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

AT THE DOOR OF HISTORY 77
mcnt. 1 But this was the last time that all Iskra men, including the
future Mensheviks, were in complete accord in defending this
idea, althoµgh perhaps none of them spoke for it as vigorously
as Trotsky did. None of them would have been more surprised
than he if he had been told that a few sessions later he would
angrily renounce his own words. It was, generally speaking, not
Lenin but the future leaders of Menshevism, especially Plekhanov,
who at this congress, during the debate on the programme,
spoke with the greatest determination for proletarian
dictatorship. Plekhanov urged the delegates to adopt formulas
that left no doubt that in a revolutionary situation they would
not shrink from the destruction of parliamentary institutions or
from restricting civil liberties. Salus revolutionis suprema lex eslo­
Plekhanov used these words as his text when he argued that if,
after the overthrow of Tsardom, a constituent assembly hostile
to the revolutionary government were to be elected, that
government should, after the manner of Cromwell, disperse the
assembly. It was on this principle that Lenin and Trotsky
acted in 1918, unmoved by the vituperation of an old and sick
Plekhanov. The latter now also pleaded that the revolutionary
government should not abolish capital punishment-it might
need it in order to destroy the Tsar. These views evoked one
single protest from an obscure delegate and gave rise to a feeble
doubt in a few others, but they were generally received with
acclamation.
Behind the scenes, however, the solidarity of the Iskra men
was beginning to vanish. The discord did not at first appear
over any problem of policy, not even over the famous paragraph
1 of the statutes, on which they were eventually to divide, but
over a matter in which no principle of policy or organization
was involved. Lenin proposed to reduce the number of lrkra's
1
L. Martov, lstorya Rossiiskoi Sotria/-Dmiokratii, pp. 62-72. Martov describes
how much the concept of a centralized organization was then 'in the air'. The idea
wa• first formulated in detail not by Lenin but by an underground worker in
Petcrsbuq.~. \vbo wrote a lettc:r to J.enin about this, and who after the split joined
tfw \1n1sheviks. In thr y