SRs-members of the Russian Party of Socialist Revolutionaries (written: “s=r-ov”, read: “Socialist Revolutionaries”). The party was formed by uniting populist groups as the left wing of democracy in late 1901–early 1902.
In the second half of the 1890s, small populist groups and circles, predominantly intellectual in composition, existed in St. Petersburg, Penza, Poltava, Voronezh, Kharkov, and Odessa. Some of them united in 1900 into the Southern Party of Socialist Revolutionaries, others in 1901 into the “Union of Socialist Revolutionaries.” The organizers were former populists (M.R. Gots, O.S. Minor, etc.) and extremist-minded students (N.D. Avksentyev, V.M. Zenzinov, B.V. Savinkov, I.P. Kalyaev, E. S. Sozonov and others). At the end of 1901, the “Southern Socialist Revolutionary Party” and the “Union of Socialist Revolutionaries” merged, and in January 1902 the newspaper “ Revolutionary Russia"announced the creation of the party. The founding congress of the party, which approved its program and charter, took place, however, only three years later and was held from December 29, 1905 to January 4, 1906 in Imatra (Finland).
Simultaneously with the establishment of the party itself, its Combat Organization (BO) was created. Its leaders - G.A. Gershuni, E.F. Azef - put forward individual terror against senior government officials as the main goal of their activities. Its victims in 1902–1905 were the ministers of internal affairs (D.S. Sipyagin, V.K. Pleve), governors (I.M. Obolensky, N.M. Kachura), as well as the leader. book Sergei Alexandrovich, killed by the famous Socialist Revolutionary I. Kalyaev. During two and a half years of the first Russian revolution, the Socialist Revolutionaries committed about 200 terrorist acts ().
In general, party members were supporters of democratic socialism, which they saw as a society of economic and political democracy. Their main demands were reflected in the Party Program drawn up by V.M. Chernov and adopted at the First Founding Congress of the Party at the end of December 1905 - beginning of January 1906.
As defenders of the interests of the peasantry and followers of the Narodniks, the Socialist Revolutionaries demanded the “socialization of the land” (transferring it into the ownership of communities and establishing egalitarian labor land use), denied social stratification, and did not share the idea of establishing a dictatorship of the proletariat, which was actively promoted by many Marxists at that time. The program of “socialization of the earth” was supposed to provide a peaceful, evolutionary path of transition to socialism.
The Social Revolutionary Party Program contained demands for the introduction of democratic rights and freedoms in Russia - the convening of a Constituent Assembly, the establishment of a republic with autonomy for regions and communities on a federal basis, the introduction of universal suffrage and democratic freedoms (speech, press, conscience, meetings, unions, separation of the church from state, universal free education, the destruction of the standing army, the introduction of an 8-hour working day, social insurance at the expense of the state and the owners of enterprises, the organization of trade unions.
Considering political freedom and democracy to be the main prerequisites for socialism in Russia, they recognized the importance of mass movements in achieving them. But in matters of tactics, the Socialist Revolutionaries stipulated that the struggle for the implementation of the program would be carried out “in forms corresponding to the specific conditions of Russian reality,” which implied the use of the entire arsenal of means of struggle, including individual terror.
The leadership of the Socialist Revolutionary Party was entrusted to the Central Committee (Central Committee). There were special commissions under the Central Committee: peasant and workers. military, literary, etc. Special rights in the structure of the organization were vested in the Council of members of the Central Committee, representatives of the Moscow and St. Petersburg committees and regions (the first meeting of the Council was held in May 1906, the last, the tenth in August 1921). The structural parts of the party also included the Peasant Union (since 1902), the Union of People's Teachers (since 1903), and individual workers' unions (since 1903). Members of the Socialist Revolutionary Party took part in the Paris Conference of Opposition and Revolutionary Parties (autumn 1904) and the Geneva Conference of Revolutionary Parties (April 1905).
By the beginning of the revolution of 1905–1907, over 40 Socialist Revolutionary committees and groups were operating in Russia, uniting about 2.5 thousand people, mostly intellectuals; more than a quarter of the composition were workers and peasants. Members of the BO party were engaged in the delivery of weapons to Russia, created dynamite workshops, and organized fighting squads. The party leadership was inclined to consider the publication of the Manifesto on October 17, 1905 as the beginning of the constitutional order, so it was decided to dissolve the BO of the party as not corresponding to the constitutional regime. Together with other left-wing parties, the Social Revolutionaries co-organized the Labor Group consisting of deputies of the First State Duma (1906), which actively participated in the development of projects related to land use. In the Second State Duma, the Socialist Revolutionaries were represented by 37 deputies, who were especially active in debates on the agrarian issue. At that time, the left wing separated from the party (creating the “Union of Socialist-Revolutionary Maximalists”) and the right wing (“People’s Socialists” or “Enesy”). At the same time, the size of the party increased in 1907 to 50–60 thousand people; and the number of workers and peasants in it reached 90%.
However, the lack of ideological unity became one of the main factors explaining the organizational weakness of the Socialist Revolutionary Party in the climate of political reaction of 1907–1910. A number of prominent figures, and above all B.V. Savinkov, tried to overcome the tactical and organizational crisis that arose in the party after the exposure of the provocative activities of E.F. Azef at the end of 1908 - beginning of 1909. The crisis of the party was aggravated by the Stolypin agrarian reform, which strengthened the sense of ownership among the peasants and undermined the foundations of Socialist Revolutionary agrarian socialism. In a climate of crisis in the country and in the party, many of its leaders, disillusioned with the idea of preparing terrorist attacks, focused almost entirely on literary activities. Its fruits were published by legal Socialist Revolutionary newspapers - “Son of the Fatherland”, “Narodny Vestnik”, “Working People”.
After the victory February Revolution 1917 The Socialist Revolutionary Party became completely legal, influential, mass, and one of the ruling parties in the country. In terms of growth rates, the Socialist Revolutionaries were ahead of others political parties: by the summer of 1917 there were about 1 million people, united in 436 organizations in 62 provinces, in the fleets and on the fronts of the active army. Entire villages, regiments and factories joined the Socialist Revolutionary Party that year. These were peasants, soldiers, workers, intellectuals, petty officials and officers, students who had little idea about the theoretical guidelines of the party, its goals and objectives. The range of views was enormous - from Bolshevik-anarchist to Menshevik-ENES. Some hoped to gain personal benefit from membership in the most influential party and joined for selfish reasons (they were later called the “March Socialist Revolutionaries”, since they announced their membership after the Tsar’s abdication in March 1917).
The internal history of the Socialist Revolutionary Party in 1917 is characterized by the formation of three currents in it - right, center and left.
The right Socialist Revolutionaries (E. Breshko-Breshkovskaya, A. Kerensky, B. Savinkov) believed that the issue of socialist reconstruction was not on the agenda and therefore believed it was necessary to focus on issues of democratization of the political system and forms of ownership. The right were supporters of coalition governments, “defencism” in foreign policy. The Right Socialist Revolutionaries and Popular Socialist Party (since 1917 – the Labor People's Socialist Party) were even represented in the Provisional Government, in particular A.F. Kerensky was first the Minister of Justice (March-April 1917), then the Minister of War and Navy (in the 1st and 2nd coalition governments), and from September 1917 - the head of the 3rd coalition government. Other right-wing Social Revolutionaries also participated in the coalition composition of the Provisional Government: N.D. Avksentyev (Minister of Internal Affairs in the 2nd composition), B.V. Savinkov (administrator of the Military and Naval Ministry in the 1st and 2nd composition) .
The Left Socialist Revolutionaries who disagreed with them (M. Spiridonova, B. Kamkov and others, who published their articles in the newspapers “Delo Naroda”, “Land and Freedom”, “Banner of Labor”) believed the current situation was possible for a “breakthrough to socialism”, and therefore they advocated the immediate transfer of all land to the peasants. They considered the world revolution capable of ending the war, and therefore some of them called (like the Bolsheviks) not to trust the Provisional Government, to go to the end, until democracy was established.
However general course the parties were determined by centrists (V. Chernov and S.L. Maslov).
From February to July-August 1917, the Socialist Revolutionaries actively worked in the Councils of Workers', Soldiers' and Sailors' Deputies, considering them "necessary to continue the revolution and consolidate fundamental freedoms and democratic principles" in order to "push" the Provisional Government along the path of reforms, and at the Constituent Assembly - to ensure the implementation of its decisions. If the right Socialist Revolutionaries refused to support the Bolshevik slogan “All power to the Soviets!” and considered the coalition government a necessary condition and a means to overcome the devastation and chaos in the economy, win the war and bring the country to the Constituent Assembly, then the left saw the salvation of Russia in a breakthrough to socialism through the creation of a “homogeneous socialist government” based on a bloc of labor and socialist parties. During the summer of 1917 they actively participated in the work of land committees and local councils in various provinces of Russia.
The October Revolution of 1917 was carried out with the active assistance of the Left Socialist Revolutionaries. Decree on land, adopted by the Bolsheviks at the Second Congress of Soviets on October 26, 1917, legitimized what was done by the Soviets and land committees: the seizure of land from landowners, the royal house and wealthy peasants. His text included Order on land, formulated by the Left Social Revolutionaries on the basis of 242 local orders (“Private ownership of land is abolished forever. All lands are transferred to the disposal of local councils”). Thanks to the coalition with the left Socialist Revolutionaries, the Bolsheviks were able to quickly establish new power in the countryside: the peasants believed that the Bolsheviks were the very “maximalists” who approved of their “black redistribution” of the land.
The Right Socialist Revolutionaries, on the contrary, did not accept the October events, regarding them as “a crime against the homeland and the revolution.” From the ruling party, after the Bolsheviks seized power, they again became the opposition. While the left wing of the Socialist Revolutionaries (about 62 thousand people) transformed into the “Party of Left Socialist Revolutionaries (Internationalists)” and delegated several of its representatives to the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, the right wing did not lose hope of overthrowing the power of the Bolsheviks. In the late autumn of 1917, they organized a revolt of cadets in Petrograd, tried to recall their deputies from the Soviets, and opposed the conclusion of peace between Russia and Germany.
The last congress of the Socialist Revolutionary Party in history worked from November 26 to December 5, 1917. Its leadership refused to recognize “the Bolshevik socialist revolution and the Soviet government as not recognized by the country.”
