A Menshevik

M. Jordanski, new Soviet representative to Rome, who will sign the Lausanne Treaty Convention relative to the freedom of the Straits, is described as "an interesting personality." Since arriving at Rome he has let it be known that he is not a Bolshevik but a Menshevik.

Before the Russian Revolution M. Jordanski was a well known journalist.

The words Bolsheviki and Mensheviki (bolshinstvo and menshinstvo) are the Russian for majority and minority. The apparent anomaly--the Bolsheviki being an actual minority in Russia--is accounted for by the Socialist Conference of Brussels, July, 1903, from which the Bolshevik and Menshevik Parties derived their names.

Since 1898 there had existed in Russia a Social Democratic Party founded on the doctrines of Karl Marx, German Socialist philosopher. Actually before the Brussels Conference the Party was split into two factions; the one composed of the Social Democrats proper, who were moderate in their aims; the other composed of the Social Revolution aries, extremists. The former constituted a vast majority while the Revolutionists were a strong and turbulent minority.

That the majority faction of the Social Democratic Party became the minority at the Brussels Conference was due to the merest accident of party mismanagement. At the Conference, which began in Brussels and finished in London, the extremist minority was more strongly represented than the moderate majority; the tables were turned and hence forth the party factions became known as Bolsheviki and Mensheviki, although in reality these were misnomers.