nvinced Marxist. He exhibited his new
             faith and his polemical talents in a diatribe of that year against the
             peasant-oriented socialism of the Populists led by N.K. Mikhiaiovsky
             While Marxism had been winning adherents among the Russian
             revolutionary intelligentsia for more than a decade previously, a
             claimed Marxist party was bit organized until 1898. In that year a
             ÒcongressÓ of nine men met at Minsk to proclaim the establishment of the
             Russian Social Democratic Worker's Party. The Manifesto issued in the
             name of the congress after the police broke it up was drawn up by the
             economist Peter Struve, a member of the moderate Òlegal MarxistÓ group
             who soon afterward left the Marxist movement altogether. The manifesto
             is indicative of the way Marxism was applied to Russian conditions, and
             of the special role for the proletariat (Pipes, 11).
             The first true congress of the Russian Social Democratic
             Workers' Party was the Second. It convened in Brussels in the summer of
             1903, but was forced by the interference of the Belgian authorities to
             move to London, where the proceedings were concluded. The Second
             Congress was the occasion for bitter wrangling among the representatives
             of various Russian Marxist Factions, and ended in a deep split that was
             mainly caused by Lenin -- his personality, his drive for power in the
             movement, and his ÒhardÓ philosophy of the disciplined party
             organization. At the close of the congress Lenin commanded a temporary
             majority for his faction and seized upon the label ÒBolshevikÓ (Russian
             for Majority), while his opponents who inclined to the ÒsoftÓ or more
             democratic position became known as the ÒMensheviksÓ or minority
             Though born only in 1879, Trotsky had gained a leading place
             among the Russian Social-Democrats by the time of the Second party
             Congress in 1903. He represented ultra-radical sentiment that could not
             recon...