During the elections to the Constituent Assembly, the Socialist Revolutionaries received 58% of the votes, at the expense of voters from the agricultural provinces. On the eve of its convening, the right-wing Socialist Revolutionaries planned the “seizure of the entire Bolshevik head” (meaning the murder of V.I. Lenin and L.D. Trotsky), but they were afraid that such actions could lead to a “reverse wave of terror against the intelligentsia.” On January 5, 1918, the Constituent Assembly began its work. The head of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, V.M. Chernov, was elected its chairman (244 votes against 151). The Bolshevik Ya.M. Sverdlov, who came to the meeting, proposed to approve the document drawn up by V.I. Lenin Declaration of the Rights of Workers and Exploited People, but only 146 deputies voted for this proposal. As a sign of protest, the Bolsheviks left the meeting, and on the morning of January 6 - when V.M. Chernov read Draft Basic Law on Land– forced to stop reading and leave the room.
After the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly, the Socialist Revolutionaries decided to abandon conspiratorial tactics and wage an open struggle against Bolshevism, consistently winning back the masses, taking part in the activities of any legal organizations - Soviets, All-Russian Congresses of Land Committees, Congresses of Women Workers, etc. After conclusion Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March 1918, one of the first places in the propaganda of the Social Revolutionaries was occupied by the idea of restoring the integrity and independence of Russia. True, the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries continued in the spring of 1918 to look for compromise ways in relations with the Bolsheviks, until the creation of the Committees of Poor People and the confiscation of grain from the peasants the Bolsheviks overflowed their cup of patience. This resulted in the rebellion on July 6, 1918 - an attempt to provoke a military conflict with Germany in order to break the shameful Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and at the same time stop the development of the “socialist revolution in the countryside,” as the Bolsheviks called it (the introduction of surplus appropriation and the forcible confiscation of grain “surplus” from the peasants). The rebellion was suppressed, the Left Socialist Revolutionary Party split into “populist communists” (existed until November 1918) and “revolutionary communists” (existed until 1920, when they decided to merge with the RCP (b)). Separate groups of left Socialist Revolutionaries did not join either one or the other newly formed parties and continued to fight the Bolsheviks, demanding the abolition of emergency commissions, revolutionary committees, committees of the poor, food detachments, and surplus appropriation.
At this time, the right Socialist Revolutionaries, having proposed in May 1918 to begin an armed struggle against Soviet power with the goal of “planting the banner of the Constituent Assembly” in the Volga region and the Urals, managed to create (with the help of rebel Czechoslovak prisoners of war) by June 1918 in Samara a Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly (Komuch) headed by V.K. Volsky. These actions were regarded by the Bolsheviks as counter-revolutionary, and on June 14, 1918 they expelled the Right Socialist Revolutionaries from the All-Russian Central Executive Committee.
From that time on, the right Socialist Revolutionaries embarked on the path of creating numerous conspiracies and terrorist acts, participated in military revolts in Yaroslavl, Murom, Rybinsk, in the assassination attempts: June 20 - on the member of the presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee V.M. Volodarsky, on August 30 on the chairman of the Petrograd Extraordinary Commission ( Cheka) M.S. Uritsky in Petrograd and on the same day - on V.I. Lenin in Moscow.
The Socialist Revolutionary Siberian Regional Duma in Tomsk declared Siberia an autonomous region, creating a Provisional Siberian Government with a center in Vladivostok and a branch (West Siberian Commissariat) in Omsk. The latter, with the approval of the Siberian Regional Duma, transferred government functions in June 1918 to the coalition Siberian government headed by former cadet P.A. Vologodsky.
In September 1918 in Ufa, at a meeting of anti-Bolshevik regional governments and groups, the Right Socialist Revolutionaries formed a coalition (with the Cadets) Ufa Directory - the Provisional All-Russian Government. Of its 179 members, 100 were Social Revolutionaries; many well-known figures of past years (N.D. Avksentyev, V.M. Zenzinov) joined the leadership of the directory. In October 1918, Komuch ceded power to the Directory, under which the Congress of Members of the Constituent Assembly, which did not have any real administrative resources, was created. In those same years, the Government of Autonomous Siberia operated in the Far East, and the Supreme Administration of the Northern Region operated in Arkhangelsk. All of them, which included right-wing Social Revolutionaries, actively abolished Soviet decrees, especially those relating to land, liquidated Soviet institutions and considered themselves a “third force” in relation to the Bolsheviks and the “White Movement”.
The monarchist forces, led by Admiral A.V. Kolchak, were suspicious of their activities. On November 18, 1918, they overthrew the Directory and formed the Siberian government. The top of the Socialist Revolutionary groups that were part of the Directory - N.D. Avksentyev, V.M. Zenzinov, A.A. Argunov - were arrested and expelled by A.V. Kolchak from Russia. They all reached Paris, marking the beginning of the last wave of Socialist Revolutionary emigration there.
The scattered Socialist Revolutionary groups that remained out of action tried to compromise with the Bolsheviks, admitting their mistakes. The Soviet government temporarily used them (not to the right of the center) for its own tactical purposes. In February 1919, it even legalized the Socialist Revolutionary Party with its center in Moscow, but a month later the persecution of the Socialist Revolutionaries was resumed and arrests began. Meanwhile, the Socialist Revolutionary Plenum of the Central Committee tried in April 1919 to restore the party. He recognized the participation of the Social Revolutionaries in the Ufa Directory and in regional governments as a mistake, and expressed a negative attitude towards foreign intervention in Russia. However, the majority of those present believed that the Bolsheviks “rejected the basic principles of socialism - freedom and democracy, replaced them with the dictatorship of the minority over the majority, and thereby excluded themselves from the ranks of socialism.”
Not everyone agreed with these conclusions. The deepening split in the party was along the lines of recognizing the power of the Soviets or fighting against it. Thus, the Ufa organization of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, in an appeal published in August 1919, called for recognizing the Bolshevik government and uniting with it. The “People” group, led by the former chairman of the Samara Komuch V.K. Volsky, called on the “working masses” to support the Red Army in the fight against Denikin. Supporters of V.K. Volsky in October 1919 announced their disagreement with the line of the Central Committee of their party and the creation of the group “Minority of the Socialist Revolutionary Party”.
In 1920–1921 during the war with Poland and the offensive of General. P.N. Wrangel, the Central Committee of the Socialist Revolutionary Party called on, without stopping the fight against the Bolsheviks, to devote all efforts to the defense of the homeland. He rejected participation in the party mobilization announced by the Revolutionary Military Council, but condemned the sabotage of volunteer detachments that carried out raids on Soviet territory during the war with Poland, in which staunch right-wing Socialist Revolutionaries and, above all, B.V. Savinkov participated.
After graduation Civil War the Socialist Revolutionary Party found itself in an illegal position; its numbers sharply decreased, most organizations collapsed, many members of the Central Committee were in prison. In June 1920, the Central Organizational Bureau of the Central Committee was created, uniting the members of the Central Committee who survived the arrests and other influential party members. In August 1921, the last in the history of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, the 10th Party Council, was held in Samara, which identified the “organization of the forces of labor democracy” as the immediate task. By this time, most of the prominent figures of the party, including one of its founders, V.M. Chernov, had long been in exile. Those who remained in Russia tried to organize a non-party Union of the Working Peasantry and declared their support for the rebellious Kronstadt (where the slogan “For Soviets without Communists” was raised).
In the conditions of the post-war development of the country, the Socialist Revolutionary alternative to this development, which provided for the democratization of not only the economic but also the political life of the country, could become attractive to the broad masses. Therefore, the Bolsheviks hastened to discredit the policies and ideas of the Socialist Revolutionaries. With great haste, “cases” began to be fabricated against former allies and like-minded people who did not have time to leave abroad. On the basis of completely fictitious facts, the Socialist Revolutionaries were accused of preparing a “general uprising” in the country, sabotage, destruction of grain reserves and other criminal actions; they were called (following V.I. Lenin) “avant-garde of reaction.” In August 1922, in Moscow, the Supreme Tribunal of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee tried 34 representatives of the Socialist Revolutionary Party: 12 of them (including old party leaders - A.R. Gots and others) were sentenced to death, the rest received prison sentences from 2 to 10 years . With the arrest in 1925 of the last members of the Central Bank of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, it practically ceased to exist in Russia.
In Revel, Paris, Berlin, and Prague, the Socialist Revolutionary emigration, led by the Foreign Delegation of the Party, continued to operate. In 1926 it split, as a result of which groups emerged: V.M. Chernov (who created the “League of the New East” in 1927), A.F. Kerensky, V.M. Zenzinov and others. The activities of these groups had almost come to a standstill by the early 1930s. Some excitement was brought only by discussions about events in their homeland: some of those who left completely rejected collective farms, others saw in them similarities with communal self-government.
During the Second World War, some emigrant Socialist Revolutionaries advocated unconditional support for the Soviet Union. Some leaders of the Socialist Revolutionary Party participated in the French resistance movement and died in fascist concentration camps. Others - for example, S.N. Nikolaev, S.P. Postnikov - after the liberation of Prague agreed to return to their homeland, but, having received “sentences”, were forced to serve their sentences until 1956.
During the war years, the Paris and Prague groups of the Socialist Revolutionary Party ceased to exist. A number of leaders moved from France to New York (N.D. Avksentyev, V.M. Zenzinov, V.M. Chernov, etc.). There was formed new center Socialist Revolutionary emigration. In March 1952, an appeal appeared from 14 Russian socialists: three Socialist Revolutionary Party members (Chernov, Zenzinov, M.V. Vishnyak), eight Mensheviks and three non-party socialists. It said that history had removed from the order of the day all controversial issues that divided the socialists and expressed the hope that in the future “post-Bolshevik Russia” there should be one “broad, tolerant, humanitarian and freedom-loving socialist party.”
Irina Pushkareva
The Social Revolutionary Party (AKP) is a political force that united all the previously disparate forces of the opposition who sought to overthrow the government. Today there is a widespread myth that the AKP are terrorists, radicals who have chosen blood and murder as their method of struggle. This misconception arose because many representatives of populism entered the new force and actually chose radical methods of political struggle. However, the AKP did not consist entirely of ardent nationalists and terrorists; its structure also included moderate members. Many of them even occupied prominent political positions and were famous and respected people. However, the “Combat Organization” still existed in the party. It was she who was engaged in terror and murder. Its goal is to sow fear and panic in society. They partially succeeded: there were cases when politicians refused the posts of governors because they were afraid of being killed. But not all Socialist Revolutionary leaders held such views. Many of them wanted to fight for power through legal constitutional means. It is the leaders of the Socialist Revolutionaries who will become the main characters of our article. But first, let's talk about when the party officially appeared and who was part of it.
