Nice Guys Finish Last

There is a certain romantic attraction in the history of lost causes. The losers are usually nicer guys; in the case of the Russian Mensheviks, they were the humanitarian shadow of communist inhumanity. But the Mensheviks’ fate was not a tragic one just because they lost. Their real tragedy in exile was that their unique potential for understanding the evolution of communism was vitiated by their philosophical dogmatism and their petty internal disputes.

In its basics the story of the Mensheviks is well known to anyone familiar with the history of socialism: Russian Marxists of the democratic persuasion who, long before the revolution, broke with Lenin and the Bolsheviks over the future winners’ authoritarian methods; who trie...