He was one of the leaders of the Socialist Revolutionary Party. Socialist Revolutionaries (Socialist Revolutionaries). Social Revolutionaries and the agrarian question
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 of the political power of workers to build socialism and, in the future, a 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. The main idea of the Social 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 union, 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 was intended 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 the private property of 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. Despite 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.
Noah shook his head.
– There is no clarity yet. There must be another reason. Perhaps the Socialist Revolutionaries have created some fog?
Bologov narrowed his cat's eyes:
- What about the Socialist-Revolutionaries? The Social Revolutionaries are the most faithful people's party.
Program. The Socialist Revolutionary Party was created on the basis of pre-existing populist organizations and occupied one of the leading places in the system of Russian political parties. It was the largest and most influential non-Marxist socialist party.
The party program was approved at its first congress in early January 1906. And it remained the main document of the party throughout its existence. The main author of the program was the main theoretician of the party, Viktor Chernov.
The Social Revolutionaries were the direct heirs of the old populism (Russia's transition to socialism through a non-capitalist route). But the Socialist Revolutionaries were supporters of democratic socialism, that is, economic and political democracy, which was to be expressed through the representation of organized producers (trade unions), organized consumers (cooperative unions) and organized citizens (democratic state represented by parliament and self-government bodies).
The originality of Socialist Revolutionary socialism lay in the theory of socialization of agriculture. Socialism in Russia must begin to grow first of all in the countryside. The ground for it, its preliminary stage, was to be the socialization of the land: the abolition of private ownership of land, its transformation into public property without the right to buy and sell, the transfer of all land to the management of central and local bodies of people's self-government, the use of land was to be equalizing labor .
Political democracy and socialization of the land were the main demands of the Socialist Revolutionary minimum program. They were supposed to ensure a peaceful, evolutionary transition of Russia to socialism without any special socialist revolution. The program, in particular, talked about the establishment of a democratic republic with inalienable rights of man and citizen: freedom of conscience, speech, press, assembly, unions, strikes, inviolability of person and home, universal and equal suffrage for every citizen from 20 years of age, without distinction gender, religion and nationality, subject to a direct election system and closed voting. Broad autonomy and the possible wider use of federal relations between individual national regions were also required, with recognition of their unconditional right to self-determination.
Editions (for 1913):“Revolutionary Russia” (illegally in 1902-1905), “People’s Messenger”, “Thought”, “Conscious Russia”, “Testaments”.
Party leader: Victor Chernov
Story. The Socialist Revolutionary Party began with the Saratov circle, which arose in 1894. In 1896 it developed a program. In 1900, this brochure was published by the foreign Union of Russian Socialist Revolutionaries. In 1897, the Saratov circle moved to Moscow and was involved in issuing proclamations and distributing foreign literature. The circle acquired a new name - the Northern Union of Socialist Revolutionaries.
In the second half of the 1890s, small populist-socialist groups and circles 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.” 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
In April 1902, the Combat Organization (BO) of the Socialist Revolutionaries announced itself with a terrorist act against the Minister of Internal Affairs Dmitry Sipyagin. The BO was the most secretive part of the party. Over the entire history of the BO (1901-1908), over 80 people worked there. The organization was in an autonomous position within the party; the Central Committee only gave it the task of committing the next terrorist act and indicated the desired date for its execution. The BO had its own cash register, appearances, addresses, apartments; the Central Committee had no right to interfere in its internal affairs. The leaders of the BO Gershuni (1901-1903) and Azef (1903-1908) (who was a secret police agent) were the organizers of the Socialist Revolutionary Party and the most influential members of its Central Committee.
The Social Revolutionaries called the revolution of 1905 “social,” transitional between bourgeois and socialist. The main impetus of the revolution is the agrarian question. Thus, the driving force of the revolution is the peasantry, the proletariat and the working intelligentsia. The transition to socialism must be accomplished in a peaceful, reformist way. The Constituent Assembly must determine the form of government and then become the supreme legislative body. The main political slogan of the revolution is “Land and Freedom”.
Party agitation and propaganda are intensifying. All regional committees published their own legal newspapers and bulletins. On February 4, 1905, the military organization of the Social Revolutionaries made the last major attempt on the life of a person close to the Tsar. Terrorist Ivan Kalyaev blew up a carriage carrying Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, the emperor's uncle.
In the fall of 1906, the combat organization was dissolved and replaced by flying combat detachments. Thus, terror acquired a decentralized character. The number of terrorist attacks has increased sharply.
The Social Revolutionaries actively participated in the preparation and conduct of revolutionary actions in the city and countryside, in the army and navy. The Social Revolutionaries actively participated in the organization of trade unions. The Social Revolutionaries participated in the work of the Soviets of Workers' Deputies. But they did not consider this body the embryo of revolutionary power. This is a means of uniting the amorphous, vague working mass. The peasantry received special attention from the Social Revolutionaries. Peasant brotherhoods and unions were formed in the villages
During the revolution, the composition of the party changed significantly. The overwhelming majority of its members were now workers and peasants. But the party's policy was determined by the intelligentsia leadership.
During the revolution of 1905-1907 there was a peak in the terrorist activities of the Socialist Revolutionaries. During this period, 233 terrorist attacks were carried out (among others, 2 ministers, 33 governors, in particular the Tsar’s uncle, and 7 generals were killed), from 1902 to 1911 - 216 assassination attempts.