The emergence of the AKP in the political arena
The name “social revolutionaries” was adopted by representatives of revolutionary populism. In this game they saw a continuation of their struggle. They formed the backbone of the first combat organization of the party.
Already in the mid-90s. In the 19th century, Socialist Revolutionary organizations began to form: in 1894, the first Saratov Union of Russian Social Revolutionaries appeared. By the end of the 19th century, similar organizations arose in almost all major cities. These are Odessa, Minsk, St. Petersburg, Tambov, Kharkov, Poltava, Moscow. The first leader of the party was A. Argunov.
"Combat Organization"
The “combat organization” of the Social Revolutionaries was a terrorist organization. It is by this that the entire party is judged as “bloody.” In fact, such a formation existed, but it was autonomous from the Central Committee and was often not subordinate to it. For the sake of fairness, let’s say that many party leaders also did not share these methods of warfare: there were the so-called left and right Socialist Revolutionaries.
The idea of terror was not new in Russian history: the 19th century was accompanied by mass murders of prominent political figures. Then this was done by the “populists”, who by the beginning of the 20th century joined the AKP. In 1902, the “Combat Organization” first showed itself as an independent organization - the Minister of Internal Affairs D.S. Sipyagin was killed. A series of murders of other prominent political figures, governors, etc. soon followed. The leaders of the Socialist Revolutionaries could not influence their bloody brainchild, which put forward the slogan: “Terror as the path to a bright future.” It is noteworthy that one of the main leaders of the “Combat Organization” was the double agent Azef. He simultaneously organized Act of terrorism, chose the next victims, and on the other hand, was a secret agent of the secret police, “leaked” prominent performers to the special services, weaved intrigues in the party, and prevented the death of the emperor himself.
Leaders of the "Combat Organization"
The leaders of the “Combat Organization” (BO) were Azef, a double agent, as well as Boris Savinkov, who left memoirs about this organization. It was from his notes that historians studied all the intricacies of BO. It did not have a rigid party hierarchy, as, for example, in the Central Committee of the AKP. According to B. Savinkov, there was an atmosphere of a team, a family. There was harmony and respect for each other. Azef himself understood perfectly well that authoritarian methods alone could not keep the BO in subordination; he allowed the activists to determine for themselves inner life. Its other active figures - Boris Savinkov, I. Schweitzer, E. Sozonov - did everything to ensure that the organization was a single family. In 1904, another finance minister, V.K. Plehve, was killed. After this, the BO Charter was adopted, but it was never implemented. According to B. Savinkov’s recollections, it was just a piece of paper that had no legal force, no one paid any attention to it. In January 1906, the “Combat Organization” was finally liquidated at the party congress due to the refusal of its leaders to continue the terror, and Azef himself became a supporter of the political legitimate struggle. In the future, of course, there were attempts to revive her with the aim of killing the emperor himself, but Azef always neutralized them until his exposure and escape.
Driving political force of the AKP
The Social Revolutionaries in the impending revolution placed emphasis on the peasantry. This is understandable: it was the agrarians who made up the majority of the inhabitants of Russia, and it was they who endured centuries of oppression. Viktor Chernov thought so too. By the way, until the first Russian revolution of 1905, serfdom actually remained in Russia in a modified format. Only the reforms of P. A. Stolypin freed the most hardworking forces from the hated community, thereby creating a powerful impetus for socio-economic development.
The Social Revolutionaries of 1905 were skeptical about the revolution. They did not consider the First Revolution of 1905 to be either socialist or bourgeois. The transition to socialism was supposed to be peaceful, gradual in our country, and a bourgeois revolution, in their opinion, was not necessary at all, because in Russia the majority of the inhabitants of the empire were peasants, not workers.
The Socialist Revolutionaries proclaimed the phrase “Land and Freedom” as their political slogan.
Official appearance
The process of forming an official political party was long. The reason was that the leaders of the Social Revolutionaries had different views both on the ultimate goal of the party and on the use of methods for achieving their goals. In addition, there were actually two independent forces in the country: the “Southern Socialist Revolutionary Party” and the “Union of Socialist Revolutionaries.” They merged into a single structure. The new leader of the Socialist Revolutionary Party at the beginning of the 20th century managed to gather all the prominent figures together. The founding congress took place from December 29, 1905 to January 4, 1906 in Finland. Then it was not an independent country, but an autonomy within Russian Empire. Unlike the future Bolsheviks, who created their RSDLP party abroad, the Socialist Revolutionaries were formed within Russia. Viktor Chernov became the leader of the united party.
In Finland, the AKP approved its program, temporary charter, and summed up the results of its movement. The official formation of the party was facilitated by the Manifesto of October 17, 1905. He officially proclaimed the State Duma, which was formed through elections. The leaders of the Socialist Revolutionaries did not want to remain on the sidelines - they also began an official legal struggle. Extensive propaganda work is carried out, official printed publications are published, and new members are actively recruited. By 1907, the “Combat Organization” was dissolved. After this, the leaders of the Socialist Revolutionaries do not control their former militants and terrorists, their activities become decentralized, and their numbers grow. But with the dissolution of the military wing, on the contrary, there is an increase in terrorist attacks - there are 223 of them in total. The loudest of them is considered to be the explosion of the carriage of the Moscow mayor Kalyaev.
Disagreements
Since 1905, disagreements began between political groups and forces in the AKP. The so-called left Socialist Revolutionaries and centrists appear. The term “Right Social Revolutionaries” was not used in the party itself. This label was later invented by the Bolsheviks. In the party itself there was a division not into “left” and “right”, but into maximalists and minimalists, by analogy with the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. The Left Social Revolutionaries are the maximalists. They broke away from the main forces in 1906. The maximalists insisted on the continuation of agrarian terror, that is, the overthrow of power by revolutionary methods. The minimalists insisted on fighting through legal, democratic means. Interestingly, the RSDLP party was divided into Mensheviks and Bolsheviks in almost the same way. Maria Spiridonova became the leader of the Left Social Revolutionaries. It is noteworthy that they subsequently merged with the Bolsheviks, while the minimalists merged with other forces, and the leader V. Chernov himself was a member of the Provisional Government.
Woman leader
The Social Revolutionaries inherited the traditions of the Narodniks, whose prominent figures for some time were women. At one time, after the arrest of the main leaders of the People's Will, only one member of the executive committee remained at large - Vera Figner, who led the organization for almost two years. The murder of Alexander II is also associated with the name of another woman Narodnaya Volya - Sofia Perovskaya. Therefore, no one was against it when Maria Spiridonova became the head of the Left Socialist Revolutionaries. Next - a little about Maria’s activities.
Spiridonova's popularity
Maria Spiridonova is a symbol of the First Russian Revolution; many prominent figures, poets, and writers worked on her sacred image. Maria did not do anything supernatural, compared to the activities of other terrorists who carried out the so-called agrarian terror. In January 1906, she made an attempt on the life of the adviser to the governor, Gabriel Luzhenovsky. He “offended” before Russian revolutionaries during 1905. Luzhenovsky brutally suppressed any revolutionary protests in his province, and was the leader of the Tambov Black Hundreds, a nationalist party that defended monarchical traditional values. The assassination attempt for Maria Spiridonova ended unsuccessfully: she was brutally beaten by Cossacks and police. Perhaps she was even raped, but this information is unofficial. Particularly zealous offenders of Maria - policeman Zhdanov and Cossack officer Avramov - were overtaken by reprisals in the future. Spiridonova herself became a “great martyr” who suffered for the ideals of the Russian revolution. The public outcry about her case spread throughout the pages of the foreign press, which even in those years loved to talk about human rights in countries not under their control.
Journalist Vladimir Popov made a name for himself on this story. He conducted an investigation for the liberal newspaper Rus. Maria’s case was a real PR campaign: her every gesture, every word she said at the trial was described in the newspapers, letters to her family and friends from prison were published. One of the most prominent lawyers of that time came to her defense: Nikolai Teslenko, a member of the Central Committee of Cadets, who headed the Union of Lawyers of Russia. Spiridonova's photograph was distributed throughout the empire - it was one of the most popular photographs of that time. There is evidence that Tambov peasants prayed for her in a special chapel erected in the name of Mary of Egypt. All articles about Maria were republished; every student considered it an honor to have her card in his pocket, along with his student ID. The system of power could not withstand the public outcry: Mary’s death penalty was abolished, changing the punishment to lifelong hard labor. In 1917, Spiridonova joined the Bolsheviks.
Other Left SR leaders
Speaking about the leaders of the Socialist Revolutionaries, it is necessary to mention several more prominent figures of this party. The first is Boris Kamkov (real name Katz).
One of the creators AK Party. Born in 1885 in Bessarabia. The son of a Jewish zemstvo doctor, he participated in the revolutionary movement in Chisinau and Odessa, for which he was arrested as a member of the BO. In 1907 he fled abroad, where he carried out all his active work. During the First World War, he adhered to defeatist views, that is, he actively wanted the defeat of Russian troops in the imperialist war. He was a member of the editorial board of the anti-war newspaper “Life”, as well as a committee for helping prisoners of war. He returned to Russia only after the February Revolution, in 1917. Kamkov actively opposed the Provisional “bourgeois” government and the continuation of the war. Convinced that he would not be able to resist the policies of the AKP, Kamkov, together with Maria Spiridonova and Mark Nathanson, initiated the creation of a faction of the Left Socialist Revolutionaries. In the Pre-Parliament (September 22 - October 25, 1917) Kamkov defended his positions on peace and the Decree on Land. However, they were rejected, which led him to a rapprochement with Lenin and Trotsky. The Bolsheviks decided to leave the Pre-Parliament, calling on the Left Socialist Revolutionaries to follow with them. Kamkov decided to stay, but declared solidarity with the Bolsheviks in the event of a revolutionary uprising. Thus, Kamkov already then either knew or guessed about the possible seizure of power by Lenin and Trotsky. In the fall of 1917, he became one of the leaders of the largest Petrograd cell of the AKP. After October 1917, he tried to establish relations with the Bolsheviks and declared that all parties should be included in the new Council of People's Commissars. He actively opposed the Brest Peace Treaty, although back in the summer he declared the inadmissibility of continuing the war. In July 1918, Left Socialist Revolutionary movements began against the Bolsheviks, in which Kamkov took part. From January 1920, a series of arrests and exiles began, but he never abandoned his allegiance to the AKP, despite the fact that he once actively supported the Bolsheviks. It was only with the beginning of the Trotskyist purges that Stalin was executed on August 29, 1938. Rehabilitated by the Russian Prosecutor's Office in 1992.
