isaac-deutscher-the-prophet-armed-trotsky-1879-1921

TROTSKY IN THE OCTOBER REVOLUTION 255
of neither-Bolsheviks-nor-Mensheviks, who persisted in opposition
to war, Prince Lvov, and the 'social patriots'. Its influence
was confined to a few working-class districts in Petrograd only;
and even there it was swamped by the rapid growth of Bolshevism.
To this small group adhered, however, men who had
in the past been eminent either as Mensheviks or as Bolsheviks
and who were presently to rise again. Most of them, Lunacharsky,
Ryazanov, Manuilsky, Pokrovsky, Yoffe, Uritsky, Volodarsky,
had written for Trotsky's papers. A few others, like
Karakhan and Yureniev, later became leading Soviet diplomats.
Together they formed a brilliant political elite, but their crganization
was too weak and narrow to serve as a base for independent
action. \Vhen Trotsky arrived, the group was discussing
its future and contemplating a merger with the Bolsheviks and
other Left groups. At public meetings its agitators were insistently
asked in what they differed from the Bolsheviks and why
they did not join hands with them. To this question they had,
in truth, no satisfactory answer. Their separation from the
Bolsheviks had resulted from the long and involved feud in the
old party; it reflected past not present differences. 1
On 7 May the Bolsheviks and the Inter-Borough Organization
arranged a special welcome for Trotsky; and on 10 May
they met to consider the proposed merger. Lenin arrived,
accompanied by Zinoviev and Kamenev; and here Trotsky
saw him for the first time since their not very friendly meeting
at Zimmerwald. Of this conference we have only a fragmentary
but informative record in Lenin's private notes. Trotsky
repeated what he had said at the reception in his honour: he
had abandoned his old attitude and no longer stood for unity
between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. Only those who had
completely broken with social patriotism should now unite
under the flag of a new International. Then he apparently asked
whether Lenin still held that the Russian Revolution was merely
bourgeois in character and that its outcome would be 'a
democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the pe;tsantry',
not proletarian dictatorship. 2 It seems that he was not clearly
aware of the radical re-orientation which Lenin had just carried
1 Sukhanov, op. cit., vol. iv, p. 365; Trotsky, Sochinenya, vol. iii, book 1, p. 47;
See also Yurenicv's report in 6 Sy.zd RSDRP.
• Lminskii Sbornik, vol. iv, pp. 300-3.