“…Into the fighting ranks of the Revolutionary Communist Party”: Admission of Former Socialists to the RSDLP(b) – RCP(b) (1917-1924)

Abstract

The article analyzes one of the problems of inter-party interaction in Russia in 1917–1924, which was not studies either intentionally or occasionally by Russian or foreign scholars. The subject of the research is the admission of socialists, who quit other parties, to the RSDLP(b) - RCP(b): more specifically who resigned the membership of Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (of Internationalists), Mensheviks, Right and Left wings of Party of Socialist-Revolutionaries, Socialist-Revolutionaries-autonomists, Union of Socialists-Revolutionaries Maximalists, Party of Revolutionary Communism, anarchists and so on. Based on the wide range of published materials, including data from the central and local periodicals, as well as unique archival sources that were added to the ever-growing aggregate of scientific knowledge for the first time, the article investigate, when, how and on what conditions former members of socialist parties (so-called “vykhodets”) were accepted for the RSDLP(b) – RCP(b) membership. The authors conclude that during 1917-1924 the conditions of admitting to Bolshevik Party changed crucially. At different moments, the Communist leadership solved different problems allowing former socialists to join the Bolshevik ranks. In 1917-1919 the admission of former socialists was initiated in order to rise the number of members of the RSDLP(b) - RCP(b), and the target audience mainly consisted of revolutionaries who had extensive experience in party and social work. After the October Revolution in 1917, the entering former members of the other parties to the Bolshevik party was considered as a tool of splitting and fragmentation of socialist parties and groups that were opponents and / or competitor for the Bolsheviks. Since the end of 1919, the admission of socialists to the RCP(b) had been gradually lost its significance as a source of recruiting and transformed mainly into an instrument for the destruction of the Mensheviks and Party of Socialist-Revolutionaries, as well as a mechanism for the adoption and incorporation of small groups with socialist and communist orientation. Since 1921, the admission of former socialists to the RCP(b) actually ceased to play the role into the process of increasing membership, but became one of the most important implement of degrading and defeating the Mensheviks and Party of Socialist-Revolutionaries. From the beginning of 1924, it was used exclusively as a factor of discrediting the socialists.