n the astonishing increase in the
number of these important organizations, which continued, year after year,
right up to the Revolution of 1917. In 1905 there were 4,479 such
co-operatives in Russia; in 1911 there were 19,253. Another hopeful sign
was the steadily increasing literacy of the masses. Statistics upon this
point are almost worthless. Russian official statistics are notoriously
defective and the figures relating to literacy are peculiarly so, but the
leaders of Russian Socialism have attested to the fact. In this connection
it is worthy of note that, according to the most authentic official
records, the number of persons subscribing to the public press grew in a
single year, from 1908 to 1909, fully 25 per cent. Education and
organization were going on, hand in hand.

Nor was agitation dead. In the Duma the Socialist and Labor parties and
groups, knowing that they had no chance to enact their program, made the
Duma a rostrum from which to address the masses throughout the nation.
Sometimes, indeed, the newspapers were forbidden to print their speeches,
but as a rule they were published, at least by the liberal papers, and so
disseminated among the masses. In these speeches the Social Democrats,
Socialist-Revolutionaries, Laborites, and more daring of the Constitutional
Democrats mercilessly exposed the bureaucracy, so keeping the fires of
discontent alive.

V

Of vast significance to mankind was the controversy that was being waged
within the Socialist movement of Russia during these years, for this was
the period in which Bolshevism was shaping itself and becoming articulate.
The words "Bolsheviki" and "Bolshevism" first made their appearance in
1903, but it was not until 1905 that they began to acquire their present
meaning. At the second convention of the Social Democratic party, held in
1903, the party split in two factions. The majority faction, headed by
Lenine, adopted the name Bolsheviki, a word derived from the Russian word
"bolshinstvo," meaning "majority." The minority faction, which followed
Plechanov, though he did not formally join it, was called, in
contradistinction, the "Mensheviki"--that is, the minority. No question of
principle was involved in the split, the question at issue being simply
whether there should be more or less centralization in the organization.
There was no thought on either side of leaving the Social Democratic party.
It was simply a factional division in the party it