The manifesto of October 17, 1905 split the party into two camps. The majority (Azef) spoke out for an end to terror and the dissolution of the militant organization. The minority (Savinkov) is for intensifying terror in order to finish off tsarism.
The party officially boycotted the legislative advisory Bulygin Duma, as well as the elections to the State Duma of the 1st convocation, participated in the elections to the Duma of the 2nd convocation, to which 37 Socialist Revolutionary deputies were elected, and after its dissolution again boycotted the Duma of the 3rd and 4th convocations. th convocations.
During the First World War, centrist and internationalist currents coexisted in the party; the latter then turned into a radical faction of the Left Socialist Revolutionaries (leader - Maria Spiridonova), who later joined the Bolsheviks.
The Socialist Revolutionary Party actively participated in the political life of the country after the February Revolution of 1917 and was the largest party of this period. By the summer of 1917, the party had about 1 million people, united in 436 organizations in 62 provinces, in the fleets and on the fronts of the active army.
The Socialist Revolutionaries entered the coalition Provisional Government, members of the Socialist Revolutionary Party were: Alexander Kerensky (Minister of Justice of the Provisional Government, Minister of War, later Prime Minister); Viktor Chernov - Minister of Agriculture; Nikolay Avksentyev - Minister of Internal Affairs, Chairman of the Pre-Parliament.
The main newspaper of the party was “Delo Naroda” - since June 1917, the organ of the Central Committee of the AKP, one of the largest Russian newspapers, whose circulation reached 300 thousand copies
In the appeal of the Central Committee of the AKP “To all revolutionary democracy of Russia,” issued on October 25, 1917, the Bolsheviks’ attempt to seize state power by armed force was called “insane.” The Socialist Revolutionary faction left the Second Congress of the Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, declaring that the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks was a crime against the homeland and the revolution. To coordinate the actions of anti-Bolshevik democratic forces, the Committee for the Salvation of the Motherland and Revolution, headed by Abram Gotz, was created. However, the Left Socialist Revolutionaries supported the Bolsheviks and became members of the Council of People's Commissars. The IV Congress of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, which was held in Petrograd from November 26 to December 5, 1917, confirmed the decisions of the Central Committee on the expulsion from the party of the left Socialist Revolutionary Internationalists, as well as those party members who joined the Soviet government. At the same time, the congress condemned the policy of the coalition of all anti-Bolshevik forces pursued by the Central Committee and approved the decision of the Central Committee to expel the far-right Socialist Revolutionary Defenseists from the party.
The Socialist Revolutionaries received a majority in the elections to the All-Russian Constituent Assembly. They played an active role in the Union for the Defense of the Constituent Assembly. The leader of the Socialist Revolutionaries, Viktor Chernov, was elected Chairman of the Constituent Assembly, which opened on January 5, 1918 and worked for only one day. After the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, the struggle for the immediate resumption of its work was declared the party's top priority.
current position: the left Socialist Revolutionaries sided with the Bolsheviks, the right Socialist Revolutionaries are actually their opponents
The largest left party in pre-revolutionary Russia was founded in 1902. Soon its members began to be abbreviated as Socialist-Revolutionaries. It is under this name that they are known to most Russians today. The most powerful revolutionary force was swept away from the historical arena by the revolution itself. Let's take a closer look at her story.
Prehistory of creation
Social revolutionary circles appeared in Russia at the end of the 19th century. One of them was founded in Saratov in 1894 on the basis of the Narodnaya Volya society. Two years later, the circle developed a program, which was sent abroad and printed in the form of a leaflet. In 1896, Andrei Argunov became the leader of the circle, who renamed the association the “Union of Socialist Revolutionaries” and moved its center to Moscow. The Central Union established connections with illegal revolutionary circles in St. Petersburg, Odessa, Kharkov, Poltava, Voronezh and Penza.
In 1900, the union acquired a printed organ - the illegal newspaper Revolutionary Russia. It was she who, in January 1902, announced the creation of the Socialist Revolutionary Party based on the union.
Tasks and methods of the Socialist Revolutionaries
The AKP program was drawn up in 1904 by prominent party leader Viktor Chernov. The main goal of the socialist-revolutionaries was to establish a republican form of government in Russia and extend the most important political rights to all segments of the population. The Socialist Revolutionaries decided to achieve their goals using radical methods: underground struggle, terrorist attacks and active agitation among the population.
Already in 1902, the population of the vast empire learned about the military organization of the new party. In the spring of 1902, militant Stepan Balmashev shot and killed Russian Interior Minister Dmitry Sipyagin at point-blank range. The organizer of the murder was Grigory Girshuni. In the following years, the Social Revolutionaries organized and carried out a number of successful and unsuccessful assassination attempts. The most notorious of them were the murders of the new Minister of Internal Affairs and Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, uncle of Nicholas II.
Social Revolutionaries and Azef
The name of the legendary provocateur and double agent is associated with the Socialist Revolutionary Party. For several years he headed the combat organization of the party and at the same time was an employee of the Okhrana (the detective department of the Russian Empire). As the head of the BO, Azef organized a number of powerful terrorist attacks, and as an agent of the tsarist secret service, he contributed to the arrest and destruction of many of his fellow party members. In 1908, Azef was exposed. The Central Committee of the AKP sentenced him to death, but the skilled provocateur fled to Berlin, where he lived for another ten years.
