Volja were revived; the Social Revolutionary Party was organised (its beginnings date from about 1892); the fighting organisation (boevaja organisacia) of the social revolutionaries took the place of the extinct terrorist executive committee. The assassination of Sypjagin was followed in 1904 by that of Pleve and in 1905 by that of Grand Duke Sergius.
As the social revolutionary party increased in strength, and as Marxism became weakened by revisionism and economism, there ensued an increase in the vigour of the narodničestvo, which now entered the theoretic field as the "new" or "renovated" narodničestvo. The contentions by which the narodniki and the Marxists were kept asunder came to the front once more, for in the newly founded Marxist periodicals "Iskra" (Spark), 1901, and "Zarja" (Dawn), 1902, the former being a political and the latter a scientific journal, the Marxists were voicing their answers to the revisionist criticism, whilst the revisionists had entered into an alliance with the narodniki. The chief spokesmen of Marxism at this epoch were Plehanov, Věra Zasulič, L. Akselrod ("Orthodox"), Martov, Starověr (Potresov). Moreover, the vigorous movement among the peasantry which manifested itself in 1902, and the increasing urgency of the agrarian problem, served at first to strengthen the narodničestvo.
Journalistic discussion of the relationship of liberalism to Marxism and to socialism in general, and the cooperation which was desired by members of both these sections of thought, assumed palpable forms in 1902. In June of that year there was published at Stuttgart the first number of "Osvoboždenie" (Deliverance); edited by Struve, this periodical served the aims of the constitutionalist movement, and in especial those of the liberal members of the zemstvos. In 1903 was organised the League of Deliverance (Sojuz Osvoboždenija), which revived and extended the aims of the Party of National Right.
The same year, at the second congress (held in London) occurred the formal split in the Social Democratic Party. In especial, the group which controlled "Iskra" became severed into two distinct trends, the majority being led by Lenin and the minority by Martov.[1] Simultaneously the Jewish Bund severed its connection with the party.
- ↑ The names of "majoritarians" (bolševiki, bolševisti) and "minoritarians" (men'ševiki, men'ševisti) have become current. At first people spoke
