The main provisions of the political program of the Socialist Revolutionary Party. Social Revolutionaries: party composition, numbers, program, tactics during the revolution

Socialist revolutionary parties - Socialist Revolutionary Parties (Socialist Revolutionaries), RSDLP (Bolsheviks), RSDLP (Mensheviks)

Ways to solve the main issues of the revolution		Bolsheviks	Mensheviks
1. Political system	Democratic Republic	The power of workers and peasants, turning into the dictatorship of the proletariat	Democratic Republic
	Maximum democratic rights and freedoms	Democracy is only for the working classes	The unconditional nature of all democratic rights and freedoms
3. Peasant question	Elimination of landownership, transfer of it to the ownership of communities and division between peasants according to labor or equalization norms	Nationalization of all land and division of it among peasants according to labor or equalization norms	Municipalization of land, that is, its transfer to local authorities with subsequent lease by peasants
4. Work question	Production communes throughout the country with broad popular self-government	The working class is the hegemon of the revolution and the creator of the new socialist society, the protection of its interests is the highest goal of the party	Protecting the interests of the working class from the tyranny of capitalists, providing it with all political rights and social guarantees
5. National question	Federation of Free Republics	The right of nations to self-determination, the federal principle of state structure	Right to cultural-national autonomy

Liberal Democratic parties - Union of October 17 (Octobrists) and Party of Constitutional Democrats (Cadets)

A way to solve Russia's main problems	Octobrists
1. Political system	Constitutional monarchy modeled on Germany	Parliamentary monarchy modeled on England
2. Political rights and freedoms	Maximum political rights and freedoms while maintaining strong state order and the unity of the country	Maximum democratic rights and freedoms up to the proclamation of a republic
3. Agrarian question	The solution to the peasant question in line with the Stolypin agrarian reform	Demand for the alienation of part of the landowners' lands for a ransom acceptable to the peasants
4. Work question	Non-interference of the state in the relationship between entrepreneurs and hired workers, the latter’s right to strike, with the exception of strategically important enterprises	The creation, with the participation of the state, of conciliation chambers to resolve conflicts between workers and entrepreneurs, the right of workers to strikes and walkouts
5. National question	Maintaining a unitary Russian state with little autonomy for Poland and Finland	A program of cultural-national autonomy, providing complete freedom of cultural development for all peoples while maintaining the territorial integrity of the country

The largest and most influential of the non-proletarian parties was the party of socialist revolutionaries (Socialist Revolutionaries), created in 1902. The history of the emergence of the Socialist Revolutionary Party is connected with the populist movement. In 1881, after the defeat of Narodnaya Volya, some former Narodnaya Volya members became part of several underground groups. From 1891 to 1900 the majority of underground left-populist circles and groups take the name “socialist-revolutionaries.” The first organization to adopt this name was the Swiss emigrant group of Russian populists led by Kh. Zhitlovsky.

The main role in the creation of the Socialist Revolutionary Party and the development of its program was played by the Northern Union of Socialist Revolutionaries, the Southern Party of Socialist Revolutionaries, the Workers' Party for the Political Liberation of Russia and the Agrarian Socialist League.

The programs of these groups show the evolution of the views of future Socialist Revolutionaries. Initially, one can trace the reliance on the intelligentsia, the idea of ​​realizing the leading role of the working class. Even those groups that relied on the peasantry then saw its stratification. And with regard to the peasantry, only one measure was expressed - an additional addition of land to peasant plots.

Many Socialist Revolutionary groups in the 90s of the 19th century. had a negative attitude towards the practical use of individual terror. And the revision of these views largely occurred under the influence of Marxism.

But the departure from the populist worldview among the Socialist Revolutionaries did not last long. Already in 1901, they decided to focus their main attention on disseminating socialist ideas among the peasants. The reason was the first major peasant unrest. The Social Revolutionaries came to the conclusion that they were early disillusioned with the peasantry as the most revolutionary class.

One of the first Socialist Revolutionaries, who began working among the peasants already in the 90s, was Viktor Mikhailovich Chernov, one of the future leaders of the Socialist Revolutionary Party. His father, a native of a peasant family, in the recent past a serf, through the efforts of his parents received an education, became a district treasurer, rose to the rank of collegiate councilor and the Order of St. Vladimir, which gave him the right to personal nobility. The father had a certain influence on his son’s views, repeatedly expressing the idea that all the land, sooner or later, should go from the landowners to the peasants.

Under the influence of his older brother, Victor, even in his high school years, became interested in the political struggle and followed the typical path for an intellectual to the revolution through populist circles. In 1892 he entered the law faculty of Moscow University. It was at this time that Chernov developed an interest in Marxism, which he considered necessary to know better than its supporters. In 1893, he joined the secret organization “Party of People's Law”; in 1894 he was arrested and deported to live in the city of Tambov. During his arrest, sitting in the Peter and Paul Fortress, he began studying philosophy, political economy, sociology and history. Tambov group V.M. Chernova was one of the first to resume the Narodniks’ orientation toward the peasantry, launching extensive agitation work.

In the fall of 1901, the largest populist organizations in Russia decided to unite into a party. In December 1901, it was finally formed and received the name “Party of Socialist Revolutionaries.” Its official bodies became “Revolutionary Russia” (from number 3) and “Bulletin of the Russian Revolution” (from number 2).

The Socialist Revolutionary Party considered itself a spokesman for the interests of all working and exploited strata of the people. However, in the foreground, the Socialist-Revolutionaries, like the old Narodnaya Volya members, still had the interests and aspirations of tens of millions of peasants during the revolution. Gradually, the main functional role of the Socialist-Revolutionaries in the system of political parties in Russia emerged more and more clearly - the expression of the interests of the entire working peasantry as a whole, primarily the poor and middle peasants. In addition, the Socialist Revolutionaries carried out work among soldiers and sailors, students and democratic intelligentsia. All these layers, together with the peasantry and proletariat, were united by the Socialist Revolutionaries under the concept of “working people.”

