ABSTRACT

What became the “All-Russian (afterwards All-Union) Communist Party (Bolsheviks)” was founded at Minsk fifty years ago, under the name of the “Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party”, by a tiny congress of nine men. They represented local organizations at Petersburg, Moscow, Kiev and Ekaterinoslav, and the “Jewish General Workers’ Union in Russia and Poland”, commonly called the “Bund”. The congress lasted three days — March 13-15 (March 1-3, O.S.), 1898. It authorized the publication of a manifesto (which was drafted by Peter Struve, a Marxist intellectual), appointed a central committee and decided to issue a party organ. But before anything else could be done, the police arrested all the principal participants, so that virtually nothing remained of this initial effort save a common name shared by a number of local committees and organizations which had no central rallying point and no other connexions with one another.