THE IMMEDIATE HISTORICAL origins of Bol shevism, and therefore of Leninism, are to be found at Ene mme or the creaton of the Kussian Social Democ ratic and Labour Party. Although the RSDLP had been formally founded in 1896, its first Congress amounted to very litle — almost all the participants were immediately arrested and the whole organisation Russian Marxism remained rather like British Tratskyism today, split up into a mumber of individani groups or 'circles.
The real foundation of the RDLP in 1903 however, while a gigantic step forward, had brought into existence a Party very far removed from one with a correct Marxist position on every question, Lenin bad the Party programme in which by no means all of Lenin's positions had been accepted 7): Lenin bad been engaged in a fight before the Congress with Martov on the organisation of working class self-defence [8]: an opportunist resolution on relations with bourgeois forces proposed by Potrosov (Starover) was passed by the Congress itself (9); and finally Lenin was deficated by Martor on the famous question of the Parry rules (10).
Despite these differences, however, Lenin was empbatic thar all the positions defended at the Second Congress were trends within the political camp of the statod that the factions:
"are only divided by shades, about which we may and should argac, but over which it would be absard and childish to part company -... a strugale of shades