The social base of the Social Revolutionaries was quite wide. Workers made up 43%, peasants (together with soldiers) - 45%, intellectuals (including students) - 12%. During the first revolution, the Socialist Revolutionaries numbered over 60-65 thousand people in their ranks, not counting the large layer of party sympathizers.

Local organizations operated in more than 500 cities and towns in 76 provinces and regions of the country. The overwhelming majority of organizations and party members were from European Russia. There were large Socialist Revolutionary organizations in the Volga region, middle and southern black soil provinces. During the years of the first revolution, more than one and a half thousand peasant Socialist Revolutionary brotherhoods, many student organizations, student groups and unions arose. The Socialist Revolutionary Party also included 7 national organizations: Estonian, Yakut, Buryat, Chuvash, Greek, Ossetian, Mohammedan Volga group. In addition, in the national regions of the country there were several parties and organizations of the Socialist-Revolutionary type: the Polish Socialist Party, the Armenian revolutionary union "Dashnaktsutyun", the Belarusian Socialist Community, the Party of Socialist Federalists of Georgia, the Ukrainian Party of Socialist Revolutionaries, the Socialist Jewish workers' party, etc.

Leading figures of the Socialist Revolutionary Party in 1905-1907. were its main theorist V.M. Chernov, head of the Combat Organization E.F. Azef (later exposed as a provocateur), his assistant B.V. Savinkov, participants in the populist movement of the last century M.A. Nathanson, E.K. Breshko-Breshkovskaya, I.A. Rubanovich, future outstanding chemist A.N. Bach. And also younger G.A. Gershuni, N.D. Avksentyev, V.M. Zenzinov, A.A. Argunov, S.N. Sletov, sons of a millionaire merchant, brothers A.R. and M.R. Gots, I.I. Funda-minsky (Bunakov), etc.

The Social Revolutionaries were not a single movement. Their left wing, which in 1906 formed the independent “Union of Socialist Revolutionaries-Maximalists,” spoke out for the “socialization” of not only the land, but also all plants and factories. The right wing, the tone of which was set by the former liberal populists grouped around the magazine “Russian Wealth” (A.V. Peshekhonov, V.A. Myakotin, N.F. Annensky, etc.), was limited to the demand for the alienation of landowners’ lands for “moderate remuneration” and replacing autocracy with a constitutional monarchy. In 1906, the right Socialist Revolutionaries created the legal “Labor People's Socialist Party” (Enes), which immediately became a spokesman for the interests of the more prosperous peasantry. However, at the beginning of 1907 there were only about 1.5 - 2 thousand members.

The Socialist Revolutionary program was developed on the basis of various and very different projects by the beginning of 1905 and was adopted after heavy debate at the party congress in January 1906. The Socialist Revolutionary doctrine combined elements of old populist views and fashionable bourgeois liberal theories , anarchic and Marxist. During the preparation of the program, an attempt was made at a conscious compromise. Chernov said that “every step of a real movement is more important than a dozen programs, and party unity on the basis of an imperfect, mosaic program is better than a split in the name of great programmatic symmetry.”

From the adopted program of the Socialist Revolutionaries it is clear that the Socialist Revolutionary Party saw its main goal in the overthrow of the autocracy and the transition from democracy to socialism. In the program, the Socialist Revolutionaries assess the preconditions of socialism. They believed that capitalism in its development creates conditions for building socialism through the socialization of small-scale production into large-scale production “from above”, as well as “from below” - through the development of non-capitalist forms of economy: cooperation, community, labor peasant farming.

In the introductory part of the program, the Socialist Revolutionaries talk about the various combinations of positive and negative aspects of capitalism. They included among the “destructive aspects” the “anarchy of production”, which reaches extreme manifestations in crises, disasters and insecurity for the working masses. They saw the positive aspects in the fact that capitalism prepares “certain material elements” for the future socialist system and promotes the unification of industrial armies of hired workers into a cohesive social force.

The program states that “the entire burden of the struggle against tsarism falls on the proletariat, the working peasantry and the revolutionary socialist intelligentsia.” Together, according to the Social Revolutionaries, they constitute the “laboring working class”, which, organized into a social revolutionary party, should, if necessary, establish its own temporary revolutionary dictatorship.

But in contrast to Marxism, the Socialist Revolutionaries made the division of society into classes dependent not on the attitude to the tools and means of production, but on the attitude to labor and the distribution of income. Therefore, they considered the differences between workers and peasants to be unprincipled, and their similarities to be enormous, since the basis of their existence lies in labor and ruthless exploitation, to which they are equally subjected. Chernov, for example, refused to recognize the peasantry as a petty-bourgeois class, because its characteristic features are not the appropriation of other people's labor, but its own labor.

He called the peasantry the “working class of the village.” But he divided two categories of peasants: the working peasantry, living by the exploitation of their own labor power, here he also included the agricultural proletariat - farm laborers, as well as the rural bourgeoisie, living by the exploitation of someone else's labor power. Chernov argued that “the independent working farmer, as such, is very susceptible to socialist propaganda; no less susceptible than the agricultural farm laborer, the proletarian.”

But although the workers and the working peasantry constitute a single working class and are equally inclined towards socialism, they must arrive at it in different ways. Chernov believed that the city was moving towards socialism through the development of capitalism, while the countryside was moving towards socialism through non-capitalist evolution.

