Fedor
Dan
was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1871. As a young man he joined
the Union of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class. Arrested
in August, 1896, Dan was exiled to Orlov for three years.
On his
return he joined the Social Democratic Labour
Party (SDLP) and attended the Second Congress of the Social Democratic
Labour Party in London in 1903. At the
Congress there was a dispute between Vladimir
Lenin and Julius Martov, two of SDLP's
leaders. Lenin argued for a small party of professional revolutionaries
with a large fringe of non-party sympathizers and supporters. Martov
disagreed believing it was better to have a large party of activists.
Julius
Martov based his ideas on the socialist parties that existed in
other European countries such as the British
Labour Party. Lenin argued that the situation was different in
Russia as it was illegal to form socialist political parties under
the Tsar's autocratic government. At the end of the debate Martov
won the vote 28-23 . Vladimir Lenin was
unwilling to accept the result and formed a faction known as the Bolsheviks.
Those who remained loyal to Martov became known as Mensheviks.
Dan supported
Julius Martov and along with Pavel
Axelrod, Leon Trotsky, Irakli
Tsereteli, Moisei Uritsky, and Noi
Zhordania, became a Menshevik.
He also joined the editorial board of its journal, Iskra
and co-editor with Martov of Voice of the
Social Democrat.
After several
years in exile Dan returned to Russia in January, 1913. He lived in
St. Petersburg where he edited a variety of newspapers published by
the Mensheviks.
On the
outbreak of the First World War, Dan was
arrested and then exiled to Minusinsk. He was released in 1915 when
he agreed to serve in the Russian
Army
as a surgeon.
Dan returned
to the capital after the February Revolution
and along with Irakli Tsereteli, argued
that the Mensheviks should join the
the Provisional Government. He also
upset the Bolsheviks by fully supporting
the war effort against the Central Powers.
After the
October Revolution, Dan was a strong
opponent of the Bolsheviks. For a
while he was a member of the small Menshevik
opposition group in the Constituent Assembly but in 1918 it was banned
along with other political parties by the Soviet government. Dan continued
to denounce the persecution of liberal newspapers, the nobility,
the Cadets and the Socialist
Revolutionaries and after being arrested in 1921 he was sent into
exile.
When the
Soviet Union was attacked by Germany in June, 1941, Dan gave his full
support to his former country. This was reflected in his book, the
Origins of Bolshevism (1943),
where he argued that Bolshevism had
been chosen by history to be "the carrier of socialism, the key
idea of our epoch". However, he continued to argue for the humanization
and democratization of the Soviet government. Fedor
Dan
died in 1947.
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