ABSTRACT
More workers were out on strike in January 1905 than during the whole previous decade, and the two revolutionary parties increased their membership and influence to an extent almost proportionate to the growth of open popular discontent in both city and village. Among the urban workers, however, the influence of the Social Democrats was indeed both broad and deep. While differences on a theoretical level did not become perfectly plain until 1905, Martov notes that in practice Bolsheviks and Mensheviks acted with much more similarity than would appear from the party literature of the period. Lenin's denial of difference in principle between the two liberal wings was echoed by the Bolshevik Bureau. The "middle class" had been induced by the proletariat, which was constantly pushing them forward, to demand a Constituent Assembly. On the very day of the October Manifesto, not knowing of its publication, Lenin wrote a sketch asserting that there then existed "an equilibrium of forces".