According to the Social Revolutionaries, small peasant labor farming is capable of defeating large ones because it moves toward the development of collectivism through community and cooperation. But this possibility can develop only after the liquidation of landownership, the transfer of land into the public domain, the destruction of private ownership of land and its equalization and redistribution.

Behind the revolutionary calls of the Social Revolutionaries were deep peasant democracy, the ineradicable desire of the peasant for land “levelling”, the elimination of landownership and “freedom” in its broadest sense, including the active participation of the peasantry in government. At the same time, the Socialist Revolutionaries, like the populists in their time, continued to believe in the innate collectivism of the peasants, linking their socialist aspirations with it.

In the agrarian part of the program of the Socialist Revolutionary Party it is written that “in matters of reorganization of land relations P.S.R. is based on communal and labor views, traditions and forms of life of the Russian peasantry, on the conviction that the land is no one’s and the right to use it is given only by labor.” Chernov generally believed that for a socialist “There is nothing more dangerous than the imposition of private property, teaching the peasant, who still believes that the land is “nobody’s”, “free” (or “God’s”), to the idea of ​​​​the right to trade, to make money in land . It is here that the danger lies in the inculcation and strengthening of that “proprietary fanaticism,” which is then capable of causing a lot of trouble for socialists.”

The Social Revolutionaries declared that they would stand for the socialization of the land. With the help of socialization of the land, they hoped to protect the peasant from becoming infected with the private property psychology, which would become a brake on the path to socialism in the future.

Socialization of land presupposes the right to use the land, to cultivate it with one’s own labor without the help of hired workers. The amount of land should be no less than what is needed for a comfortable existence and no more than what the family can cultivate without resorting to hired labor. Land was redistributed by taking away from those who had a surplus in favor of those who had a shortage of land, to an equalizing labor standard.

There is no private ownership of land. All lands come under the management of central and local bodies of people's self-government (and not into state ownership). The bowels of the earth remain with the state.

Mainly with their revolutionary agrarian program, the Socialist Revolutionaries attracted peasants to themselves. The Socialist Revolutionaries did not identify the “socialization” (socialization) of the land with socialism as such. But they were convinced that on its basis, with the help of the most diverse types and forms of cooperation, a new, collective agriculture would be created in the future in a purely evolutionary way. Speaking at the First Congress of the Social Revolutionaries (December 1905 - January 1906), V.M. Chernov stated that the socialization of the land is only the foundation for organic work in the spirit of the socialization of peasant labor.

The attractive force of the Socialist Revolutionary program for the peasants was that it adequately reflected their organic rejection of landownership, on the one hand, and the desire to preserve the community and equal distribution of land, on the other.

So, egalitarian land use established two basic norms: the provision norm (consumer) and the marginal norm (labor). The consumer-minimum norm meant the provision for the use of one family of such an amount of land, as a result of cultivation of which in ways usual for the given area, the most urgent needs of this family could be covered.

But the question arises, what needs should be taken as a basis? After all, based on them, it is necessary to determine the site. And the needs were different not only within the entire Russian state, but also within individual provinces and districts and depended on a number of specific circumstances.

The Social Revolutionaries considered the maximum labor standard to be the amount of land that a peasant family could cultivate without hiring labor. But this labor standard did not combine well with equal land use. The point here is the difference in the labor force of peasant farms. If we assume that for a family consisting of two adult workers, the labor norm will be “A” hectares of land, then if there are four adult workers, the norm of peasant land will not be “A + A”, as required by the idea of ​​equalization, but “A +A+a" hectares, where "a" is some additional plot of land necessary to employ the newly emerged labor force formed by a cooperation of 4 people. Thus, the simple scheme of the Social Revolutionaries still contradicted reality.

The general democratic demands and the path to socialism in the city in the Socialist Revolutionary program were practically no different from the path predetermined by the European social democratic parties. The Socialist Revolutionary program included the typical demands for a revolutionary democracy for a republic, political freedoms, national equality, and universal suffrage.

Considerable space was devoted to the national question. It was covered more volume and wider than other parties did. Such provisions were recorded as complete freedom of conscience, speech, press, meetings and unions; freedom of movement, choice of occupation and freedom to strike; universal and equal suffrage for every citizen at least 20 years of age, without distinction of gender, religion or nationality, subject to a direct election system and closed voting. In addition, it was assumed that a democratic republic would be established on these principles with broad autonomy for regions and communities, both urban and rural; recognition of nations' unconditional right to self-determination; introduction of the native language into all local, public and government institutions. Establishment of compulsory, equal general secular education for all at state expense; complete separation of church and state and the declaration of religion as a private matter for everyone.

These demands were practically identical to the demands of the Social Democrats known at that time. But there were two significant additions to the Socialist Revolutionary program. They advocated the greatest possible use of federal relations between individual nationalities, and in “regions with a mixed population, the right of each nationality to a share in the budget proportional to its size, intended for cultural and educational purposes, and the disposal of these funds on the basis of self-government.”

In addition to the political field, the Socialist Revolutionary program defines measures in the field of legal, national economic, and in matters of communal, municipal and zemstvo economy. Here we are talking about election, replacement at any time and jurisdiction of all officials, including deputies and judges, and free legal proceedings. On the introduction of a progressive tax on income and inheritance, exemption from tax on small incomes. On the protection of the spiritual and physical forces of the working class in the city and countryside.

On the reduction of working hours, state insurance, the prohibition of overtime work, the work of minors under 16 years of age, the restriction of the work of minors, the prohibition of child and female labor in certain branches of production and during certain periods, continuous weekly rest. The Socialist Revolutionary Party advocated the development of all kinds of public services and enterprises (free medical care, wide credit for the development of the labor economy, communization of water supply, lighting, roads and means of communication), etc. It was written in the program that the Socialist Revolutionary Party would defend, support or tear through these measures with its revolutionary struggle.

