The three life histories from which the reminiscences in this volume have been drawn were originally recorded on tape in the course of an interviewing program conducted between 1960 and 1965, as part of an interuniversity project on the history of the Menshevik movement. All the interviews were transcribed as faithfully as possible, but our informants were given and usually availed themselves of the opportunity to edit their remarks, and especially to correct the inevitable errors in the transcripts.

For reasons more fully explained in the Introduction, I concluded soon after beginning my interviews with three survivors of the Menshevik movement that the interest their reminiscences presented warranted a systematic effort to trace the trajectory of their lives, and in particular the shaping of their ideas, attitudes, and values. If the end product of this effort proves of enduring interest and value, thanks are owed first and foremost to these three informants – Lydia Dan, Boris Nicolaevsky, and George Denike – for the time and energy that they invested, notwithstanding advanced age and failing health, in this long and arduous interviewing program.

Long after the conclusion of the interviews – which by the time of the deaths of these informants comprised thousands of pages of transcripts – several readers expressed the view that the light shed by these life histories on Menshevik political culture and the radical intelligentsia of which it was a part warranted dissemination of edited versions among a broader circle of readers. Most encouraging in this regard was Professor Richard Wortman, who offered me his collaboration in selecting and eventually editing those portions of the transcripts that most deserved broader circulation.