A curious case
Were the Bolsheviks under the leadership of Kamenev supporters of the Provisional Government and hostile to soviet power? Lars T Lih puts the story straight
Lev Kamenev was the
de facto leader of the Bolshevik Party for a few weeks in March and early April 1917, before Lenin’s return to Russia. Even after, he remained in the top leadership core of four or five persons. Yet he has gone down in history as someone whose outlook differed from Lenin’s in profound ways - as someone who was practically indistinguishable from a ‘moderate’ Menshevik; someone who supported the ‘bourgeois’ Provisional Government, denied that the war was imperialist, was hostile to the idea of soviet power, supported ‘revolutionary defencism’ and in general acted in non-revolutionary ways. Anyone who reads this article and the accompanying documentation will realise that this portrait is the complete opposite of the truth. A curious case, indeed!