ABSTRACT
In the period between Stolypin's effective coup d'etat of 1907 and the general political amnesty granted in 1913, the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party was in a shambles. Government reaction methodically decimated local party organizations within Russia. The greatest disability of the RSDRP was to be found in the separation of the central party leadership in exile in Europe from the local organizations in Russia. However, by May, 1907, the time of the Fifth Congress, the revolution was past all hope of revival and the splintering of the RSDRP had begun in earnest. The first split to occur was the recurrence of a sharp division between the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. It was at this time that the emigre Bolshevik faction suffered a devastating schism that it did not resolve until several months after the February Revolution of 1917. In the dispute, Lenin found himself at odds with a group of radical Bolsheviks led by the God-builders Bogdanov, Lunacharsky, and Gorky.
