At the Sixth Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, convened by the Bolsheviks, the 4,000 strong Interdistrict Group (Mezhraiontsy), led by Trotsky and Lunacharsky, formally merges with the 240,000-strong Bolshevik Party, led by Lenin.
Outside the congress, the counter-revolution continues to rage in Russia. Following the collapse of the Kerensky offensive and the repression of the July insurrection, the government asserts unlimited repressive powers, including the power to ban any meeting that undermines national security or the war effort. Leading Bolsheviks are arrested or driven underground, and Bolshevik papers are being attacked and censored. These demands for “order” encounter the full-throated support of the populist and opportunist parties in the Petrograd Soviet. At the Congress, Lenin’s proposal to withdraw the slogan of “power to the soviets” is the subject of deep divisions in the newly elected Bolshevik leadership.
August 8 (July 26 O.S.): Sixth Congress opens with Bolsheviks and Mezhraionsty united
Ever since his return to Russia in April, Lenin has endorsed in essence the international strategic perspective elaborated by Trotsky following the 1905 revolution. According to Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution, the Russian Revolution’s democratic tasks—the elimination of tsarism, the reform of agricultural relations, and the elimination of national oppression—can only be achieved by the working class wielding state power. The working class, once in power, will then proceed necessarily and rapidly to the socialist reorganization of society, as part…