twenty-four, Lenin had
             become a revolutionary agitator and a convinced 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 (Wren,
             3). While Marxism had been winning adherents among the Russian
             revolutionary intelligentsia for more than a decade previously, aclaimed
             Marxist party was bit organized until 1898. In that year a "congress" 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 "legal Marxist" group who soon afterward left the
             Marxist movement altogether. The manifesto is indicative of the way Marxism
             was applied to Russianconditions, 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 "hard" 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 "Bolshevik" (Russian for
             Majority), while his opponents who inclined to the "soft" or more democratic
             position became known as the "Mensheviks" or minority (Daniels, 19).
             Though born only in 1879, Trotsky had gained a leading place among the
             Russian Social-Democrats by the time of the Seco...