Bolsheviks and Mensheviks in spring 1917: discussions of uniting (as exemplified in Simbirsk, Samara and Saratov province)

The problem of uniting the Social Democrats after the overthrow of tsarism was one of the most important in the history of not only the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks of that time. The unification, if it took place, would seriously change the political situation in the country. The Bolshevik part of the new united party would have to make room under the pressure of its Menshevik part, V. I. Lenin would not have had such a decisive right to make decisions that he had in the RSDLP(b), therefore, Russia would have developed in some other way than it turned out in reality. The choice of unification or separation is something that did not arise in 1917 and does not cease to be relevant in our time, which is especially evident in electoral periods. The attitude of the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks of the Simbirsk, Samara and Saratov provinces to a possible unification into a common party, that is, to the restoration of the once existing organizational unity of the social democratic movement in Russia, has been studied; the reasons for the failed merger in the largest party organizations of the region under study were identified. Research tasks were implemented mainly on the basis of data from the periodicals of the Bolshevik and Menshevik, Soviet publications in the spring of 1917 in the Simbirsk, Samara and Saratov provinces. The methodological potential includes a comparative historical method, the application of which made it possible to compare the assessment of the unification by the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks of the three Volga provinces, its goals and conditions.