AKP and Revolution of 1905
At the very beginning of the first Russian revolution, the Socialist Revolutionaries put forward a number of theses, which the party did not part with until its dissolution. The socialists revived the old slogan “Land and Freedom,” which now meant fair distribution of land among the peasants. They also proposed to assemble a Constituent Assembly - a representative body that would decide issues of federalization and the state system of post-revolutionary Russia.
During the revolutionary years, the Socialist Revolutionaries conducted revolutionary agitation among soldiers and sailors. took an active part in the creation of the first councils of workers' deputies. These first councils coordinated the actions of the revolutionary-minded masses and did not pretend to be representative bodies. Socialist-Revolutionaries in 1917 When the February Revolution forced Nicholas II to abdicate the throne, the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks formed alternative bodies to the Provisional Government, local dumas and zemstvos - councils. The Petrograd Soviet actually became in opposition to the Provisional Government.
In the spring of 1917, the left parties held the First All-Russian Congress of Soviets, which formed the All-Russian Executive Committee, which duplicated the functions. At first the Soviets were dominated by the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries, but in June their Bolshevisation began. When the Bolsheviks seized power in Petrograd, they held the Second Congress of Soviets. Most of the Socialist Revolutionaries left the congress, declaring that they considered the Bolshevik coup a crime, but some party members entered the first composition of the Council of People's Commissars. Although the AKP declared the overthrow of the Bolshevik dictatorship as its main goal, it remained legal until 1921. A year later, members of the AKP Central Committee who did not have time to emigrate were repressed.
Source - Wikipedia
Socialist Revolutionary Party Leader: Viktor Chernov
Founded: 1902
Date of dissolution: 1921
Ideology: Populism
International: Second
Allies and blocs: Mensheviks, the left wing collaborated with the Bolsheviks until 1918
Number of members: more than 1 million people (1917)
Motto: In the struggle you will find your right!
Seats in the State Duma: 23/499 (1st convocation) 37/518 (2nd convocation) 0/446 (3rd convocation) 0/432 (4th convocation) 347/767 (constituent assembly)
Party press: “Revolutionary Russia”, “People’s Messenger”, “Mysl”, “Conscious Russia”.
The Socialist Revolutionary Party (AKP, Socialist Revolutionary Party, Socialist Revolutionaries) is a revolutionary political party of the Russian Empire, later the Russian Republic and the RSFSR. Member of the Second International. The Socialist Revolutionary Party was created on the basis of previously existing populist organizations and occupied one of the leading places in the system of Russian political parties. It was the largest and most influential non-Marxist socialist party. Its fate was more dramatic than the fate of other parties. 1917 was a triumph and a tragedy for the Socialist Revolutionaries. In a short time after the February Revolution, the party became the largest political force, reached the millionth mark in its numbers, acquired a dominant position in local governments and most public organizations, and won elections to the Constituent Assembly. Its representatives held a number of key positions in the government. Her ideas of democratic socialism and a peaceful transition to it were attractive to the population. However, despite all this, the Social Revolutionaries were unable to retain power.
The historical and philosophical worldview of the party was substantiated by the works of Nikolai Chernyshevsky, Pyotr Lavrov, Nikolai Mikhailovsky. The draft party program was published in May 1904 in No. 46 of Revolutionary Russia. The project, with minor changes, was approved as the party program at its first congress in early January 1906. This program remained the main document of the party throughout its existence. The main author of the program was the main theoretician of the party, Viktor Chernov. The Social Revolutionaries were the direct heirs of the old populism, the essence of which was the idea of the possibility of Russia's transition to socialism through a non-capitalist route. But the Socialist Revolutionaries were supporters of democratic socialism, that is, economic and political democracy, which was to be expressed through the representation of organized producers (trade unions), organized consumers (cooperative unions) and organized citizens (democratic state represented by parliament and self-government bodies). The originality of Socialist Revolutionary socialism lay in the theory of socialization of agriculture. This theory was a national feature of Socialist Revolutionary democratic socialism and was a contribution to the development of world socialist thought. The original idea of this theory was that socialism in Russia should begin to grow first of all in the countryside. The ground for it, its preliminary stage, was to be the socialization of the earth. Socialization of land meant, firstly, the abolition of private ownership of land, but at the same time not turning it into state property, not its nationalization, but turning it into public property without the right to buy and sell. Secondly, the transfer of all land to the management of central and local bodies of people's self-government, starting from democratically organized rural and urban communities and ending with regional and central institutions. Thirdly, the use of land had to be equalizing labor, that is, to ensure the consumption norm based on the application of one’s own labor, individually or in partnership. The Socialist Revolutionaries considered political freedom and democracy to be the most important prerequisite for socialism and its organic form. Political democracy and socialization of the land were the main demands of the Socialist Revolutionary minimum program. They were supposed to ensure a peaceful, evolutionary transition of Russia to socialism without any special socialist revolution. The program, in particular, spoke about the establishment of a democratic republic with inalienable rights of man and citizen: freedom of conscience, speech, press, meetings, unions, strikes, inviolability of person and home, universal and equal suffrage for every citizen from 20 years of age, without distinction gender, religion and nationality, subject to a direct election system and closed voting. Broad autonomy was also required for regions and communities, both urban and rural, and the possible wider use of federal relations between individual national regions, recognizing their unconditional right to self-determination. The Socialist Revolutionaries, earlier than the Social Democrats, put forward a demand for a federal structure of the Russian state. They were also bolder and more democratic in setting such demands as proportional representation in elected bodies and direct popular legislation (referendum and initiative). Publications (as of 1913): “Revolutionary Russia” (illegally in 1902-1905), “People's Messenger”, “Thought”, “Conscious Russia”, “Testaments”.
