MIA: Encyclopedia of Marxism: Glossary of Events


All-Russia Congresses of Menshevik and Affiliated Organisations


 

May 7 - 12, 1917

Held in Petrograd on May 7-12 (20-25), 1917, and was attended by 88 voting delegates and 35 delegates with a consultative voice representing a membership of 44,830. The agenda, among others, included the following items: the attitude to and participation in the Provisional Government, the attitude towards the war, the revival of the International, and the land question.

The Conference approved of socialists joining the coalition government, and urged full support for it; it condemned fraternisation among the soldiers at the front, urged the need for strengthening the army's fighting capacity, expressed the view that land reform could not be carried through until after the Constituent Assembly had met, and called for "a vigorous struggle against anarchic seizures of land and all other lawless methods of solving the problem". The Conference approved the decision of the Petrograd Soviet to convene an international socialist conference, and instructed the Organising Committee to take an active part in the Third Zimmerwald Conference.