Another prominent theorist of the left Socialist Revolutionaries is Steinberg Isaac Zakharovich. At first, like others, he was a supporter of the rapprochement of the Bolsheviks and the Left Socialist Revolutionaries. He was even the People's Commissar of Justice in the Council of People's Commissars. However, just like Kamkov, he was an ardent opponent of the conclusion of the Brest Peace. During the Socialist Revolutionary uprising, Isaac Zakharovich was abroad. After returning to the RSFSR, he led an underground struggle against the Bolsheviks, as a result of which he was arrested by the Cheka in 1919. After the final defeat of the Left Socialist Revolutionaries, he emigrated abroad, where he carried out anti-Soviet activities. Author of the book “From February to October 1917,” which was published in Berlin.
Another prominent figure who maintained contact with the Bolsheviks was Natanson Mark Andreevich. After October revolution in November 1917 he initiated the creation of a new party - the Left Socialist Revolutionary Party. These were the new “leftists” who did not want to join the Bolsheviks, but also did not join the centrists from the Constituent Assembly. In 1918, the party openly opposed the Bolsheviks, but Nathanson remained faithful to the alliance with them, breaking away from the Left Social Revolutionaries. A new movement was organized - the Party of Revolutionary Communism, of which Nathanson was a member of the Central Executive Committee. In 1919, he realized that the Bolsheviks would not tolerate any other political force. Fearing arrest, he left for Switzerland, where he died of illness.
Social Revolutionaries: 1917
After the high-profile terrorist attacks of 1906-1909. The Social Revolutionaries are considered the main threat to the empire. Real police raids begin against them. The February Revolution revived the party, and the idea of “peasant socialism” found a response in the hearts of people, since many wanted the redistribution of landowners’ lands. By the end of the summer of 1917, the number of the party reached one million people. 436 party organizations are being formed in 62 provinces. Despite the large numbers and support, the political struggle was rather sluggish: for example, in the entire history of the party, only four congresses were held, and by 1917 a permanent Charter had not been adopted.
The rapid growth of the party, the lack of a clear structure, membership fees, and registration of its members lead to strong differences in political views. Some of its illiterate members did not even see the difference between the AKP and the RSDLP and considered the Socialist Revolutionaries and the Bolsheviks to be one party. There were frequent cases of transition from one political force to another. Also, entire villages, factories, factories joined the party. AKP leaders noted that many of the so-called March Socialist-Revolutionaries join the party solely for the purpose of career growth. This was confirmed by their massive departure after the Bolsheviks came to power on October 25, 1917. Almost all of the March Socialist-Revolutionaries went over to the Bolsheviks by the beginning of 1918.
By the fall of 1917, the Socialist Revolutionaries split into three parties: right (Breshko-Breshkovskaya E.K., Kerensky A.F., Savinkov B.V.), centrists (Chernov V.M., Maslov S.L.), left ( Spiridonova M. A., Kamkov B. D.).
The Socialist Revolutionary Party was once one of the most massive in Russia. She tried to find a non-Marxist path to socialism, which was associated with the development of peasant collectivism.
The process of forming the Socialist Revolutionary Party was lengthy. The founding congress of the party, held on December 29, 1905 – January 4, 1906. in Finland and approved its program and temporary organizational charter, summed up the ten-year history of the Socialist Revolutionary movement.
The first Socialist Revolutionary organizations appeared in the mid-90s of the 19th century: the Union of Russian Socialist Revolutionaries (1893, Bern), the Kiev group and the Union of Socialist Revolutionaries in 1895–1896. The SSR was organized in Saratov and then moved its headquarters to Moscow. In the second half of the 90s. Socialist Revolutionary-oriented organizations arose in Voronezh, Minsk, Odessa, Penza, St. Petersburg, Poltava, Tambov and Kharkov.
The name “socialist-revolutionaries” was adopted, as a rule, by those representatives of revolutionary populism who had previously called themselves “People’s Will” or gravitated towards them. The name “Narodnaya Volya” was legendary in the revolutionary environment, and abandoning it was not a formality, a simple change of labels. This was reflected, first of all, in the desire of revolutionary populism to overcome the deep crisis that it was experiencing at that time, its search for itself and its niche in the revolutionary movement in conditions that had undergone significant changes compared to the 70-80 years of the 19th century.
In 1900, the Socialist Revolutionary Party, which united a number of Socialist Revolutionary organizations in the south of Russia and therefore was often called the Southern Socialist Revolutionary Party, announced itself with the publication of the Manifesto.
The Union of Socialist Revolutionaries also expanded its borders. His groups appeared in St. Petersburg, Yaroslavl, Tomsk and a number of other places. The program of the Union was drawn up back in 1896, and printed in 1900 under the title “Our Tasks”.
The embodiment of the unifying trend in emigration was the formation in 1900 in Paris, on the initiative of V.M. Chernov, of the Agrarian Socialist League (ASL). It was significant primarily because it proclaimed work among the peasantry as the next issue of the revolutionary cause.
In the matter of ideological definition and organizational unity of the Socialist Revolutionary movement, the periodical press played a noticeable role: the emigrant monthly newspaper “Nakanune” (London, 1899) and the magazine “Bulletin of the Russian Revolution” (Paris, 1901), as well as the newspaper “Revolutionary Russia” of the Union of Socialists- revolutionaries, the first issue of which appeared in early 1901.
The message about the formation of the Socialist Revolutionary Party appeared in January 1902 in the third issue of Revolutionary Russia. During 1902, Socialist Revolutionary organizations in Russia joined the party. Before the First Russian Revolution, the party had over 40 committees and groups, uniting approximately 2–2.5 thousand people. In terms of its social composition, the party was predominantly intellectual. Pupils, students, intellectuals and employees made up more than 70% of it, and workers and peasants - about 28%.
The organization was one of weaknesses the Socialist Revolutionary Party throughout its history and one of the reasons for its displacement from the historical stage by the Bolsheviks. The Social Revolutionaries, according to their leader V.M. Chernov, constantly “sinned” towards “organizational nihilism” and suffered from “organizational laxity.” The basis of the party was its local organizations: committees and groups, formed, as a rule, on a territorial basis. The established local organizations (and this was extremely rare) usually consisted of propagandists united in a union, agitators who made up the so-called agitator meeting, and technical groups - printing and transport. Organizations were most often formed from the top down: first a leadership “core” emerged, and then the masses were recruited. Internal connections in the party, vertical and horizontal, have never been strong and reliable, they were especially weak in the period preceding the First Russian Revolution.
Initially, the party apparently did not even have its own special central body. This was reflected, on the one hand, by the originality of the very matter of forming the party, and on the other, by the predominance of supporters of organizing the party on the principle of federation. The technical functions of the Central Committee were performed to a certain extent by the most powerful local organizations, which were the Saratov organization until the end of 1902, and after its defeat - Ekaterinoslav, Odessa and Kiev.
The Commission for Relations with Foreign Countries, consisting of E.K. Breshkovskaya, P.P. Kraft and G.A. Gershuni, gradually became the Central Committee, without general party sanction. They also took on the functions of internal party traveling agents. In the summer of 1902, Gershuni, without agreement with other members of the Central Committee, co-opted E.F. Azef into its composition. The ideological and, to some extent, organizational center of the party was the editorial board of Revolutionary Russia. Since collective leadership existed only formally, individuals played a large role in the party. Among them, M.R. Gots stood out. He was the representative of the Russian party center abroad, and had the right to co-opt the Central Committee in the event of its complete failure. Not without reason, he was sometimes called the “dictator” of the party and it was noted that in 1903-1904. he and Azef “controlled the entire party.” V.M. Chernov was mainly an ideological leader and was not particularly involved in organizational issues.
As the functions of the party expanded, special structures appeared in it. In April 1902, with a terrorist act by S.V. Balmashov, the Combat Organization, the formation of which Gershuni began even before the formation of the party, announced itself. In order to intensify and expand party work in the countryside, in 1902, after peasant uprisings in the Poltava and Kharkov provinces, the Peasant Union of the Socialist Revolutionary Party arose.
In terms of theory, the Socialist Revolutionaries were pluralists. The party, they believed, could not be like a spiritual sect or be guided by one theory. Among them were supporters of the subjective sociology of N.K. Mikhailovsky, and followers of the then fashionable teachings of Machism, empirio-criticism, and neo-Kantianism. The Socialist Revolutionaries were united by their rejection of Marxism, especially its materialist and monistic explanation of social life. The latter was considered by the Social Revolutionaries as a set of phenomena and events that are equally dependent and functionally connected with each other. They did not recognize its division into material and ideal spheres.
The only necessary condition for staying in the party was belief in its ultimate goal - socialism. The basis of the Socialist Revolutionary ideology was the idea they adopted from the old populists about the possibility of a special path for Russia to socialism, without waiting for the prerequisites for this to be created by capitalism. This idea was generated by the desire to save the working people, primarily the multi-million Russian peasantry, from the torment and suffering of capitalist purgatory and quickly introduce them to the socialist paradise. It was based on the idea that human society in its development is not monocentric, but polycentric. By rejecting the idea of monism and believing in Russia’s special path to socialism, populism and the Socialist Revolutionaries were to some extent related to the Slavophiles. But in their social and ideological essence, the Narodniks, and especially the Socialist-Revolutionaries, were not Slavophiles or their heirs. Special position V.M. Chernov explained Russia in the world and its special path to socialism not by the irrational qualities inherent in the Russian people such as spirituality, conciliarity, Orthodoxy, but by the established international division of labor: Russia seemed to him “Eurasia,” standing on the brink between one-sided and industrial and primitive agricultural “colonial” countries.