Pre-revolutionary period
The Socialist Revolutionary Party began with the Saratov circle, which arose in 1894 and was in connection with the group of Narodnaya Volya members of the “Flying Leaf”. When the Narodnaya Volya group was dispersed, the Saratov circle became isolated and began to act independently. In 1896 he developed a program. It was printed on a hectograph under the title “Our tasks. The main provisions of the program of the socialist revolutionaries." In 1900, this brochure was published by the foreign Union of Russian Socialist Revolutionaries along with Grigorovich’s article “Socialist Revolutionaries and Social Democrats.” In 1897, the Saratov circle moved to Moscow and was involved in issuing proclamations and distributing foreign literature. The circle acquired a new name - Northern Union of Socialist Revolutionaries. It was led by Andrei Argunov. In the second half of the 1890s, small populist-socialist groups and circles 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”. 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 Geneva Agrarian-Socialist League joined it. In April 1902, the Combat Organization (BO) of the Socialist Revolutionaries announced itself with a terrorist act against the Minister of Internal Affairs Dmitry Sipyagin. The BO was the most conspiratorial part of the party; its charter was written by Mikhail Gots. Over the entire history of the BO (1901-1908), over 80 people worked there. The organization was in an autonomous position within the party; the Central Committee only gave it the task of committing the next terrorist act and indicated the desired date for its execution. The BO had its own cash register, appearances, addresses, apartments; the Central Committee had no right to interfere in its internal affairs. The leaders of the BO Gershuni (1901-1903) and Azef (1903-1908) (who was a secret police agent) were the organizers of the Socialist Revolutionary Party and the most influential members of its Central Committee.
The period of the first Russian revolution 1905-1907
The Social Revolutionaries did not recognize the first Russian revolution as bourgeois. The bourgeoisie could not lead the revolution or even be one of its driving forces. This was predetermined by the reforms of Alexander II, which gave scope for the development of capitalism in Russia. The Social Revolutionaries did not consider the revolution to be socialist either, calling it “social”, transitional between bourgeois and socialist. The main impetus of the revolution is the agrarian question. Thus, the driving force of the revolution is the peasantry, the proletariat and the working intelligentsia. The union of these forces, formalized by the creation of a socialist party, is the key to the success of the revolution. The transition to socialism must be accomplished in a peaceful, reformist way. The Constituent Assembly must determine the form of government and then become the supreme legislative body. The main political slogan of the revolution is “Land and Freedom”. Party agitation and propaganda are intensifying. All regional committees published their own legal newspapers and bulletins. Attempts to publish legal daily central party newspapers: “Son of the Fatherland” (November-December 1905), “Delo Naroda”, “Narodny Vestnik”, “Thought” (1906). On February 4, 1905, the military organization of the Social Revolutionaries made the last major attempt on the life of a person close to the Tsar. Terrorist Ivan Kalyaev blew up a carriage carrying Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, the emperor's uncle. In the fall of 1906, the combat organization was dissolved and replaced by flying combat detachments. Thus, terror acquired a decentralized character. The number of terrorist attacks has increased sharply. The Social Revolutionaries actively participated in the preparation and conduct of revolutionary protests in the city and countryside, in the army and navy (the Moscow December armed uprising, performances in Kronstadt and Sveaborg in the summer of 1906). The Social Revolutionaries actively participated in the organization of trade unions. They successfully worked in the All-Russian Peasant Union, the All-Russian Railway Union, the Postal and Telegraph Union, and the Teachers' Union. The Social Revolutionaries participated in the work of the Soviets of Workers' Deputies (there were 92 of them in the capital, and 21 in Moscow). They enjoyed influence in Ekaterinoslav, Nikolaev, Odessa, Saratov, Kharkov, Sevastopol and other councils. But they did not consider this body the embryo of revolutionary power. This is a means of uniting the amorphous, vague working mass. The citadel of Socialist Revolutionary influence among workers was the Moscow textile factory - Prokhorovskaya Manufactory.