A specific feature of the tactics of the Social Revolutionaries, inherited from the People's Volya, was individual terror directed against representatives of the highest tsarist administration (the murder of Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, the attempt on the life of the Moscow Governor General F.V. Dubasov, P.A. Stolypin and etc.) Total in 1905-1907. The Social Revolutionaries carried out 220 terrorist attacks. The victims of their terror during the revolution were 242 people (of which 162 people were killed). During the revolution, with such acts the Socialist Revolutionaries tried to wrest the constitution and civil liberties from the tsarist government. Terror for the Socialist Revolutionaries was the main means of fighting against the autocracy.

In general, revolutionary terror had no effect in 1905-1907. great influence on the course of events, although one should not deny its significance as a factor in the disorganization of power and the activation of the masses.

However, the Social Revolutionaries were not thugs, hung with bombs and revolvers. Mostly they were people who painfully comprehended the criteria of good and evil, their right to dispose of other people's lives. Of course, the Socialist-Revolutionaries have many victims on their conscience. But this apparent determination was not simply given to them. Savinkov, a writer, Socialist Revolutionary theorist, terrorist, political figure, writes in his “Memoirs” that Kalyaev, who killed Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich in February 1905, “loved the revolution so deeply and tenderly, as only those who love it gives his life for it, seeing in terror “not only the best form of political struggle, but also a moral, perhaps religious sacrifice.”

Among the Social Revolutionaries there were also “knights without fear or reproach”, who did not experience any particular doubts. Terrorist Karpovich told Savinkov: “They are hanging us - we must hang. With clean hands and gloves, you can’t do terror. Let thousands and tens of thousands die - it is necessary to achieve victory. The peasants are burning their estates - let them burn... Now is not the time to be sentimental - in war, as in war.” And here Savinkov writes: “But he himself did not expropriate or burn the estates. And I don’t know how many people I’ve met in my life who, behind their outward harshness, would keep such a tender and loving heart as Karpovich.”

These painful, almost always insoluble contradictions of actions, characters, destinies, and ideas permeate the history of the Socialist Revolutionary movement. The Social Revolutionaries firmly believed that by eliminating those governors, grand dukes, and gendarmerie officers who would be recognized as the most criminal and dangerous enemies of freedom, they would be able to establish the reign of justice in the country. But, subjectively fighting for a certain bright future and fearlessly sacrificing themselves, the Socialist Revolutionaries actually cleared the way for immoral adventurers, devoid of any doubts or hesitations.

Not all terrorist attacks ended successfully; many militants were arrested and executed. The Socialist Revolutionary terror led to unnecessary casualties among revolutionaries and diverted their strength and material resources from working among the masses. In addition, the revolutionaries actually committed lynching, although they justified their actions by the interests of the people and the revolution. One violence inevitably gave rise to another, and the spilled blood was usually washed away with new blood, creating some kind of vicious circle.

Most of the minor attempts remained unknown, but one murder by 20-year-old girl Maria Spiridonova of the Tambov “pacifier” of the peasants Luzhenovsky, thanks to the newspaper “Rus”, thundered throughout the world. The murder of Luzhenovsky showed the world all the horror of Russian reality: the cruelty of the authorities (Spiridonova was not only beaten so that the doctor could not examine for a week whether her eye was intact, but they were also raped) and brought to the point of readiness sacrificing their lives alienating young people from the government.

Thanks to the protests of the world community, Spiridonova was not executed. The execution was replaced by hard labor. The regime at the Akatui penal servitude in 1906 was soft, and there Spiridonova, Proshyan, Bitsenko - the future Left Socialist Revolutionary leaders - walked through the taiga and indulged in their wildest dreams of socialism. The Aka-Tui convicts were idealists of the highest standard, loyal comrades, unmercenaries, as alien to the everyday side of life as is possible only in Russia. For example, when in December 1917, Proshyan, appointed People's Commissar of Posts and Telegraphs, came to take drugs - in a blouse and tattered felt boots - the doorman did not let him go further than the front hall.

But the fact is that the entire parliamentary and Duma experience of the country’s development passed them by. By 1917 they came with 10 years of experience of hard labor or exile, perhaps greater maximalists than they were in their youth.

The Social Revolutionaries also resorted to such a very dubious means of revolutionary struggle as expropriation. This was an extreme means of replenishing the party coffers, but the “exes” concealed the threat of the revolutionaries’ activities degenerating into political banditry, especially since they were often accompanied by the murders of innocent people.

During the First Revolution, Socialist Revolutionary organizations began to grow rapidly. With the manifesto of October 17, 1905, an amnesty was declared, and revolutionary emigrants began to return. The year 1905 became the apogee of neo-populist revolutionary democracy. During this period, the party openly calls on the peasants to seize the land of the landlords, but not by individual peasants, but by entire villages or societies.

The Social Revolutionaries had different views on the role of the party in that period. The right-wing neo-populists believed that it was necessary to liquidate the illegal party, that it could move to a legal position, since political freedoms had already been won.

V. Chernov believed that this was premature. That the most pressing problem facing the party is the party's reach to the masses. He believed that a pariah who had just emerged from underground would not be isolated from the people if he used the emerging mass organizations. Therefore, the Social Revolutionaries focused on working in trade unions, councils, the All-Russian Peasant Union, the All-Russian Railway Union and the Union of Postal and Telegraph Employees.

During the years of the revolution, the Socialist Revolutionaries launched extensive propaganda and agitation activities. At various times during this period, more than 100 Socialist Revolutionary newspapers were published, proclamations, flyers, brochures, etc. were printed and distributed in millions of copies.