The Socialist Revolutionary idea that the fate of socialism in Russia cannot be linked with the development of capitalism was based on the assertion of a special type of Russian capitalism. In Russian capitalism, according to the Socialist Revolutionaries, in contrast to the capitalism of developed industrial countries, negative, destructive tendencies prevailed, especially in agriculture. In this regard, agricultural capitalism cannot prepare the prerequisites for socialism, socialize the land and production on it.
The peculiarities of Russian capitalism, as well as the autocratic police regime and the persisting patriarchy, determined, in the opinion of the Socialist Revolutionaries, the nature and grouping of social and political forces in the Russian arena. They divided them into two opposing camps. In one of them, the highest bureaucracy, nobility and bourgeoisie united under the auspices of the autocracy, in the other - workers, peasants and intelligentsia. Since for the Socialist Revolutionaries the division of society into classes was determined not by their attitude to property, but by their attitude to labor and sources of income, then in one of the named camps we see classes that received their income, as the socialists believed, through the exploitation of other people’s labor, and in the other - living by their labor.
The nobility was considered by the Social Revolutionaries as a historically doomed class, inextricably linked with the autocracy, dictating its policies to it. The conservatism of the Russian bourgeoisie was explained by its supposedly artificial origin through the imposition of capitalism “from above,” as well as by the privileges it received from the autocracy, its excessive concentration, which gave rise to oligarchic tendencies, its inability to compete in the foreign market, where its imperialist aspirations could only be realized with the help of the military force of the autocracy
The Social Revolutionaries considered the peasantry to be the main force of the second, labor camp. It, in their eyes, was “a little less than everything” in terms of its numbers and its significance in the economic life of the country and “nothing” in terms of its economic, political and legal status. The only way of salvation for the peasantry was seen in socialism. At the same time, the Socialist Revolutionaries did not share the Marxist dogma that the path of the peasantry to socialism necessarily lies through capitalism, through differentiation into the rural bourgeoisie and the proletariat and the struggle between these classes. To prove the inconsistency of this dogma, it was argued that peasant labor farms are not petty-bourgeois, that they are stable and capable of withstanding competition from large farms. It was also proven that the peasants were close in status to the workers, that together with them they constituted a single working people. For the working peasantry, the Socialist Revolutionaries believed, a different, non-capitalist path of development towards socialism was possible. At the same time, due to the development of bourgeois relations in the countryside, the Socialist Revolutionaries no longer had the old Narodnik unconditional faith in the socialist nature of the peasant. The Social Revolutionaries were forced to admit the duality of his nature, the fact that he was not only a worker, but also an owner. This recognition put them in a difficult position in search of ways and possibilities for introducing the peasants to socialism.
The Social Revolutionaries noted that the standard of living of the Russian proletariat was higher than that of the majority of the peasantry, and much lower than that of the Western European proletariat, that it did not have civil and political rights. At the same time, it was recognized that due to its high concentration in the most important economic and political centers and social activity, it poses a constant and most serious danger to ruling regime. The connection between Russian workers and the countryside was especially emphasized. This connection was not seen as a sign of their weakness and backwardness, or as an obstacle to the formation of their socialist consciousness. On the contrary, such a connection was assessed positively, as one of the foundations of class “worker-peasant unity.”
The main mission of the intelligentsia was seen to be to bring the ideas of socialism to the peasantry and proletariat, to help them realize themselves as a single working class, and to see in this unity the guarantee of their liberation.
The Socialist Revolutionary program was divided into a minimum program and a maximum program. The maximum program indicated the ultimate goal of the party - the expropriation of capitalist property and the reorganization of production and the entire social system on socialist principles with the complete victory of the working class, organized into a social revolutionary party. The originality of the Socialist Revolutionary model of socialism lay not so much in the ideas about the socialist society itself, but in what Russia’s path to this society should be.
The most important minimum requirement of the program was the convening of a Constituent Assembly on a democratic basis. It was supposed to eliminate the autocratic regime and establish free popular rule, ensuring the necessary personal freedoms and protecting the interests of working people. The Socialist Revolutionaries considered political freedom and democracy a prerequisite for socialism and an organic form of its existence. In the question of state structure new Russia The Socialist Revolutionaries advocated the “greatest possible” use of federal relations between individual nationalities, recognition of their unconditional right to self-determination, and broad autonomy of local self-government.
The central point of the economic part of the Socialist Revolutionary Minimum Program was the requirement for the socialization of the land. The socialization of land meant the abolition of private ownership of land, the transformation of land not into state property, but into public property. Land was withdrawn from trade, and its purchase and sale were not allowed. Land could be obtained by consumer or labor standard. The consumer norm was calculated only to satisfy the necessary needs of its owner. The socialization of the land served as a connecting bridge between the Socialist Revolutionary programs of minimum and maximum. It was seen as the first stage in the socialization of agriculture. By abolishing private ownership of land and withdrawing it from trade, socialization, as the Socialist Revolutionaries believed, punched a hole in the system of bourgeois relations, and by socializing the land and placing the entire working population on equal terms in relation to it, it created the necessary prerequisites for the final stage of socialization of agriculture - socialization of production through various forms cooperation.
Regarding tactics, the party program briefly, in a general form, stated that the struggle would be waged “in forms corresponding to the specific conditions of Russian reality.” The forms, methods and means of struggle that were used by the Social Revolutionaries were varied: propaganda and agitation, activities in various representative institutions, as well as all types of extra-parliamentary struggle (strikes, boycotts, demonstrations, uprisings, etc.).
What distinguished the Socialist Revolutionaries from other socialist parties was that they recognized systematic terror as a means of political struggle.
Before the outbreak of the First Russian Revolution, terror overshadowed other activities of the party. First of all, thanks to him, she gained fame. The militant organization of the party carried out terrorist attacks against the Ministers of Internal Affairs D.S. Sipyagin (April 2, 1902, S.V. Balmashov), V.K. Pleve (July 15, 1904, E.S. Sozonov) and governors - Kharkov I.M. Obolensky (June 26, 1902, F.K. Kachura), who brutally suppressed peasant unrest in the spring of 1902, and Ufa - N.M. Bogdanovich (May 6, 1903, O.E. Dulebov .
Although the Social Revolutionaries carried out mass revolutionary work, it did not have a wide scope. A number of local committees and groups were engaged in propaganda and agitation activities among city workers. The main task of Socialist Revolutionary propaganda and agitation in the countryside, carried out orally and through the dissemination of various types of literature, was, firstly, to acquire among the peasants supporters of socialist ideas who could later lead peasant revolutionary movements; and secondly, the political education of the entire peasant mass, preparing them to fight for a minimum program - the overthrow of the autocracy and the socialization of the land. However, in all the main areas of mass work, the Socialist-Revolutionaries in the pre-revolutionary period were significantly inferior to the Social Democrats.
With the formation of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, disagreements within it were not eliminated. Moreover, they sometimes became so aggravated that the party found itself on the verge of a split. One of the controversial issues was the issue of terror and its organization. It arose due to the fact that from the spring of 1903 there were no terrorist attacks for more than a year and the Combat Organization did not show itself in any way. The provocateur Azef, who headed the organization after the arrest of G.A. Gershuni, was in no hurry to use it for its intended purpose, hiding behind various excuses of a technical and organizational nature. Those dissatisfied with the inactivity of the Combat Organization demanded the decentralization of terror, the deprivation of the BO of autonomy and a privileged position in the party, and the establishment of effective control over it by the Central Committee. Azef stubbornly opposed this.
The originality of the Socialist Revolutionary concept of revolution lay, first of all, in the fact that they did not recognize it as bourgeois. In their opinion, Russian capitalism, due to its weakness and excessive dependence on the government, was not able to “push” so much on outdated public relations to cause a national crisis. The ability of the bourgeoisie to become the head of the revolution and even to be one of it was also denied driving forces. The opinion was also expressed that the bourgeois revolution in Russia was prevented by the “revolution from above”, the reforms of the 60-70s of the 19th century. Then, allegedly, space was given for the development of capitalism, and then the “serf autocracy” turned into a “noble-bourgeois monarchy.” The Social Revolutionaries did not consider the revolution to be socialist either, calling it “social”, transitional between bourgeois and socialist. The revolution, in their opinion, should not have been limited to a change of power and redistribution of property within the framework of bourgeois relations, but should have gone further: to make a significant hole in these relations, abolishing private ownership of land through its socialization.
The Socialist Revolutionaries saw the main impulse of the revolution not in the “pressure of developing capitalism,” but in the crisis of agriculture, laid down by the reform of 1861. This circumstance explained the enormous role of the peasantry in the revolution. The Social Revolutionaries decided in their own way and main question revolution is a question of power. They abandoned the Narodnaya Volya Blanquist idea of seizing power by socialist revolutionaries. The concept of the Socialist Revolutionaries did not envisage a socialist revolution as such. The transition to socialism had to be accomplished in a peaceful, reformist way, based on the use of democratic, constitutional norms. Through democratic elections, the Socialist Revolutionaries hoped to gain a majority, first locally, and then in the Constituent Assembly. The latter was supposed to finally determine the form of government and become the highest legislative and administrative body.
Already in the First Russian Revolution, the attitude of the Social Revolutionaries to the Soviets of Workers', Peasants' and Soldiers' Deputies was determined. In them they did not see the embryo of a new revolutionary power, did not consider them capable of performing state functions, and considered them as unique trade unions or bodies of self-government only for one class. According to the Social Revolutionaries, the main purpose of the Soviets was to organize and unite the dispersed, amorphous working masses.
The main demands of the Socialist Revolutionaries in the revolution were the demands of their minimum program. If before the revolution the main task of the party was to educate the masses of socialist consciousness, now the task of overthrowing the autocracy has come to the fore. Their activities became not only larger-scale, more energetic, but also more diverse. Party agitation and propaganda became wider and more intense.
There were also changes in the terrorist activities of the party, which continued to receive significant attention. The form of terror used has changed. Azef’s efforts virtually paralyzed the activities of the Combat Organization, the last significant act of which was the murder in February 1905 of Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, the Tsar’s uncle, the former Governor-General of Moscow, one of the inspirers of the government’s reactionary course. In the fall of 1906, the BO was temporarily disbanded and in its place several flying combat detachments were created, which committed a number of successful terrorist acts. Terror has become decentralized. It was widely used by local party organizations against middle and lower-level government officials. The Social Revolutionaries actively participated in the preparation and conduct of revolutionary actions (strikes, demonstrations, rallies, armed uprisings, etc.) in the city and countryside, among civilian population, as well as in the army and navy. They also tested themselves in the legal, parliamentary arena of struggle.