The peasantry received special attention from the Social Revolutionaries. Peasant brotherhoods and unions were formed in villages (Volga region, Central Chernozem region). They managed to organize a number of local peasant uprisings, but their attempts to organize all-Russian uprisings of peasants in the summer of 1905 and after the dissolution of the First State Duma failed. It was not possible to establish hegemony in the All-Russian Peasant Union and over the representatives of the peasantry in the State Duma. But there was no complete trust in the peasants: they were absent from the Central Committee, agrarian terror was condemned, and the solution to the agrarian question was “from above.” During the revolution, the composition of the party changed significantly. The overwhelming majority of its members were now workers and peasants. But the party's policy was determined by the intelligentsia leadership. The number of Social Revolutionaries during the years of the revolution exceeded 60 thousand people. Party organizations existed in 48 provinces and 254 districts. There were about 2000 rural organizations and groups. In 1905-1906, its right wing left the party, forming the Party of People's Socialists, and the left wing, the Union of Socialists-Revolutionaries-Maximalists, dissociated itself. During the revolution of 1905-1907 there was a peak in the terrorist activities of the Socialist Revolutionaries. During this period, 233 terrorist attacks were carried out (among others, 2 ministers, 33 governors, in particular the Tsar’s uncle, and 7 generals were killed), from 1902 to 1911 - 216 assassination attempts. The manifesto of October 17, 1905 split the party into two camps. The majority (Azef) spoke out for an end to terror and the dissolution of the militant organization. The minority (Savinkov) is for intensifying terror in order to finish off tsarism. The party officially boycotted the legislative advisory Bulygin Duma, as well as the elections to the State Duma of the 1st convocation, participated in the elections to the Duma of the 2nd convocation, to which 37 Socialist Revolutionary deputies were elected, and after its dissolution again boycotted the Duma of the 3rd and 4th convocations. th convocations.
During First World War centrist and internationalist currents coexisted in the party; the latter then turned into a radical faction of the Left Socialist Revolutionaries (leader - Maria Spiridonova), who later joined the Bolsheviks.
After the February Revolution
The Socialist Revolutionary Party actively participated in the political life of the country after the February Revolution of 1917, bloced with the Menshevik defencists and was the largest party of this period. By the summer of 1917, the party had about 1 million people, united in 436 organizations in 62 provinces, in the fleets and on the fronts of the active army. The Socialist Revolutionaries entered the coalition Provisional Government, members of the Socialist Revolutionary Party were: Alexander Kerensky (Minister of Justice of the Provisional Government, Minister of War, later Prime Minister); Viktor Chernov - Minister of Agriculture; Nikolay Avksentyev - Minister of Internal Affairs, Chairman of the Pre-Parliament. The main newspaper of the party was “Delo Naroda” - since June 1917, the organ of the Central Committee of the AKP, one of the largest Russian newspapers, whose circulation reached 300 thousand copies. Popular Socialist Revolutionary newspapers included “The Will of the People” (reflected the views of the right-wing movement in the AKP, published in Petrograd), “Trud” (the organ of the Moscow committee of the AKP), “Land and Freedom” (a newspaper for peasants, Moscow), “Znamya Truda” (organ of the left movement, Petrograd) and others. In addition, the Central Committee of the AKP published the journal Party News.
After the October Revolution
In the appeal of the Central Committee of the AKP “To all revolutionary democracy of Russia,” issued on October 25, 1917, the Bolsheviks’ attempt to seize state power by armed force was called “insane.” The Socialist Revolutionary faction left the Second Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, declaring that the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks was a crime against the homeland and the revolution. To coordinate the actions of anti-Bolshevik democratic forces, the Committee for the Salvation of the Motherland and Revolution, headed by Abram Gotz, was created. However, the Left Socialist Revolutionaries supported the Bolsheviks and became members of the Council of People's Commissars. The IV Congress of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, which was held in Petrograd from November 26 to December 5, 1917, confirmed the decisions of the Central Committee on the expulsion from the party of the left Socialist Revolutionary Internationalists, as well as those party members who joined the Soviet government. At the same time, the congress condemned the policy of the coalition of all anti-Bolshevik forces pursued by the Central Committee and approved the decision of the Central Committee to expel the far-right Socialist Revolutionary Defenseists from the party. The Social Revolutionaries received a majority in the elections to the All-Russian Constituent Assembly. They played an active role in the Union for the Defense of the Constituent Assembly, led by Vasily Filippovsky. At a meeting of the Central Committee of the AKP, held on January 3, 1918, an armed uprising on the opening day of the Constituent Assembly, proposed by the party’s military commission, was rejected “as an untimely and unreliable act.” The leader of the Social Revolutionaries, Viktor Chernov, was elected Chairman of the Constituent Assembly, which opened on January 5, 1918 and lasted only one day. After the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, the struggle for the immediate resumption of its work was declared the party's top priority. The VIII Council of the AKP, which took place in Moscow from May 7 to 16, 1918, called the elimination of the Bolshevik dictatorship “the next and urgent” task of all democracy. The Council warned party members against conspiratorial tactics in the fight against Bolshevism, but stated that the party would provide all possible assistance to the mass movement of democracy aimed at replacing the “commissar state with real democracy.” At the beginning of June 1918, the Socialist Revolutionaries, relying