When the election campaign to the First State Duma began, the first party congress decided to boycott the elections. However, some Socialist Revolutionaries took part in the elections, although many of the Socialist Revolutionary organizations issued leaflets calling for a boycott of the Duma and preparations for an armed uprising. But the Central Committee of the Party in its “Bulletin” (March 1906) proposed not to force events, but to use the situation of won political freedoms to expand agitation and organized work among the masses. The Party Council (the highest body between party congresses, which included members of the Central Committee and the Central Organ and one representative each from regional organizations) adopted a special resolution on the Duma. Considering that the Duma was unable to meet the aspirations of the people, the Council at the same time noted the opposition of its majority and the presence of workers and peasants in it. From this the conclusion was drawn about the inevitability of the Duma’s struggle with the government and the need to use this struggle to develop the revolutionary consciousness and mood of the masses. The Social Revolutionaries actively influenced the peasant faction in the First Duma.

The defeat of the armed uprisings in 1905-1906, the spread of hopes for the Duma among the people and the development of constitutional illusions in connection with this, the decrease in the revolutionary pressure of the masses - all this steadily led to a change in sentiment among the Socialist Revolutionaries. In particular, this was manifested in the exaggeration of the importance of the Duma for the development of the revolutionary process and unity. The Social Revolutionaries began to view the Duma as a weapon in the struggle for the convocation of the Constituent Assembly. There were hesitations in tactics towards the Cadet Party. From complete rejection of the Cadets and exposing them as traitors to the revolution, the Socialist-Revolutionaries came to the recognition that the Cadets were not enemies of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, and agreements with them were possible. This was especially evident during the election campaign in the Second Duma and in the Duma itself. Then the Socialist Revolutionaries, meeting the people's socialists and Trudoviks halfway in the name of creating a populist bloc, adopted many of the tactical guidelines of the Cadets.

It is impossible to unambiguously assess the activities of the Socialist Revolutionaries during the retreat of the revolution. The Socialist Revolutionary Party did not stop working, propagating its program demands and slogans, which were of a revolutionary-democratic nature. The defeat of the revolution dramatically changed the situation in which the Socialist Revolutionary Party operated. But the Socialist Revolutionaries did not consider the onset of reaction to be the end of the revolution. Chernov wrote about the inevitability of a new revolutionary explosion, and all the events of 1905-1907. viewed only as a prologue to the revolution.

The III Party Council (July 1907) identified the immediate goals: gathering strength both in the party and among the masses, and as the next task - strengthening political terror. At the same time, the participation of the Socialist Revolutionaries in the Third Duma was rejected. V. Chernov called on the Socialist Revolutionaries to join trade unions, cooperatives, clubs, educational societies and fight “the disdainful attitude towards all this “culturalism.” Preparations for an armed uprising were not removed from the agenda either.

But the party had no strength, it was disintegrating. The intelligentsia left the party, organizations in Russia perished under police attacks. Printing houses, warehouses with weapons and books were liquidated.

The strongest blow to the party was dealt by Stolypin's agrarian reform, aimed at destroying the community - the ideological basis of the Socialist Revolutionary "socialization".

The crisis that erupted in connection with the exposure of Yevno Azef, who for many years was an agent of the secret police and at the same time the head of the Combat Organization, a member of the Central Committee of the party, completed the process of collapse of the Socialist Revolutionary Party.

In May 1909, the V Party Council accepted the resignation of the Central Committee. A new Central Committee was elected. But soon he too ceased to exist. The party began to be led by a group of figures called the “Foreign Delegation”, and the “Banner of Labor” gradually began to lose its position as the central body.

World War I caused another split in the Socialist Revolutionary Party. The overwhelming majority of Socialist Revolutionaries abroad zealously defended the positions of social chauvinism. The other part, led by V.M. Chernov and M.A. Nathanson took internationalist positions.

In the brochure “War and the Third Force,” Chernov wrote that the duty of the left movement in socialism is to oppose “any idealization of war and any liquidation - in view of war - of the basic internal work of socialism.” The international labor movement must be the “third force” that is called upon to intervene in the struggle of the imperialist forces. All the efforts of left-wing socialists should be directed towards its creation and the development of a general socialist peace program.

V.M. Chernov called on the socialist parties to move “to a revolutionary attack on the foundations of bourgeois domination and bourgeois property.” He defined the tactics of the Socialist Revolutionary Party in these conditions as “transforming the military crisis experienced by the civilized world into a revolutionary crisis.” Chernov wrote that it is possible that Russia will be the country that will give impetus to the reorganization of the world on socialist principles.

The February Revolution of 1917 was a major turning point in the history of Russia. The autocracy fell. By the summer of 1917, the Socialist Revolutionaries became the largest political party, numbering over 400 thousand people in their ranks. Having a majority in the Petrograd Council of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, the Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks on February 28, 1917 rejected the opportunity to form a Provisional Government from the Council, and on March 1 decided to entrust the formation of the government to the Provisional Committee of the State Duma.

In April 1917, Chernov, together with a group of Socialist Revolutionaries, arrived in Petrograd. At the III Congress of the Socialist Revolutionary Party (May-June 1917), he was again elected to the Central Committee. After the April crisis of the Provisional Government, on May 4, 1917, the Petrograd Soviet adopted a resolution on the formation of a coalition Provisional Government, which now included 6 socialist ministers, including V.M. Chernov as Minister of Agriculture. He also became a member of the Main Land Committee, which was entrusted with the task of preparing land reform.

