itself to Lenin's stress on the party organization. Trotsky stayed with the Menshevik faction until he joined Lenin in 1917. From that point on, he accommodated himself in large measure to Lenin's philosophy of party dictatorship, but his reservations came to the surface again in the years after his fall from power (Stoessinger, 13). In the months after the Second Congress of the Social Democratic Party Lenin lost his majority and began organizing a rebellious group of Bolsheviks. This was to be in opposition of the new majority of the congress, the Menshiviks, led by Trotsky. Twenty-two Bolsheviks, including Lenin, met in Geneva in August of 1904 to promote the idea of the highly disciplined party and to urge the reorganization of the whole Social- Democratic movement on Leninist lines (Stoessinger, 33). The differences between Lenin and the Bogdanov group of revolutionary romantics came to its peak in 1909. Lenin denounced the otzovists, also known as the recallists, who wanted to recall the Bolshevik deputies in the Duma, and the ultimatists who demanded that the deputies take a more radical stand -- both for their philosophical vagaries which he rejected as idealism, and for the utopian purism of their refusal to take tactical advantage of the Duma. The real issue was Lenin's control of the faction and the enforcement of his brand of Marxist orthodoxy. Lenin demonstrated his grip of the Bolshevik faction at a meeting in Paris of the editors of the Bolsheviks factional paper, which had become the headquarters of the faction. Bogdanov and his followers were expelled from the Bolshevik faction, though they remained within the Social- Democratic fold (Wren, 95). On March 8 of 1917 a severe food shortage cause riots in Petrograd. The crowds demanded food and the step down of Tsar. When the troops were called in to disperse the crowds, they refused to fire their weapons and joined in the...
