Julius Martov

Julius Martov (1873-1923), Russian revolutionary politician.

He was one of the leaders of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party, and a prominent leader of the Menshevik faction of that party. He lived in exile after the Russian Revolution of 1905. In the First World War, he took an internationalist position.

In 1917 he led the Menshevik Internationalists who criticised the Menshevik leaders who took part in the Provisional Government. When the Bolshevik led the overthrow of the Provisional Government and dissolved the Constituent Assembly, whose elections had been a demand of the Bolsheviks, he led the Menshevik opposition to the new Soviet government. During the next four years he opposed the Bolsheviks, and the counter-revolutionary attempts to defeat the Bolshevik party dicatorship, which he believed would have led to a military dicatorship or the return of Tsarism.

In 1921 the Menshevik party was finally banned at the end of the Civil War, as it started to gain more support inside the Soviet institutions. Martov went into exile in Berlin, where the Mensheviks started published "Socialist Courier". Martov died of throat cancer in 1923.