socialist

• Cooperation of Marxist Groups

  Mid-1890s: Success in cooperating with St. Petersburg workers through Union of Struggle for the Emancipation of Labour
• Most SD (Social Democratic) leaders either arrested in Siberia or fled abroad by the early 1900s
• Lenin's Concerns


  Articulated concerns about the labor movement's tendency towards destructive rioting and economism in his 1902 publication "What is to be Done?"
• Zubatov unions


  Filled vacuum among St. Petersburg workers during Menshevik-Bolshevik squabble over Marxist theory
• Formation and Representation in St. Petersburg Soviet

  1. October: Formation of St. Petersburg Soviet, with representation from Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, and SRs

  2. Mensheviks prominent, Trotsky as first vice president
• Suppression of Soviet Leadership

  December: Soviet leaders arrested after Tsarist suppression of Moscow Soviet uprising in November
• Bolsheviks


  • Mistrustful of working-class initiatives not led by their own vanguard
  • Lenin, returning from Geneva in November, unable to speak at Soviet housed in Technological Institute
• Activities of Soviet and workers in 1905 led Lenin to revise thinking about proletariat's ability to achieve class consciousness
• Lenin recognized radicalism but advocated for continued guidance from vanguard party