on the support of the rebel Czechoslovak Corps, formed a Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly in Samara, chaired by Vladimir Volsky. The People's Army of KOMUCH was created. After this, the “right Socialist Revolutionaries” were expelled from the Soviets at all levels on June 14, 1918 by a decision of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. The Left Socialist Revolutionaries remained legal until the events of July 6-7, 1918. On many political issues, the Left Socialist Revolutionaries disagreed with the Bolsheviks. These issues were: the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty and agrarian policy, primarily the surplus appropriation system and the Brest Committees. On July 6, 1918, the leaders of the Left Socialist Revolutionaries who were present at the V Congress of Soviets in Moscow were arrested. (See Left Socialist Revolutionary uprisings (1918)). The Socialist Revolutionaries had a majority in the Siberian Regional Duma, located in Tomsk, which declared Siberia an autonomous region and created the Provisional Siberian Government headed by the Socialist Revolutionary Peter Derber. They also prevailed at the State Conference that took place in Ufa in September 1918, which resulted in the formation of the coalition All-Russian Provisional Government (Directory), two of the five members of which were Socialist Revolutionaries. The Central Committee of the AKP, at the insistence of Viktor Chernov, issued a circular letter criticizing the results of the Ufa State Conference and the policies of the Directory. It stated that the Directory would be supported by the party only on the condition that it pursues a consistent democratic policy and conditions are created in the troops for the free propaganda of Socialist Revolutionary ideas. The letter of the Central Committee was sharply negatively received by the right-wing Socialist-Revolutionaries, who were members of the Directory itself and its apparatus, and the right-wing elements interpreted this letter as a call by the Socialist-Revolutionaries for an armed uprising against the Directory and used it as a pretext for their speech, as a result of which the Directory was abolished and came to power Alexander Kolchak came. At the beginning of 1919, the Moscow Bureau of the AKP, and then the conference of Socialist Revolutionary organizations operating on the territory of Soviet Russia, spoke out against any agreements with both the Bolsheviks and the “bourgeois reaction.” At the same time, it was recognized that the danger on the right was greater, and therefore it was decided to abandon the armed struggle against Soviet power. However, a group of Socialist Revolutionaries led by the former head of Komuch Vladimir Volsky, the so-called "Ufa delegation", which entered into negotiations with the Bolsheviks about closer cooperation, was condemned. To use the potential of the Socialist Revolutionary Party in the fight against the White movement, on February 26, the Soviet government legalized the Socialist Revolutionary Party. Members of the Central Committee began to gather in Moscow, and the publication of the central party newspaper Delo Naroda was resumed there. But the Socialist Revolutionaries did not stop sharply criticizing the Bolshevik regime and the persecution of the party was resumed: the publication of “Delo of the People” was banned, and a number of active party members were arrested. Nevertheless, the plenum of the Central Committee of the AKP, held in April 1919, based on the fact that the party does not have the strength to wage an armed struggle on two fronts at once, called for it not to resume it against the Bolsheviks for now. The Plenum condemned the participation of party representatives in the Ufa State Conference, the Directory, in the regional governments of Siberia, the Urals and Crimea, as well as in the Iasi Conference of Russian anti-Bolshevik forces (November 1918), spoke out against foreign intervention, saying that it would only be an expression of “selfish imperialist interests » governments of the intervening countries. At the same time, it was emphasized that there should be no agreements with the Bolsheviks. The IX Party Council, held in Moscow or near Moscow in June 1919, confirmed the decision of the party to abandon the armed struggle against the Soviet regime while continuing the political struggle against it. It was ordered to direct their efforts to mobilize, organize and put on combat readiness the forces of democracy, so that if the Bolsheviks did not voluntarily abandon their policy, they would be eliminated by force in the name of “democracy, freedom and socialism.” At the same time, the leaders of the right wing of the party, who were then already abroad, reacted with hostility to the decisions of the IX Council and continued to believe that only an armed struggle against the Bolsheviks could be successful, that in this struggle a coalition was permissible even with undemocratic forces that could be democratized with the help of "envelopment" tactics. They also allowed foreign intervention to help the “anti-Bolshevik front.” At the same time, the Ufa delegation called for recognizing Soviet power and uniting under its leadership to fight counter-revolution. This group began to publish its weekly magazine “People”, and is therefore also known as the group “People”. The Central Committee of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, calling the actions of the “People” group disorganizing, decided to dissolve it, but the “People” group did not obey this decision, at the end of October 1919 it left the party and adopted the name “Minority of the Socialist Revolutionary Party”. In Ukraine there was the Ukrainian Party of Socialist Revolutionaries, which separated from the AKP in April 1917, and the AKP organizations led by the All-Ukrainian Regional Committee. According to the instructions of the AKP leadership, the Ukrainian Socialist Revolutionaries were supposed to fight the Denikin regime, but these instructions were not always followed. Thus, for calls for support for Denikin, the Kiev mayor Ryabtsev was expelled from the party, and for solidarity with him the local city Socialist Revolutionary party organization was dissolved. In the territory. controlled by the Denikin regime, the Socialist Revolutionaries worked in such coalition organizations as the South-Eastern Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly