ABSTRACT
The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) is by far the most important political institution in that country. Indeed, it has strong claims for recognition as one of the most powerful political institutions in any country in the world. Founded in 1898 at the Minsk Congress (still referred to as the First Congress, even though after it the party existed more in the mind than in reality), the Russian Social Democratic Workers’ Party split in 1903 into two wings: the Bolsheviks, led by Lenin, and the Mensheviks, under Martov. Although attempts were made in subsequent years to reunite the competing factions, notably in 1906, for all practical purposes they led separate existences, divided by clashes of personality and by more fundamental doctrinal differences over the appropriate road toward the socialist revolution, and over the time-scale on which a revolutionary Marxist party should operate. It was the more militant, more politically sensitive Lenin who propelled the Bolshevik wing into revolution in the autumn of 1917, seizing power from the Provisional Government in a virtually bloodless coup on 25 October (see Schapiro, 1970, chs. 1–9).
