Some of you might be missing the point. First, the Menshevik Program *prior* to 1917 was not that different in practice and propaganda than the Bolsheviks. Both wings of the RSDWP were FOR revolution…it was what kind of revolution, and lead by whom, that was a difference…and of course…where it was going.

What Eric is doing, David, is to break with the “leadership” concept…I can bet the majority of opiners here have read little of other Bolsheviks (to say nothing of *Menshevik*!!!) writers. Everything is viewed through the lenses of the “Lenin/Stalin/Trotsky” perspective…which says, quite honestly, shit about what the Bolshevik Party was actually *doing* and what sections were saying what, when and where. The only people come somewhat close to this is Trotsky in his HRR and Alexander Rabinowitch. But that is limited as well as *both* works focus mostly on Petrograd and Moscow. Instead of looking at this issue polemically, he’s looking at as a *historian*…and that’s quite different, from the polemical broadsides against this that are as vacuous as they strident.

Eric is breaking with some with the “Revolution through the writings of…” paradigm and going to original, Russian sources such as party organizations, committees, etc etc. Gerry has his work cut for him if he is going to try to contradict Eric here. Gerry’s missive is a large one…it is ONLY denunciation and he offers zero documentation.

I read both Lih’s original tract on the April Thesis and Eric’s essay (I helped provide some documentation on the Workers and Farmers Government slogan)…Eric makes a FAR better case that Lih does in terms of actually placing the significance of the April Thesis in it’s correct political and historical context.