From the Other Shore: Russian Social Democracy after 1921 by André s> Liebich (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 355 regionalautonomy. What is certainis thathe accepted and cooperatedloyally with Masaryk'spolicy of including German parties and ministersin the I926 to 1929 coalition government which he headed. In the last months of his life he died in December I933-he was deeply worriedabout the dangers to his countryfromthe Nazi riseto power and believed that the Czechoslovak politicalsystemshouldbe alteredin a democraticsenseto meet those dangers. This shows that he had a broader view of politics than mere fixing or deal making and while ProfessorMiller mentions these views he failsto give them properconsideration. That said, this is an excellent biography. The difficultiesof research have been overcome; it is well written,free ofjargon, and a pleasureto read. It also has the merit of placing Czechoslovak agrarian politics in a comparative frameworkso as to point out clearly the differenceswith similar Croatian, Bulgarianand Polishpartiesof the same period. Above all this book succeeds in giving a clear portrait, both personal and political, of this elusive, sympatheticand remarkablefigureof inter-warCzechoslovakia. London TREVOR VAUGHAN THOMAS Liebich, Andr&.FromtheOtherShore.RussianSocialDemocracy after192I. Harvard Historical Studies, 125. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA and London, I~997 (hardcover) and I999 (paperback). xii + 476 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. ?31.95; $19.95. IN 1922, after their party had been declared illegal and their newspapers closed down, several hundred Mensheviks left Russia carrying Soviet passports and $13.oo bound for Berlin for what they thought would be temporary exile. Grouped around their journal, Sotsialisticheskiivestnik, and guided by the Foreign Delegation of the RSDRP, they led reasonably productive lives aided by their German socialist comrades for the next decade. The rise of Hitler changed this and in February 1933 sixty-seven menmbersof the emigre colony, the vast majority of them Jewish, moved to Paris on visas obtained through the intercession of L&on Blum. Seven years later, with the fall of France imminent, the westward migration of the ageing and diminishing Mlenshevik 'family' continued this time to New York where old ties with the Jewish labour movement led to a new and last home for the wandering band. One is struck, not only by the legality and propitious timing of these three moves, but also with Menshev ik resilience and optimism in the face of adverse conditions. Unlike many political refugees, they did not give in to despondency even wvhenthe dream of returning to their homeland faded. Wherever they lived, they sought to maintain contacts with Russia, to keep alive a belief in a non-dictatorial form of social democracy, and to interpret events in the Soviet Unioni for the edification first of western socialists and later of North American academnics. Even though they quarrelled incessantly about doctrinal matters, past history and future prospects, they always looked after one another financially and otherwise. Andre Liebich, a professor of international history and politics at the Institute of International Studies in Geneva, has provided in the book under 356 SEER, 79, 2, 200 I review the firstdetailed scholarly account of these peregrinations.He writes with grace and remarkabledetachment. He is also to be commended for the clarity and organization which he has been able to impose on his fractious, complex and often disorganized subject. What could have been a tedious compendium of the slowly evolving Menshevikworld-view has instead been presented as an engaging 'collective biography' of the 'Menshevik family' (p. io), most notably Fedor and Lidia Dan, Raphael Abramovitch, Boris Nicolaevsky,BorisSapir, Solomon Schwarzand David Dallin. In recognition of these qualities, FromtheOther Shore recently received the FrankelPrize in ContemporaryHistoryawardedby the Wiener Library. Liebich has mined virtually every major archive in western Europe and North America. Not surprisingly,much of his materialcomes from the taped interviews, mimeographed reports and memoirs compiled by the InterUniversity Project on the History of Menshevism at Columbia University. The Nicolaevsky,Volskyand SouvarineCollections at the Hoover Institution have also been consultedalong with the holdingsof the InternationalInstitute of Social History in Amsterdam. One unusual source is FBI and CIA reports on aged Mensheviksliving in New Yorkwhich the authorobtained under the Freedom of Information Act. These provide both a touch of humour and a clear indication that police reportsin generalmustbe treatedwith the utmost caution. One investigatorconcluded that J. Martow'was actuallyFedorDan and thatthelatterwas a 'SocialRevolutionary'.Dan mighthavebeen working...