and the Zemstvo-City Association. The newspaper “Rodnaya Zemlya”, published in Yekaterinodar by one of the leaders of the Zemstvo-City Association, Grigory Schrader, promoted the tactics of “enveloping” the Denikinites until it was closed by the latter, and the publisher himself was arrested. At the same time, the Socialist Revolutionaries, who dominated the Black Sea Liberation Committee, which led the “green” peasant movement, directed their forces primarily to the fight against Denikin’s followers and recognized the need for a united socialist front. In 1920, the Central Committee of the AKP called on the party to continue to wage an ideological and political struggle against the Bolsheviks, but at the same time to direct its main attention to the war with Poland and the fight against Wrangel. Party members and party organizations who found themselves in territories occupied by the troops of Poland and Wrangel had to wage a “revolutionary struggle with them by all means and methods,” including terror. The Riga Peace Treaty, which ended the Soviet-Polish war, was assessed by the Socialist Revolutionaries as a “treasonous betrayal” of Russian national interests. The activities of the Siberian Socialist Revolutionaries intensified under the influence of the victories of the Red Army over Kolchak’s troops. In organizing the anti-Kolchak forces, the Socialist Revolutionaries used the zemstvos. The Zemstvo Congress, held in Irkutsk in October 1919, which was dominated by the Socialist Revolutionaries, decided to overthrow the Kolchak government. In November 1919, in Irkutsk, the All-Siberian Conference of Zemstvos and Cities created a Political Center to prepare an uprising against the Kolchak regime, which was headed by F. F. Fedorovich, a member of the Central Committee of the Socialist Revolutionary Party. As the Red Army approached Irkutsk, the Political Center carried out an armed uprising in late December 1919 - early January 1920 and seized power in the city, however, power in Irkutsk soon passed to the Bolsheviks. The Socialist-Revolutionaries were part of the coalition government created by the Bolsheviks in Vladivostok at the end of January 1920 - the Primorsky Regional Zemstvo Government and the government of the same composition of the united Far Eastern Republic, formed in July 1921. By the beginning of 1921, the Central Committee of the AKP virtually ceased its activities. Back in June 1920, the Social Revolutionaries formed the Central Organizational Bureau, which, along with members of the Central Committee, included some prominent party members. In August 1921, due to numerous arrests, the leadership of the party finally passed to the Central Bureau. By that time, some of the members of the Central Committee, elected at the IV Congress, had died (I. I. Teterkin, M. L. Kogan-Bernstein), voluntarily resigned from the Central Committee (K. S. Burevoy, N.I. Rakitnikov, M.I. Sumgin), went abroad (V.M. Chernov, V.M. Zenzinov, N.S. Rusanov, V.V. Sukhomlin). The members of the AKP Central Committee who remained in Russia were almost entirely in prison. The 10th Party Council, held in Samara in August 1921, identified as the immediate task the accumulation and organization of the forces of labor democracy; party members were called upon to refrain from extremist actions against Soviet power and to restrain the masses from scattered and spontaneous uprisings that scatter the forces of democracy. V. M. Chernov, who was in Reval during the Kronstadt rebellion in March 1921, called for support for the Kronstadt residents with a general strike and uprising.
In the summer of 1922, the “counter-revolutionary activities” of the right Socialist-Revolutionaries were “finally publicly exposed” at the Moscow trial of members of the Socialist-Revolutionary Central Committee. parties (Gotsa, Timofeeva and others), despite their protection by the leaders of the Second International. The leadership of the right Socialist Revolutionaries was accused of organizing terrorist attacks against Bolshevik leaders in 1918 (the murder of Mikhail Uritsky and V. Volodarsky, the attempt on Lenin). In August 1922, the party leaders (12 people, among them 8 members of the Central Committee) were conditionally sentenced to death by the Supreme Tribunal of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee: the sentence against them was to be carried out immediately if the AKP began to use armed methods of struggle against Soviet power. On January 14, 1924, the death sentence was commuted to 5 years' imprisonment followed by 3 years of exile to remote areas of the country. After the trial, in September 1922, another member of the party’s Central Committee, Vladimir Richter, was arrested and sentenced to death, commuted to 10 years in prison. At the beginning of January 1923, the bureau of the Petrograd Provincial Committee of the RCP (b) allowed the “initiative group” of Socialist Revolutionaries, under the secret control of the GPU, to hold a city meeting. As a result, a result was achieved - the decision to dissolve the city organization of the Socialist Revolutionary Party. In March 1923, with the participation of the “Petrograd initiative”, the All-Russian Congress of former ordinary members of the Socialist Revolutionary Party was held in Moscow, which deprived the former leadership of the party of their powers and decided to dissolve the party. The party, and soon its regional organizations, were forced to cease to exist on the territory of the RSFSR. In 1925, the last members of the Party's Central Bureau were arrested. Only the Socialist Revolutionary emigration continued its activities, which existed until the 1960s, first in Paris, Berlin, Prague, and then in New York. Of all the leaders of the left Socialist Revolutionaries, only the People's Commissar of Justice in the first post-October government, Steinberg, managed to escape. The rest were arrested many times, were in exile for many years, and were shot during the years of the Great Terror. A member of the Central Committee of the Left Social Revolutionaries, Maria Spiridonova was shot according to the verdict passed on September 8, 1941, on the basis of a resolution of the State Defense Committee, without initiating a criminal case or conducting preliminary or trial proceedings, by the military collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR, chaired by Ulrich V.V. (members of the collegium Kandybin D. Ya. and Bukanov V. V.).
