Atlanta semi-weekly journal., 1918-02-05
POLITICAL PARTIES IN RUSSIA.
Aims the Socialist Factions
BY Freder J
By Frederic J. Haskin.
and Aims of the Various Socialist

VIZ AsHINGTON. D. c., Feb Along with the
w new interest attaching to news from Rus
sia, has increased demand for
knowledge of Russian parties and policies to enable
the average American to understand the sign1t-
canoe of press dispatches from Moscow and PetrO-
grad. What the principal Russian parties to-
day, and what do they stand for? What does 1t
signify, for example, when the BOlshevki dissolve
the constituent assembly because it includes ma
jority of Socialist Revolutionsts? Many Ameri-
failed to understand this latter development.
because they knew that the Bolshevik were both
Socialists and revoutionists themselves.
The following account of the principal parties
of the moment is given by an excellent authority,
Russian of varied political experience now in the
United States 1t tells only of the parties that are
powerful and active in Russia today several strong
Russian parties have not reappeared since the reVo-
luton.
Russian politics today is Socialist politics. The
party of present that is not purely Social
istic is the Constitutional Democratic, whose mem
bers the so-called Cadets. The name is coined
from the initials of the party's real title. The
Cadets are the most conservative element in the
present political situation, in the sense that they
stand for state not planned on Socialistic lines.
While they continue to exist, they powerless to
guide matters. The two men assassinated in their
beds in Petrograd recently were prominent Cadets,
and this incident is probably significant OF what
might be expected from the lawless lower element
among the extremists if the Cadets should actually
become the dominating feature of the situation.
The Socialists have matters in their own hands
but they are divided into several camps OF these,
those best known to the world, by name at least,
are the Bolsheviki and the Mensheviki
The principal part of each of these parties had
its birth at the second congress of the Russian So
cialst Workmens party, held in Austria in 1913.
The radicals or no-compormise element, were in
the majority at that congress, and took the name
of Bolsheviki, which signifies majoritists How
the is traceabe to the fact that they mad
a majority in particular congress, and by no
means signifies that the Bolshevih are always a
majority party. 1t stands for set of princl-
pies, whether those principles are held by ma
jority or a small minority.
The principles of the Bosheviki may be summed
up by saying that they desire to set up the pure
MARKHAM state by the quickest and most direct
means. They want compromise with the
called bourgeose, middle class. They want the
proletariat to rule and they propose to set up it's
rule by direct action-confiscation of property and
la atjonalizaton of land and industry
The Mensheviki in sympathy with these
ends, but they favor more moderate means of at
tanning them. They propose to change the exist
ing order more gradually into They
willing to compromise and to cooperate with
Kerensky's coalition government In theory, how
ever, and in ideals, they practically at with
the Bolsheviki
Who, then, are the Socialist revoutionists, who
were in a majority in the recently dissolved con-
sttuent assembly? The Socialists of Russia first
worked among the industrial classes of the great
cities in spreading their propaganda. 1t is we'll
known sociological law that radicalism of any sort
takes hold more easily among the workers in great
machine industries than in any other great class
of the people Thus the original Russian Socialist
party a Socialist Workmens s party-largely the
same as the party that met in Austria, and split
into Bosheviki and Menshevik But the mass of