The activities of the Socialist Revolutionaries among the workers had significantly outgrown the framework of pre-revolutionary circle work. Thus, in the fall of 1905, Socialist Revolutionary resolutions often received a majority at rallies and meetings of workers of the largest St. Petersburg factories. The citadel of Socialist Revolutionary influence at that time was the famous Moscow textile factory - Prokhorovskaya Manufactory.
The peasantry remained the subject of special attention of the Social Revolutionaries. Peasant brotherhoods and unions were formed in the villages. This work was carried out especially widely in the Volga region and the central black earth provinces. Already during the period of the first revolution, the policy of the Social Revolutionaries towards the peasantry was affected by their lack of the Old Narodnik belief that the peasant by nature is a socialist. This held back the Socialist Revolutionaries, did not allow them to completely and completely trust the peasant initiative. They feared that the results of this initiative would diverge from their socialist doctrine, lead to the strengthening of peasant private ownership of land and complicate its socialization. This weakened the will and determination of the Socialist Revolutionary leadership, forcing it to be more inclined to solve the agrarian question “from above”, through legislation, than “from below”, by seizing land by peasants. Condemning “agrarian terror,” the party leadership at the same time tolerated its preachers in the party until they themselves left it in 1906, forming the core of the Union of Socialist Revolutionaries into Maximalists. Doubts about the socialist commitment of the peasants were probably reflected in the fact that there were no peasants in the Socialist Revolutionary governing bodies, with the exception of the lower ones; village, volost and sometimes district. And first of all, one should look for an explanation in the doctrinaire Socialist Revolutionaries for the fact that during the period of the revolution the final merger of the Socialist Revolutionaries with the peasant movement never took place.
The Social Revolutionaries, like the Bolsheviks, recognized that the revolution must not only be organized, but also armed. During the Moscow armed uprising, the Central Committee of the Socialist Revolutionary Party hastily created a Combat Committee, which was able to create two dynamite workshops in St. Petersburg, but they were immediately handed over by Azef, who was a member of the committee. This ended the Socialist Revolutionary attempt to prepare an uprising in St. Petersburg. The Social Revolutionaries took an active part and played a prominent role in a number of armed uprisings against tsarism, especially in Moscow in December 1905, as well as in Kronstadt and Sveaborg in the summer of 1906.
The Social Revolutionaries spoke out in favor of a boycott of the legislative Bulygin Duma and took an active part in the All-Russian October strike. The Manifesto of October 17, 1905, issued by the Tsar under the pressure of a strike and promising political and civil freedoms, expansion of voting rights to the State Duma and giving it legislative powers, was met with ambiguity by the Socialist Revolutionaries. The majority of the party leadership was inclined to believe that Russia had become a constitutional country and, therefore, it was necessary to make adjustments to tactics and abandon terror, at least for a while. The most persistent supporter of ending the terror and dissolving the Combat Organization was its head, Azef. Minority, one of prominent representatives whose deputy was Azef B.V. Savinkov, on the contrary, advocated strengthening terror in order to finish off tsarism. Ultimately, the central terror was suspended and the Combat Organization was effectively dissolved.
After October 17, the Party Central Committee preferred “not to force events.” He and his representatives in the St. Petersburg Council of Workers' Deputies were against the introduction of an 8-hour working day by turnout, against the “passion for strikes,” including against the call for a December general political strike with its transformation into an armed uprising. Instead of tactics to spur the revolution, the Socialist Revolutionaries proposed using the freedoms declared by the October 17 Manifesto to expand the base of the revolution by strengthening agitation, propaganda and organizational work among the masses, especially among the peasantry. Formally, such tactics were not without meaning. At the same time, there was a latent fear that revolutionary extremism would disrupt the sequence of development of the revolution, frighten the bourgeoisie and it would refuse to accept power.
The Socialist Revolutionaries were also active supporters of the boycott of the Duma elections. The elections nevertheless took place, and a significant number of peasant deputies found themselves in the Duma. In this regard, the Socialist Revolutionary leadership radically changed its attitude towards the Duma, so as not to interfere with its work, it was even decided to temporarily stop terrorist activities. The subject of special attention of the Social Revolutionaries was the peasant deputies who entered the Duma. With the active participation of the Socialist Revolutionaries, a Duma faction was created from these deputies - the Labor Group. However, in terms of their influence on peasant deputies in the Duma, the Socialist Revolutionaries were inferior to the people's socialists, representatives of the right wing of neo-populism.
The Second State Duma turned out to be the only one that the Socialist-Revolutionaries did not boycott. The greatest success of the Social Revolutionaries in the Second Duma was that they managed to collect more than three times more signatures for their agrarian project than for the First Duma project. And although the Duma group of Socialist Revolutionaries was closely supervised by the Party Central Committee, nevertheless, its activity was, according to the general party assessment, “far from brilliant.” She caused discontent in the party, primarily because she did not pursue the party line consistently and decisively enough. The party leadership threatened the government to respond with a general strike and armed uprising if it encroached on the Duma, and their deputies declared that they would not submit to its dissolution and would not disperse. However, this time everything was limited only to words. During the revolution, it changed significantly social composition parties. The overwhelming majority of its members were now workers and peasants. However, as before, the party’s policy was determined by the intellectual composition of the AKP leadership.
After the defeat of the revolution, the Socialist Revolutionary Party, like other Russian revolutionary and opposition parties, found itself in a state of crisis. It was caused primarily by the failure that these parties suffered in the revolution, as well as by the sharp deterioration in the conditions of their activity in connection with the triumph of reaction.
In their tactical calculations, the Socialist Revolutionaries proceeded from the fact that the revolution, in principle, did not change anything, and the third June coup d'etat returned the country to its pre-revolutionary state. The State Duma, elected under the new electoral law, was considered by them as a constitutional fiction. From this assessment of the political situation in the country, the conclusion was made that, firstly, the reasons that caused the first revolution remain, and that a new revolution is inevitable. Secondly, that it is necessary to return to previous forms, methods and means of struggle, boycotting the anti-people State Duma.
On a par with the tactics of boycott and otzovism was the “militism” professed by the Socialist-Revolutionaries. The Third Party Council, which met shortly after the June 3rd coup, spoke out in favor of a boycott of the Duma, and at the same time called strengthening the military cause a priority task. In particular, this meant the creation of combat squads, their training of the population in the methods of armed struggle, and partial performances in the troops. At the same time, it was noted that a general uprising cannot be a specific goal in the near future. The decision to strengthen central terror was unanimously approved.
However, as the inertia of the revolution faded and public life was returning to its usual, peaceful course, the inconsistency of the Socialist Revolutionary calls for a return to combat tactics was increasingly revealed. A more realistic trend began to take shape in the party, led by a young member of the Central Committee N.D. Avksentiev, Doctor of Philosophy, one of the editors of the party’s central organ, the newspaper Znamya Truda. At the First All-Party Conference, held in August 1908 in London, he, speaking as co-rapporteur of V.M. Chernov on the issue of the current situation, insisted on abandoning the tactics of “partial military actions” and preparations for an armed uprising and considered it necessary to rely on propaganda and organizational work and central terror. Chernov and his supporters managed to defend the paragraph of the resolution on combat training only with a minimal margin and in a truncated form. Only strong party organizations engaged in “serious socialist work” were now allowed to engage in combat training. Like the Third Council, the conference unanimously spoke out in favor of strengthening central terror, and a strike “at the center of centers,” i.e., an attempt on the life of Nicholas P., was also considered quite ripe.
However, the decisions of the London Conference and the IV Council that approved them remained on paper. Enormous moral damage to the party and terror was caused by V.L. Burtsev’s exposure of E.F. Azef. At the beginning of January 1909, the Central Committee of the AKP officially declared him a provocateur. B.V. Savinkov’s attempt to recreate the Combat Organization, morally rehabilitate terror and prove that it existed and exists regardless of provocation was unsuccessful.
The general crisis that struck the Socialist Revolutionary Party during the inter-revolutionary period also included the organizational decline of the party. Already in 1908, V.M. Chernov noted that “the organization has melted, disappeared,” the party has moved away from the masses, many of its members are leaving work, emigration has reached “terrifying proportions.” Many members of the party were arrested, including such prominent figures as E.K. Breshkovskaya, N.V. Tchaikovsky, O.S. Minor and a number of others. Seat of the Central Committee. and publications central newspapers the parties “Banner of Labor” and “Land and Freedom” were again transferred abroad. The leadership of the party was weakened by the fact that at the V Party Council, held in May 1909, the old composition of the Central Committee, consisting of the most capable, experienced and authoritative people in the party (V. M. Chernov, N.I. Rakitnikov, M.A. Natanson, A.A. Argunov and N.D. Avksentyev). The advantage of the members of the new Central Committee elected by the Council was only that they were not associated with Azef. In all other respects they were inferior to the former Tsekovites. In addition, most of them were soon arrested. The situation was further aggravated by the fact that a number of prominent party figures, primarily V.M. Chernov and B.V. Savinkov, actually distanced themselves from current party work and focused almost entirely on literary activities. Since 1912, the Party Central Committee stopped showing any signs of life.
Due to its own crisis state and lack of connections with the broad masses, the Socialist Revolutionary Party had virtually no influence on the beginning of a new revolutionary upsurge. However, the growth of revolutionary sentiment in the country contributed to the revival of the Social Revolutionaries. In St. Petersburg, their legal newspapers “Trudovaya Golos” began to be published, then with various epithets - “Thought” (“Cheerful Thought”, “Living Thought”, etc.) Their activity also intensified among the workers. On the eve of the war, their organizations existed in almost all large metropolitan plants and factories, and they were often created by the workers themselves without the participation of Socialist-Revolutionary intellectuals. At this time, Moscow and Baku were also centers of Socialist Revolutionary work. In addition, organizations were revived in the Urals, Vladimir, Odessa, Kyiv, and the Don region. Influential were the organizations of port and ship workers on the Volga and sailors of the Black Sea merchant fleet.
