in no time all the cmigre colonies were seething with.intrigue.
The Paris conference had resolved to disown the two extreme
wings of the party, the liquidators and the boycotters. The
Mensheviks had undertaken to have no truck with the former,
the Bolsheviks with the latter. Lenin could easily keep his part
of the undertaking. He had, anyhow, expelled the chief boycotters,
Bogdanov and Lunacharsky, from his faction. The
Mensheviks, on the other hand, found it almost impossible to
live up to their obligation. The liquidators' attitude was too
common in their ranks for them to dissociate themselves from it
in earnest. If they were to expel those who had turned their
backs on the underground struggle, they would merely have
destroyed their own influence and helped Bolshevism to ascendancy.
This they refused to do. The issue then presented itself
in this form. Those who were opposed to clandestine work,
argued the Bolsheviks, had no place in a party staking its future
on that work. The Mensheviks-that is, the anti-liquidators
1 Pravda, no. 1 o. z Pravda, no. 12.