Now the Socialist Revolutionary Party had the opportunity to directly implement its program. But she chose the top version of agrarian reform. The resolution of the Third Congress of the Socialist Revolutionary Party proposed to carry out only preparatory measures for the future socialization of the land until the Constituent Assembly. Before the Constituent Assembly, all lands had to be transferred to the jurisdiction of local land committees, which were given the right to decide all issues related to the lease. A law was passed banning land transactions before the Constituent Assembly.

This law caused a storm of indignation among landowners, who were deprived of the right to sell their lands on the eve of land reform. An instruction was issued by the Land Committee, which established supervision over the exploitation of arable and hay lands and the accounting of uncultivated land. Chernov believed that some changes in land relations were necessary before the Constituent Assembly. But not a single law or instruction that seriously addressed the peasantry was issued.

After the July political crisis, the agrarian policy of the Ministry of Agriculture shifted to the right. But the leadership of the Socialist Revolutionary Party feared that the peasant movement would completely get out of control, and they tried to put pressure on the Cadets to adopt temporary agrarian legislation. To implement this legislation, it was necessary to break with the policy of conciliation. However, the same Chernov, who was the first to realize that it was impossible to work in the same government with the Cadets, did not dare to break with them.

He chose maneuvering tactics, trying to convince the bourgeoisie and landowners to make concessions. At the same time, he called on the peasants not to seize landowners’ lands and not to stray from the position of “legality.” In August, Chernov resigned; it coincided with the attempted mutiny of General L.G. Kornilov. In connection with the Kornilov rebellion, the leadership of the Socialist Revolutionaries initially sided with the formation of a “uniform socialist government,” i.e. government, consisting of representatives of socialist parties, but soon again began to look for a compromise with the bourgeoisie.

The new government, in which the majority of portfolios belonged to socialist ministers, turned to repression against workers, soldiers, and began to participate in punitive measures against the countryside, which led to peasant uprisings.

So, being in power after the fall of the autocracy, the Social Revolutionaries were unable to implement their main program demands

It must be said that already in the spring - summer of 1917, the left wing, numbering 42 people, declared itself in the Socialist Revolutionary Party, which in November 1917 was constituted into the Left Socialist Revolutionary Party. The left wing of the Socialist Revolutionary Party revealed fundamental differences on programmatic issues with the rest of the party.

For example, on the issue of land, they insisted on transferring the land to us peasants without ransom. They were against the coalition with the Cadets, opposed the war, and took internationalist positions towards it.

After the July crisis, the Left Socialist Revolutionary faction issued a declaration in which it sharply dissociated itself from the policies of its Central Committee. The left became more active in Riga, Reveli, Novgorod, Taganrog, Saratov, Minsk, Pskov, Odessa, Moscow, Tver and Kostroma provinces. Since the spring, they have occupied strong positions in Voronezh, Kharkov, Kazan, and Kronstadt.

The Socialist Revolutionaries also reacted differently to the October Revolution. Representatives of all major socialist parties in Russia were present at the Second Congress of Soviets. The left wing of the Socialist Revolutionary Party supported the Bolsheviks. The right-wing Social Revolutionaries believed that an armed coup had occurred, which was not based on the will of the majority of the people. And this will only lead to civil war. At the Second Congress of Soviets, they insisted on the formation of a government based on all layers of democracy, including the Provisional Government. But the idea of ​​negotiations with the Provisional Government was rejected by the majority of delegates. And the Right Socialist Revolutionaries abandon the congress. Together with the right-wing Mensheviks, they set a goal to gather social forces in order to provide stubborn resistance to the Bolsheviks’ attempts to seize power. They do not give up hope of convening a Constituent Assembly.

On the evening of October 25, 1917, during the Second Congress of Soviets, the Left Socialist Revolutionaries organized a faction. They remained at the congress and insisted on the formation of a government based, if not on all, then at least on the majority of revolutionary democracy. The Bolsheviks invited them to join the first Soviet government, but the left rejected this offer, because this would have completely severed their ties with the party members who left the congress. And this would exclude the possibility of their mediation between the Bolsheviks and the departed part of the Socialist Revolutionary Party. In addition, the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries believed that 2-3 ministerial portfolios were too few to reveal their own identity, not to get lost, and not to end up as “petitioners in the Bolshevik front.”

Undoubtedly, the refusal to enter the Council of People's Commissars was not final. The Bolsheviks, realizing this, clearly outlined the platform for a possible agreement. With each passing hour, the understanding among the leadership of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries grew that isolation from the Bolsheviks was disastrous. M. Spiridonova showed particular activity in this direction, and her voice was listened to with extraordinary attention: she was the recognized leader, the soul, the conscience of the left wing of the party.

For cooperation with the Bolsheviks, the IV Congress of the Socialist Revolutionary Party confirmed the previously adopted resolutions of the Central Committee on the exclusion of the Left Socialist Revolutionaries from its ranks. In November 1917, the left formed their own party - the party of left socialists-revolutionaries.

In December 1917, the Left Social Revolutionaries shared power in the government with the Bolsheviks. Steinberg became People's Commissar of Justice, Proshyan - People's Commissar of Posts and Telegraphs, Trutovsky - People's Commissar for Local Self-Government, Karelin - People's Commissar of Property of the Russian Republic, Kolegaev - People's Commissar of Agriculture, Brilliantov and Algasov - People's Commissars without portfolios.

The Left Socialist-Revolutionaries were also represented in the government of Soviet Ukraine and occupied responsible positions in the Red Army, in the navy, in the Cheka, and in local Soviets. On a parity basis, the Bolsheviks shared the leadership of the departments of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee with the Left Socialist Revolutionaries.