Socialist Revolutionary work among peasants was carried out in a number of provinces: Poltava, Kyiv, Kharkov, Chernigov, Voronezh, Mogilev and Vitebsk, as well as in the North Volga region, the Baltic states, the North Caucasus and in many cities and villages of Siberia. However, the payoff from this work was not nearly as impressive as its “geography.” To a certain extent, this explained the fact that the village “as an active force of the social movement,” according to the correct remark of the Socialist Revolutionary “Cheerful Thought,” was “absent” in the new revolutionary upsurge.
The growth of the next national crisis, the growth of the revolutionary movement and the revival of the activities of the Socialist Revolutionaries strengthened the tendency among them to consolidate their forces and to recreate the party. However, the outbreak of war interrupted this trend.
The outbreak of the World War confronted the Socialist-Revolutionaries with new difficult questions: why the war started, how socialists should react to it, is it possible to be both a patriot and an internationalist, what should be the attitude towards the government that has become the head of the fight against an external enemy, is class struggle acceptable during the war and, if so, in what form , what should be the way out of the war, etc.?
Since the war not only extremely complicated party ties, especially with foreign countries, where the main theoretical forces of the party were concentrated, but also exacerbated ideological differences, the Socialist Revolutionaries were unable to develop a common platform in relation to the war. The first attempt to develop such a platform was made at the very beginning of the war. In August 1914, in Switzerland, in the town of Bozhi, a private meeting of prominent party figures took place (N.D. Avksentyev, A.A. Argunov, E.E. Lazarev, M.A. Natanson, I.I. Fondaminsky, V. M. Chernov and others) on the issue of “the line of conduct in conditions of a world war.” Already at this meeting, the range of opinions and disagreements that the war gave rise to among the Socialist Revolutionaries was revealed. With all the richness of this spectrum, two points of view were clearly identified - defencist and internationalist.
The majority of the meeting participants (Avksentyev, Argunov, Lazarev, Fondaminsky) declared themselves to be consistent defencists. They believed that socialists must defend their homeland against foreign imperialism. Without denying the possibility of political and class struggle during the war, the defencists at the same time emphasized that the struggle should be conducted in such forms and by such means that it does not undermine national defense. The victory of German militarism was seen as a greater evil for civilization and the cause of socialism in Russia and throughout the world. The Socialist Revolutionary Defenseists saw the best way out of the war in the victory of the Entente. Russia's participation in this bloc was welcomed, since it was assumed that the alliance of tsarism with Western democracies would have a beneficial effect on it, especially after the end of the war.
A consistent internationalist position at the meeting was defended only by M.A. Nathanson, who believed that workers do not have a fatherland and socialists, even during war, should not forget that the interests of the ruling classes and the interests of the people remain opposed. V.M. Chernov’s position was left-center. He believed that the tsarist government was not waging a defensive, but a war of conquest, defending dynastic rather than popular interests, and therefore the socialists should not provide it with any support. They are obliged to oppose the war, restore the Second International, and become a “third” force that, by putting pressure on the two imperialist blocs locked in a bloody duel, will achieve a just peace without annexations and indemnities. But neither Nathanson, nor even more so Chernov, in their anti-war and internationalist speeches, went to Leninist extremes: calls for turning the imperialist war into a civil war and the defeat of their government.
In the Foreign Delegation of the Party Central Committee, the representation of internationalists and defencists turned out to be equal, and as a result, the activities of this only all-party governing body at that time were almost completely paralyzed.
The leaders of the internationalist movement (M.A. Nathanson, N.I. Rakitnikov, V.M. Chernov, B.D. Kamkov) were the first to begin promoting their views and ideological consolidation of their supporters. At the end of 1914 they began publishing the newspaper “Thought” in Paris. In its first issues, theses by V.M. Chernov were published, in which the position of the Socialist-Revolutionary Internationalists on a set of issues relating to war, peace, revolution and socialism was theoretically substantiated.
The origin of the war was associated primarily with the entry of capitalism into the “national-imperialist phase,” during which it acquired one-sided industrial development in developed countries. And this, in turn, gave rise to another abnormality - one-sided industrial Marxist socialism, which was extremely optimistic about the prospects for the development of capitalism and underestimated its negative, destructive sides, completely linking the fate of socialism with this prospect. Marxist socialism assigned only the role of an appendage to triumphant industry to agriculture and the countryside as a whole. Also ignored were those layers of the working population that were not employed in industry. According to Chernov, this socialism viewed capitalism as a “friend-enemy” or “enemy-friend of the proletariat,” since the proletariat was interested in the development and prosperity of capitalism. The dependence of the growth of the well-being of the proletariat on the development of capitalism has become main reason“massive nationalist fall from grace of socialism.” The conditions for overcoming the crisis of socialism were seen in the cleansing of Marxist socialism from those deeply penetrated into it negative influences“one-sided industrialist and national-imperialist phase of capitalist development,” that is, in the replacement of Marxist socialism with integral Socialist Revolutionary socialism.
Among such negative influences, the idealization of the proletariat by Marxists was mentioned first of all. Such a proletariat as Marxism portrays it, wrote Chernov, does not exist. In fact, there is not just one international proletariat, welded together by class solidarity, independent of differences in race, nation, gender, territory, state, qualifications and standard of living, imbued with irreconcilable hostility to the existing system and to all forces of oppression and exploitation, but many proletariats, with a number of private contradictions between them and with a certain relative solidarity with the ruling strata. As a result, the conclusion was drawn that socialists should not make an idol out of any working class, including the proletariat, and the socialist party should not be identified with the proletarian party. Chernov emphasized that ending the war and achieving a just peace without annexations and indemnities can only be achieved through the united efforts of all working people; and the duty of every socialist and every socialist party is to unite the socialist forces scattered by the war.
Guided by such considerations, Chernov and Nathanson participated in the international conferences of socialist internationalists - Zimmerwald (1915) and Kinthal (1916). Chernov noted that the participants in these conferences pursued different goals. Some, including Chernov himself, viewed them as a means of awakening and uniting all international socialism, others (Lenin and his supporters) - as a means of breaking with it and founding a narrower “sectarian International.” Only M.A. Nathanson (M. Bobrov) signed the “Manifesto” of the Zimmerwald Conference. Chernov refused to sign this document due to the fact that his amendments in the spirit of the Socialist Revolutionary view of war and socialism were rejected.
At the same time, when the Zimmerwald Conference was taking place, the defencist-SRs organized a meeting in Geneva with the Russian social-democratic defencists. The “Manifesto” of this meeting stated that “freedom... cannot be achieved except by following the path of national self-defense.” The call for the defense of one’s fatherland was justified by the fact that Germany’s victory over Russia, firstly, would turn the latter into a colony, which would hamper the development of its productive forces and the growth of the consciousness of the working people, and consequently, the final death of tsarism would be delayed. Secondly, the defeat of tsarism will have the most severe impact on the position of the working people, since payment of indemnity will cause an increase in taxes. Hence the conclusion was drawn that the vital, economic interests of the people require socialists to actively participate in the defense of the country.
At the same time, the defencists assured that their position did not mean internal peace, reconciliation with the government and the bourgeoisie during the war. The possibility was not even excluded that the overthrow of the autocracy would be a precondition and guarantee of Russia's victory in the war. But at the same time, it was pointed out that it was necessary to avoid revolutionary outbreaks, not to abuse strikes, to think about what their consequences would be, whether they would harm the cause of the country’s defense. Best app strength for a socialist was active participation in all public organizations working for the needs of the war: military-industrial committees, zemstvo and city institutions, rural self-government bodies, cooperatives, etc. The weekly newspaper “Prazyv” became the mouthpiece of the defencist bloc of Socialist Revolutionaries and Social Democrats. , published in Paris from October 1915 to March 1917.
Defensiveness prevailed especially at the beginning of the war. However, as, on the one hand, the inability of the autocracy to ensure effective defense of the country and to prevent economic ruin and financial crisis was revealed, and on the other hand, the movement in opposition to the autocracy gained strength, defencism not only lost its influence, but also underwent certain changes, became more radical and developed into revolutionary defencism. Signs of such an evolution are found in the decisions of the illegal meeting of the populists, held in July 1915 in Petrograd at the apartment of A.F. Kerensky.
It said that “the moment has come to fight for a decisive change in the system of public administration.” The slogans of this struggle were to be: amnesty for all victims of political and religious beliefs, civil and political liberties, democratization of public administration from top to bottom, freedom of professional, cooperative and other organizations, fair distribution of taxes among all classes of the population. With regard to the State Duma, it was said that it was powerless to lead the country out of the crisis, but until the convening of “true popular representation,” its platform must be used to organize the people’s forces. The Labor Group, whose leader was the Socialist-Revolutionary A.F. Kerensky, was to become the spokesman for the decisions made by the meeting.
However, ideological and tactical discord and organizational fragmentation persisted among the Socialist Revolutionaries even after the meeting. Instability and even contradiction in views and moods were characteristic not only of the Socialist-Revolutionaries-intellectuals, but also of the Socialist-Revolutionaries-workers. This was clearly manifested in their position in the elections in Petrograd. working group Central Military-Industrial Committee and at meetings of this group. Some criticized the defeatism of the Bolsheviks; others called for defense and coalition with the bourgeoisie who opposed tsarism; still others expressed solidarity with the Zimmerwaldians.
The ideas of the left Socialist Revolutionary Internationalists at the beginning of the war did not enjoy any noticeable influence, but as the external and internal situation of the country worsened and the political crisis grew, they found more and more supporters. Thus, in January 1916, the Petrograd Committee of the Socialist Revolutionary Party stated that “the main task is to organize the working classes for a revolutionary revolution, because only when they seize power will the liquidation of the war and all its consequences be carried out in the interests of labor democracy.”
The war further aggravated the organizational crisis of the Socialist Revolutionaries. According to V.M. Zenzinov, a member of the Central Committee elected at the V Party Council, during all the years of the war “there were almost no Socialist Revolutionary Party organizations anywhere.” However, the ideas of the party retained their roots, potential strength and significance. Thousands of Socialist Revolutionaries and their supporters, active in 1905 - 1907, did not disappear during the inter-revolutionary decade, but only dispersed organizationally. The “forges” of the Socialist Revolutionary cadres of agitators, propagandists and organizers during this period were prisons, hard labor and exile. Those Social Revolutionaries who formally left the party did not break their spiritual connection with it. Working in various legal organizations, they expanded the field of Socialist Revolutionary ideological influence. On the whole, the leading core of the party remained, taking refuge in emigration. Only taking all this into account can one understand the amazing metamorphosis that occurred with the Socialist Revolutionaries in a short time after the victory of the second Russian revolution in February 1917.
