ABSTRACT
The Social Democrats were in a quandary; the proletarian uprising that had occurred did not conform to Marxist theory, which, as it applied to Russia, required a period of bourgeois predominance to come before the revolution of the proletariat. Moreover, their most active leaders were either exiles in Siberia or emigrants abroad, and the party had been divided for 14 years on the question of how it should organize and conduct the revolution in the first place. One faction, the Mensheviks, wanted open party membership and an overt mass movement; another, the Bolsheviks, insisted on conspiratorial guidance of the masses through a centralized and professionalized party; a third, the Mezhraiontsy, stood for party reunification and engaged in polemics against both of the others. The Social Revolutionaries, who traditionally had looked to the peasants rather than the working class for their support, were divided into two parties, Right Social Revolutionaries holding to the established doctrine and Left Social Revolutionaries with leanings toward Marxism and internationalism. The only individual who stood out in the turmoil was Alexander Kerenskiy, a Right Social Revolutionary and a Duma delegate, who managed on the basis of those credentials to become a member of the Duma Committee and deputy chairman of the Petrograd Soviet’s Executive Committee.
