>While exiled in 1899, Bauman had an affair with the wife of a fellow revolutionary who became pregnant with Bauman's child. Bauman responded by openly mocking her, and circulating a vicious cartoon of her as the Virgin Mary with a baby in her womb, with a caption asking "who the baby looked like". The woman later hanged herself.
>This story had gained wide currency among Russian political exiles by the time Bauman reappeared in Switzerland in 1902, after the escape from Kiev. Some of those involved in producing Iskra, including Lenin's closest friend and collaborator, Julius Martov and Pavel Axelrod, one of the founders of Russian Marxism, wanted Bauman expelled from the organisation. In 1903, the board of Iskra adjudicated the matter, and Lenin interceded on Bauman's behalf. According to biographer Robert Service, Lenin rejected the party's right to interfere, arguing that the party's task "was to make revolution against the Romanov monarchy and to vet the morality of comrades only when and in so far as their actions affected the implementation of the task". The subsequent controversy divided the party, and has been described as "one of the many personal clashes which came to define the ethical distinctions" between the Bolshevik and Menshevik factions after 1903.
Was it really worth it to split the party over this asshole?
>>2379477of course not but it was an unnecessary wedge between core cadre that undermined mutual trust.
let me frame it another way: should it be permissible, within the bounds of party discipline and maintaining organizational integrity, for a party member to abuse and bully the family of their fellow cadre? that seems like a much more relevant and obvious question well before you get to the degree to which this was responsible for splitting the party
>>2379500Of course it is not permissible
That said, the source of Lenins defense of Bauman is Robert Service, who is a notorious anti-communist who has a habit of making shit up and vastly exagerate communist death tolls.
So let us take this with a pinch of salt.
>>2379550>le inceldon't worry buddy, i had my phase banging alt-chicks free of "bourgeois morality"
when you get older you'll understand these women make shit partners
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