What did the program requirements of the Left Socialist Revolutionary Party include? In the political field: the dictatorship of the working people, the Soviet Republic, the free federation of Soviet republics, the fullness of local executive power, direct, equal, secret voting, the right to recall deputies, election by labor organizations, the duty of reporting to voters. Ensuring freedom of conscience, speech, press, assembly and association. The right to existence, to work, to land, to upbringing and education.

In matters of the work program: workers' control over production, which is understood not as the giving of factories and factories to workers, railways to railway workers, etc., but as organized centralized control over production on a national scale, as a transitional stage to nationalization and socialization enterprises.

For the peasantry: the demand for the socialization of the land. The Socialist Revolutionary Party set itself the task of winning the peasants to its side. It was the concession of the Bolsheviks to the peasants in the Decree on Land (the Decree on Land is a Socialist Revolutionary project) that largely contributed to the establishment of cooperation between the Socialist Revolutionaries and the Bolsheviks. The Left Socialist Revolutionaries explained that the socialization of land is a transitional form of land use. Socialization did not involve first driving landowners from their homes, and then proceeding to a general equalization of allotment, starting with farm laborers and proletarians. On the contrary, the objectives of socialization were to take away from those who have a surplus in favor of those who have a shortage of land to equalize the labor standard, and to give everyone the opportunity to work on the land.

According to the Left Socialist Revolutionaries, peasant communities, legitimately fearing the fragmentation of land into small plots, should strengthen forms of joint cultivation and establish quite consistent, from the point of view of socialism, norms for the distribution of labor products among consumers, regardless of the working capacity of one or another member of the working community.

In their opinion, since the basis of socialization is the principle of creation, hence the desire to conduct collective forms of economy as more productive compared to individual ones. By increasing productivity, establishing new social relations in the countryside, and implementing the principle of collective rights, the socialization of the land leads directly to socialist forms of economy.

At the same time, the Left Socialist Revolutionaries believed that the unification of peasants and workers is the key to further successful struggle for a better future for the oppressed classes, for socialism.

So, the right Socialist Revolutionaries characterized the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks as a crime against the Motherland and the revolution. Chernov considered a socialist revolution in Russia impossible, since the country was economically upset and economically undeveloped. He called what happened on October 25 an anarcho-Bolshevik uprising. All hope was placed on the transfer of power to the Constituent Assembly, although the importance of the activities of the Soviets was emphasized.

In principle, the Social Revolutionaries did not object to the slogans “Power to the Soviets!”, “Land to the peasants!”, “Peace to the peoples!” They only stipulated their legal implementation by the decision of the popularly elected Constituent Assembly. Having failed to regain lost power peacefully through the idea of ​​​​creating a homogeneous socialist government, they made a second attempt - through the Constituent Assembly.

As a result of the first free elections, 715 deputies were elected to the Constituent Assembly, of which 370 were Socialist Revolutionaries, i.e. 51.8%. January 5, 1918 Constituent Assembly chaired by V.M. Chernov adopted a law on land, an appeal to the Allied powers for peace, and proclaimed the Russian Democratic Federative Republic. But all this was secondary and had no significance. The Bolsheviks were the first to implement these decrees.

The Bolsheviks dispersed the Constituent Assembly. And the Socialist Revolutionaries determined that the elimination of Bolshevik power was the next and urgent task of all democracy. The Socialist Revolutionary Party could not come to terms with the policies pursued by the Bolsheviks. At the beginning of 1918, Chernov wrote that the policy of the RCP (b) “is trying to jump, by means of decrees, over the natural organic processes of the growth of the proletariat in political, cultural and social relations, representing some kind of original, original, truly Russian “decree socialism” or "socialist maternity leave".

According to the Central Committee of the Party of Socialist Revolutionaries, “in this situation, socialism turns into a caricature, being reduced to a system of equalizing everyone to a lower and even decreasing level ... of all culture and the smuggled revival of the most primitive forms of economic life,” therefore, “Bolshevik communism is nothing about “has nothing in common with socialism and therefore can only compromise itself.”

They criticized the economic policy of the Bolsheviks, the measures they proposed to overcome the industrial crisis and their agrarian program. The Social Revolutionaries believed that the gains of the February Revolution were partly stolen, partly mutilated by the Bolshevik government, that “this coup” caused a fierce civil war throughout the country, “without Brest and the October Revolution, Russia would have already tasted the benefits of peace,” and so Russia is still engulfed in an unbreakable fiery ring of fratricidal war; The Bolsheviks’ stake on world revolution only means that they “believed in their own strength” and were waiting for “salvation only from the outside.”

The intransigence of the Socialist-Revolutionaries towards the Bolsheviks was also determined by the fact that “the Bolsheviks, having rejected the basic principles of socialism - freedom and democracy - and replacing them with dictatorship and the tyranny of an insignificant minority over the majority, thereby erased themselves from the ranks of socialism.”

In June 1918, the right Socialist Revolutionaries led the overthrow of Soviet power in Samara, then in Simbirsk and Kazan. They acted with the help of Czechoslovak legionnaires and the people's army, created within the framework of the Samara Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly (Komuch).

As Chernov later recalled, they explained their armed uprising in the Volga region as an illegal dispersal of the Constituent Assembly. They saw at the beginning of the civil war a struggle between two democracies - the Soviet one and the one that recognized the power of the Constituent Assembly. They justified their speech by the fact that the food policy of the Soviet government aroused the indignation of the peasants, and they, as a peasant party, should have led the fight for their rights.

However, there was no unity among the leaders of the right Socialist Revolutionaries. The most right-wing of them insisted on abandoning the Brest Peace Treaty, on resuming Russia's participation in the world war, and only after that transferring power to the Constituent Assembly. Others, with more left-wing views, called for the resumption of the work of the Constituent Assembly, were against the civil war and advocated cooperation with the Bolsheviks, because “Bolshevism turned out to be not a fleeting storm, but a long-term phenomenon, and the influx of masses towards it at the expense of central democracy undoubtedly continues in the outlying regions of Russia.”

