Russian Social Democratic Emigration during the First World War: from internationalists to defenders (ОБОРОНЦЫ, oborontsy)

On the vast amount of sources the author analyses the views of Russian social-democratic (S-D) emigrants in Europe during World War I. The positions of the S-D emigrants played the most important role in the development of key ideological guidelines, since it was abroad that the main ideological forces had been concentrated as a result of the mass “exodus” following the defeat of the 1905–1907 revolution. The Russian Social-Democrats faced World War I within a party which was formally united but in fact split into two independent factions, the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks. The war created a new balance of forces within the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party, and the attitude towards the war became decisive in the formation of new factions. The author traces the whole spectrum of views from internationalists to defenders (so called oborontsy), paying special attention to the positions of Vladimir Lenin, Alexander Bogdanov, the left-bolshevik group “Vpered”, Alexandra Kollontai and Alexander Shlyapnikov, Leo Martov and the émigré newspaper “Golos”/“Nashe Slovo”, Lev Trotsky, Pavel Axelrod and Georgi Plekhanov.