Emigration
The beginning of the Socialist Revolutionary emigration was marked by the departure of N. S. Rusanov and V. V. Sukhomlin in March-April 1918 to Stockholm, where they and D. O. Gavronsky formed the Foreign Delegation of the AKP. Despite the fact that the leadership of the AKP had an extremely negative attitude towards the presence of significant Socialist Revolutionary emigration, quite a lot of prominent figures of the AKP ended up abroad, including V. M. Chernov, N. D. Avksentyev, E. K. Breshko-Breshkovskaya , M. V. Vishnyak, V. M. Zenzinov, E. E. Lazarev, O. S. Minor and others. The centers of Socialist Revolutionary emigration were Paris, Berlin and Prague. The first congress of foreign organizations of the AKP took place in 1923, and the second in 1928. Since 1920, the party's periodicals began to be published abroad. A huge role in establishing this business was played by Viktor Chernov, who left Russia in September 1920. First in Reval (now Tallinn, Estonia), and then in Berlin, Chernov organized the publication of the magazine “Revolutionary Russia” (the name repeated the title of the central body of the party in 1901-1905 years). The first issue of Revolutionary Russia was published in December 1920. The magazine was published in Yuryev (now Tartu), Berlin, and Prague. In addition to “Revolutionary Russia,” the Socialist Revolutionaries published several other publications in exile. In 1921, three issues of the magazine “For the People!” were published in Revel. (officially it was not considered a party one and was called the “worker-peasant-Red Army magazine”), political and cultural magazines “The Will of Russia” (Prague, 1922-1932), “Modern Notes” (Paris, 1920-1940) and others, including including in foreign languages. In the first half of the 1920s, most of these publications were focused on Russia, where most of the circulation was illegally delivered. From the mid-1920s, the ties of the Foreign Delegation of the AKP with Russia weakened, and the Socialist Revolutionary press began to spread mainly among the emigrants. In the second half of the 1930s. The Socialist Revolutionaries, in the most significant of the emigrant literary magazines, Sovremennye Zapiski, called on Soviet Russia “back to capitalism.” See also People's Law Left Socialist Revolutionaries Left Socialist Revolutionaries rebellions 1918 Ukrainian Party of Socialist Revolutionaries Provisional Government Civil War in Russia Chernov, Viktor Mikhailovich Savinkov, Boris Viktorovich Spiridonova, Maria Alexandrovna Socialist League of the New East Notes[edit | edit source text] ^ O. Nazarov. The year is 1922. The trial of the Socialist Revolutionaries ^ http://www.sgu.ru/files/nodes/9830/2.pdf Literature[edit | edit source text] RPS program Pavlenkov F. F. Encyclopedic Dictionary. - St. Petersburg, 1913. (5th ed.). Eltsin B. M. (ed.) Political Dictionary. - M.; L.: Krasnaya Nov, 1924 (2nd ed.). Addition to the Encyclopedic Dictionary // In a reprint of the 5th edition of the “Encyclopedic Dictionary” by F. Pavlenkov. - New York, 1956. Radkey O. H. The Sickle under the Hammer: The Russian Socialist Revolutionaries in the Early Months of Soviet Rule. N.Y.; L.: Columbia University Press, 1963. 525 p. Gusev K.V. Socialist Revolutionary Party: from petty-bourgeois revolutionism to counter-revolution: Historical essay / K.V. Gusev. - M.: Mysl, 1975. - 383 p. Gusev K.V. Knights of Terror. - M.: Luch, 1992. Socialist Revolutionary Party after the October Revolution of 1917: Documents from the archives of P.S.-R. / Collected and provided with notes and an outline of the history of the party in the post-revolutionary period by Marc Jansen. Amsterdam: Stichting beheer IISG, 1989. 772 pp. Leonov M.I. Socialist Revolutionary Party in 1905 - 1907. - M.: ROSSPEN, 1997. - 512 p. - ISBN 5-86004-118-7 Morozov K. N. Party of Socialist Revolutionaries in 1907-1914. / K. N. Morozov. - M.: ROSSPEN, 1998. - 624 p. Morozov K. N. The trial of the socialist revolutionaries and the prison confrontation (1922-1926): ethics and tactics of confrontation / K. N. Morozov. - M.: ROSSPEN, 2005. - 736 p. Suslov A. Yu. Socialist revolutionaries in Soviet Russia: sources and historiography / A. Yu. Suslov. - Kazan: Kazan Publishing House. state technol. University, 2007. Programs of the main Russian parties: 1. People's Socialists. 2. Social Democratic Labor Party. 3. Socialist revolutionaries. 4. People's Freedom Party. 5. Octobrist Party (Union of October 17, 1905). 6. Peasant Union. 7. National Democratic-Republican Party. 8. Political parties of various nationalities in Russia (“Ukrainians”, “Bunda”, etc.): with attached articles: a) About Russian parties, b) Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. - [M.], . - 64 s. Chernomordik S. Socialist Revolutionaries: (Party of Socialist Revolutionaries). - Kharkov: Proletary, 1929. - 61 p. - (What parties were there in Russia) Shulyatikov V.M. Dying party. // "Workers' Banner". March 1908, No. 1. Memorable book of a socialist revolutionary / In 2 issues.. - 1911. - 81+88 pp. Contains the charter and program of the party, resolutions of party congresses, a table of terrorist acts committed by the Social Revolutionaries, as well as instructions on forging passports. Links[edit | edit source text] Erofeev N.D. Socialist revolutionaries (mid-90s of the 19th century - October 1917). Erofeev N. D. Departure from the political arena of the Socialist Revolutionaries Morozov K.N. Party of tragic fate... Protocols of the Central Committee of the AKP 1917-1918 Praysman L.G. Terrorists and revolutionaries, security guards and provocateurs - M.: ROSSPEN, 2001. - 432 p. Morozov K. N. Socialist Revolutionary Party in 1907-1914. - M.: ROSSPEN, 1998. - 624 p. 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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 shared 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 had arisen 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 terrorist attacks, 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 submission; he allowed the activists to determine their internal life themselves. 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. At that time it was not an independent country, but an autonomy within the 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 founders of the 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 the 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.).