Representatives of the intelligentsia became that social base, on the basis of which at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries . radical political parties were formed: Social Democrats and Socialist Revolutionaries. They took shape earlier than the liberal opposition parties, since they recognized the possibility of using illegal methods of struggle, and the liberals sought to act within the framework of the existing political system.
The first social democratic parties began to emerge in the 80-90s of the 19th century. in national regions of Russia: Finland, Poland, Armenia. In the mid-90s, “Unions of Struggle for the Liberation of the Working Class” were formed in St. Petersburg, Moscow and other cities. They established contact with the striking workers, but their activities were interrupted by the police. An attempt to create the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party at the 1898 congress was unsuccessful. Neither the program nor the charter were adopted. The congress delegates were arrested.
A new attempt to unite into a political organization was made by G.V. Plekhanov, Yu.O. Tsederbaum (L. Martov), V.I. Ulyanov (Lenin) and others. Since 1900, they began publishing the illegal political newspaper Iskra abroad. She united disparate circles and organizations. In 1903, at a congress in London, a program and charter were adopted that formalized the formation of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP). The program provided for two stages of the revolution. On the first minimum program implementation of bourgeois-democratic demands: the elimination of autocracy, the introduction of an 8-hour working day and democratic freedoms. On the second - maximum program implementation socialist revolution and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
However, ideological and organizational differences split the party into Bolsheviks (supporters of Lenin) and Mensheviks (supporters of L. Martov). Bolsheviks strived turn the party into a narrow organization of professional revolutionaries. The introduction of the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat into the program isolated them from other social democratic movements. In the Bolsheviks' understanding, the dictatorship of the proletariat meant the establishment political power workers to build socialism and a future classless society. Mensheviks they did not consider Russia ready for a socialist revolution, opposed the dictatorship of the proletariat and assumed the possibility of cooperation with all opposition forces. Despite the split, the RSDLP set a course for inciting the workers' and peasants' movement and preparing for revolution.
Program: They were for self-determination of nations. Russia - democratic republic. Dictatorship of the proletariat. Work question: 8-hour working day, abolition of fines and overtime work. The agrarian question: return of sections, abolition of redemption payments, nationalization (Lenin) / municipalization (Martov). Reliance on students. Revolutionary methods, a penchant for terror, “rob the loot.”
Socialist Revolutionary Party(Socialist Revolutionaries) formed in 1902 based on associations of neo-populist circles. The illegal newspaper "Revolutionary Russia" became the mouthpiece of the party. His The Social Revolutionaries considered peasants to be their social support, however compound the party was predominantly intellectual. The leader and ideologist of the Socialist Revolutionaries was V.M. Chernov. Their program provided for the expropriation of capitalist property and the reorganization of society on a collective, socialist basis, the introduction of an 8-hour working day and democratic freedoms. main idea the Socialist Revolutionaries was " socialization of the earth", i.e. the destruction of private ownership of land, its transfer to peasants and division between them according to labor standards. The Social Revolutionaries chose terror as their tactics of struggle. Through terror of the Socialist Revolutionaries tried to spark a revolution and intimidate the government.
The program of the Socialist Revolutionary Party put forward a broad list of democratic changes: freedom of conscience, speech, press, assembly and unions, freedom of movement, inviolability of person and home; compulsory and equal general and secular education for all at state expense; complete separation of church and state and the declaration of religion as a private matter for everyone; destruction of the army and its replacement by the people's militia.
Certain provisions of the program concerned the future political structure of Russia. It was envisaged to establish democratic republic with broad regional autonomy and communities; recognition of the right of nations to self-determination; direct popular legislation; election, replacement and jurisdiction of all officials; universal and equal suffrage for every citizen at least 20 years of age by secret ballot.
IN the economic part of the Socialist Revolutionary program planned to resolve the labor issue: protection of the spiritual and physical strength of the working class, the introduction of an 8-hour working day, the establishment of a minimum wage, the creation at each enterprise of a factory inspectorate elected by workers and monitoring working conditions and the implementation of legislation, freedom of trade unions, etc.
Assessing Russia as an agricultural country in which the peasant population predominated, the Social Revolutionaries recognized that the main issue of the coming revolution would be agrarian question. They saw its solution not in nationalization of the entire land after the revolution, and in its socialization, that is, in its withdrawal from commodity circulation and circulation from private property individuals or groups into the public domain. However the egalitarian principle of land use was in direct contradiction with reality, since based on consumer norms it was impossible to determine the current needs for land in different regions of the country, since the needs of peasant farms were different. In reality, there was no equality in the technical equipment of peasant farms.
The Social Revolutionaries were confident that their socialization was built on the psychology of the peasantry, on its long-standing traditions, and it was a guarantee of the development of the peasant movement along the socialist path. With all the utopian costs and deviations towards reformism, the program of the Socialist Revolutionary Party was of a revolutionary-democratic, anti-landowner, anti-autocratic character, and the “socialization of the land” represented an undoubted discovery of the Socialist Revolutionaries, especially V.M. Chernov, in the field of revolutionary democratic agrarian reforms. Their implementation would open the way to the development of peasant farming.
The tactics of the Socialist Revolutionary parties reflected the mood of the petty-bourgeois strata; instability, fluctuations, inconsistency. They actively supported terror, which distinguished them from other parties.
At the turn of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many trends in politics emerged. One of the most influential among the non-proletarian parties was the Socialist Revolutionary Party. It was created in 1902. People's circles played a fundamental role, the ideas of which were laid in its basis. One of the main leaders of the Socialist Revolutionaries was Viktor Mikhailovich Chernov, who came from a peasant family.
There was a process of uniting layers of working and exploited people under a single movement of the Socialist Revolutionaries. They also attracted soldiers and students. The bulk was represented by peasants, about 45%, and the intelligentsia, together with peasants, about 15%. The total number was about 63 thousand people.
There was organizational weakness within the party and lack of a common goal. During the period of 1910, leaders tried to structure the work and overcome the problems that were aggravated by the Stolypisk reform in the field of agriculture. All this undermined the basic ideas of the socialist revolutionaries.
The program of the Socialist Revolutionaries was freedom of speech, lawmaking through referendum and popular initiative. In the sphere of the national economy, it was intended to approve a progressive tax, protection of workers' rights, and the development of public services and enterprises.
The main means of retaining like-minded people was to undermine the ideas of power that hindered the development of the party. Terror was chosen as the main method. Before the First World War, the party had representation in all major cities. The war increased divisions among the followers of the political movement. Political leaders each saw the outcome of the war in their own way. Until February 1917, the Socialist Revolutionary Party was not legal. At the end of the February Revolution, they began to operate legally and shared the pedestal with other leading parties. The number of party representatives has increased significantly. By mid-1917 there were about 1 million people. Their popularity was so great that entire villages, plants, and factories joined it. The bulk of the political organization consisted of peasants, workers, officers and others. On the one hand, a large representation of segments of the population contributed to the growth of numbers, on the other hand, this is a huge number of opinions, views and they are quite difficult to manage. Someone benefited personally from one of the most influential parties.
Therefore, currents were formed within the party itself, tearing apart the unity of the socialist revolutionaries. There were three directions - right, left and center.
The Right Socialist Revolutionaries, their representative and leader was Alexander Kerensky, focused on democratization political system and all forms of ownership. They were represented in the government. Kerensky was the head of the third coalition government. The right did not accept the results of the October Revolution and wanted to overthrow the power of the Bolsheviks.
The opponents of the right in the political bloc were the left Socialist Revolutionaries. The representatives were Spiridonova M., Kamkov B. They believed that the post-war period was the most successful for a breakthrough to socialism. It is necessary to move until democracy is established in the country. They expressed no confidence in the Provisional Government. The revolution took place under the active assistance of representatives of the Left Socialist Revolutionaries. Thanks to active interaction with the left, the Bolsheviks established their political influence in the villages.
The main course of the party was represented by centrists V. Chernov and S. Maslov. The party actively worked among the military, promoting the ideas of democratic principles and further revolution.
At the end of December 1917, the last congress of representatives of the Socialist Revolutionaries took place. The leadership did not recognize the power of the Bolsheviks. During the elections to the Constituent Assembly, they received about 60% of the votes. After the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, the Socialist Revolutionaries changed their tactics of terror to political struggle with the Bolsheviks. In 1918, they began to promote the idea of the integrity of the country and its independence. Until a certain time, the right and left were looking for common ground with the Bolsheviks, until the latter began to create committees. This all resulted in a rebellion and an attempt to organize a conflict between Germany, but it was not successful. The putsch was suppressed, the Left Socialist Revolutionaries split into populists and communist revolutionaries. The right, in turn, continued the fight against the Soviets. In June 1918, the Socialist Revolutionaries were expelled from the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. From that time on, terror and the creation of military rebellions were chosen as the main means of achieving the goal.
Social revolutionaries, removed from politics, tried to negotiate with the Bolsheviks. The Soviet government used them until a certain time to establish influence over the population and in February 1919 even legalized their party. But disagreements within the Socialist Revolutionaries did not allow the party to flourish; some believed that it was necessary to cooperate with the Bolsheviks, others to fight the power of the soviets.
In the 20s, the central committee of the Socialist Revolutionaries called for not to stop fighting the Bolsheviks. At the end of the Civil War, social revolutionaries again became illegal. Party representatives were in prison, and support among the population was falling. The last congress in the history of the party took place in 1921. The main focus of activity was the consolidation of labor and political democracy. These ideas were dangerous for the Bolsheviks, and they decided to discredit the Socialist Revolutionaries. Propaganda began against their activities. In 1922, a tribunal was held over representatives of social revolutionaries. Twelve representatives were sentenced to death, others were sentenced to arrest for up to 10 years. At this point, the party actually ceased to exist.
Many representatives who were in exile formed centers of migration of the Socialist Revolutionaries. In the 40s of the 20th century they supported Soviet Union. Participated in resistance to the spread of fascism.
