Talk:Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (Mensheviks)

A fact from Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (Mensheviks) appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 16 April 2010 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that Sotsialisticheskii vestnik, the organ of the exiled Russian Menshevik Party, was published from New York until 1965?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2010/April.

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Why the separate article?

CLOSED

BOLD merger of article(s) was reverted to further discuss. There is no consensus to merge at this time. Non-Administrative closure-- GenQuest ^"scribble" 22:50, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Why is this article separate from the Mensheviks one? This doesn't really make sense as there was mostly continuation. Not to mention there are 58 translations of the other page and only 2 of this one. The content of the Russian page includes all periods. EmSim15 (talk) 04:08, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - I reverted the merge at this article and the Menshevik article. In terms of process this was never listed at Wikipedia:Proposed mergers, and the merger was done less than an hour after being proposed here. I think the issue warrants further reflection. Arguably Mensheviks and Bolsheviks were factions within a single party (RSDRP), albeit there were other factions as well. If we accept that RSDRP(m)/RSDRP(o) is the same article topic as the Menshevik faction within RSDRP, when should have a parallel merge of the article Bolsheviks and Communist Party of the Soviet Union (as KPSS has same link to Bolshevik factions as RSDRP(o) had to the Menshevik faction). The question is also, at what point do we end the continuity of the RSDRP article? Notably there were still some joint SD organizations even as late as 1917 (see Tobolsk electoral district (Russian Constituent Assembly election, 1917) and Vologda electoral district (Russian Constituent Assembly election, 1917)). I propose that a merger discussion for a consensus is listed at Wikipedia:Proposed mergers - whereby we get a set-up of articles RSDRP (with party history up to 1912, and small commentary on the later joint SD organizations)/1 article Menshevik+RSDRP(o) ideally using the name 'Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (Mensheviks)'/1 article Bolshevik+KPSS (at 'Communist Party of the Soviet Union)/1 article at Bund (no change). --Soman (talk) 15:35, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I did reflect on the merging before proposing it. I also went ahead with the merge considering there has been little activity on both pages so I didn't expect a response, and since it is not required to propose a merge before conducting one,

The Bolsheviks and Mensheviks were distinct factions within the party until the official split in 1912, but that doesn't mean that what the Mensheviks were and stood for was very different after this point. I think the RSDRP article can include the details of the split and such and end definitively when the party was dissolved. Some overlap can exist between that and the Mensheviks / Bolsheviks articles and the RSDLP article, naturally. I would encourage creating unity between the Russian and English pages as this only makes sense, considering that the Russian pages are generally more detailed and there's a lot that can be taken from them. The Mensheviks article currently contains very little details about ideology

I agree that it should be discussed further considering these objections and I will post a proposal. However, I disagree that the Bolsheviks article should be merged with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union as there are clearly far greater differences and importances between the two. I think that considering the small size of both articles, the 1912 official split can be a subsection in the article as in both cases they remained under the same name. Especially considering that neither of the articles end at a specific point. EmSim15 (talk) 23:06, 2 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- I think that the notion that the Mensheviks of 1920 would be the same as the Mensheviks of 1905, but that the Bolsheviks of 1920 wouldn't be the same as the Bolsheviks of 1905 is an odd distinction. We do have problem with linkages in Wikipedia, where many links on 'Bolsheviks' or 'Bolshevik Party' in the context of the 1917 revolution or the ensuing civil war points back to the pre-1912 Bolshevik faction of RSDRP and not the Communist (Bolshevik) Party. --Soman (talk) 12:24, 5 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.