Absolute Beginners

Nicholas has now been tsar for nine years and refuses to share his absolute authority with a parliament urged by social reformers. Now married and in London, Lenin is founding his own more radical brand of Marxism and manoeuvres to divide the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party and its publication Iskra from his primary rival Julius Martov. He befriends Leon Trotsky, and despite ill health, at the Second R.S.D.L.P. Congress, Lenin moves to consolidate control. One by one, moderates and liberals are side-lined or expelled, leaving the party split into Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. Meeting at the grave of Karl Marx, many former comrades bid him farewell.