After the defeat of the Samara Komuch by the Red Army, the right Socialist Revolutionaries in September 1918 took an active part in the Ufa State Conference, which elected the Directory, which pledged to transfer power to the Constituent Assembly on January 1, 1919, if it met.

However, on November 18, the Kolchak coup took place. Members of the Central Committee of the Socialist Revolutionary Party living in Ufa, having learned about Kolchak’s coming to power, accepted an appeal to fight the dictator. But soon many of them were arrested by the Kolchakites. Then the remaining members of the Samara Committee of the Constituent Assembly, headed by its chairman V.K. Volsky declared their intention to stop the armed struggle with Soviet power and enter into negotiations with it. But their condition for cooperation was the creation of an all-Russian government consisting of representatives of all socialist parties and the convening of a new Constituent Assembly.

At Lenin’s suggestion, the Ufa Revolutionary Committee entered into negotiations with them without any conditions. An agreement was reached, and this part of the Social Revolutionaries created their own group “People”.

In response, the Central Committee of the Socialist Revolutionary Party stated that the actions taken by Volsky and others were their own business. The Central Committee of the Socialist Revolutionaries still believes that “the creation of a united revolutionary front against any dictatorship is considered possible by the Socialist Revolutionary organizations only on the basis of fulfilling the basic demands of democracy: the convening of the Constituent Assembly and the restoration of all freedoms (speech, press, assembly, agitation, etc. ), won by the February Revolution, and subject to the end of the civil war within democracy."

Over the following years, the Socialist Revolutionaries did not play any active role in the political and state life of the country. At the IX Council of their party (June 1919), they decided to “stop the armed struggle against the Bolshevik government and replace it with an ordinary political struggle.”

But 2 years later, in July - August 1921, the X Council of the Socialist Revolutionary Party conspiratorially met in Samara, at which it was stated that “the question of the revolutionary overthrow of the dictatorship of the Communist Party with all the force of iron necessity is put on the agenda , becomes a question of the existence of Russian labor democracy.”

By that time, the Socialist Revolutionaries had 2 leadership centers: “Foreign delegation of the Socialist Revolutionary Party” and “Central Bureau of the Socialist Revolutionary Party in Russia.” The first ones faced a long emigration, publishing magazines, writing memoirs. Secondly, the political trial in July - August 1922.

At the end of February 1922, the upcoming trial of the right-wing Socialist Revolutionaries on charges of actions committed during the civil war was announced in Moscow. The accusation against the leaders of the Socialist Revolutionary Party was based on the testimony of two former members of the Combat Organization - Lydia Konopleva and her husband G. Semenov (Vasiliev). By that time, they were not members of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, and according to rumors they belonged to the RCP (b). They presented their testimony in a brochure published in February 1922 in Berlin, which, in the opinion of the Socialist Revolutionary leaders, was cynical, falsifying and provocative. This brochure alleged the involvement of leading party functionaries in attempts to assassinate V.I. Lenina, L.D. Trotsky, G.E. Zinoviev and other Bolshevik leaders at the beginning of the revolution.

Figures of the revolutionary movement with an impeccable past, who spent many years in pre-revolutionary prisons and hard labor, were involved in the 1922 trial. The announcement of the trial was preceded by a long stay (since 1920) of the leaders of the Socialist Revolutionary Party in prison without the presentation of a corresponding specific charge. The notice of the trial was perceived by everyone (without distinction of political affiliation) as a warning about the imminent execution of old revolutionaries and as a harbinger of a new stage in the liquidation of the socialist movement in Russia. (In the spring of 1922 there were widespread arrests among the Mensheviks of Russia).

At the head of the public struggle against the upcoming reprisal against the Socialist Revolutionaries were the leaders of the Menshevik Party, who were in exile in Berlin. Under pressure from public opinion in socialist Europe, N. Bukharin and K. Radek gave written assurances that the death sentence would not be imposed at the upcoming trial and would not even be requested by the prosecutors.

However, Lenin found this agreement to infringe on the sovereignty of Soviet Russia, and People's Commissar of Justice D.I. Kursky publicly stated that this agreement does not bind the Moscow court in any way. The trial, which opened in early June, lasted 50 days. Prominent representatives of the Western socialist movement, who came by agreement to Moscow to defend the defendants, were subjected to organized persecution and were forced to leave the trial on June 22. Following them, the Russian lawyers left the courtroom. The accused were left without formal legal protection. It became clear that the death sentence for the leaders of the socialist revolutionaries was inevitable.

“The trial of the socialist revolutionaries took on the cynical character of a public preparation for the murder of people who sincerely served the cause of the liberation of the Russian people,” wrote M. Gorky to A. France.

The verdict in the Socialist Revolutionary case, passed on August 7, provided for the death penalty in relation to 12 members of the party's Central Committee. However, by the decision of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of August 9, the execution of the death sentence was suspended for an indefinite period and made dependent on the resumption or non-resumption of the hostile activities of the Socialist Revolutionary Party against the Soviet regime.

However, the decision to suspend death sentences was not immediately communicated to the convicts, and for a long time they did not know when the sentence passed on them would be carried out.

Later, on January 14, 1924, the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee again considered the issue of the death penalty and replaced execution with a five-year prison sentence and exile.

In March 1923, the Socialist Revolutionaries decided to dissolve their party in Soviet Russia. In November 1923, a congress of Socialist Revolutionaries who were in exile took place. A foreign organization of the Socialist Revolutionary Party was organized. But the Socialist Revolutionary emigration also split into groups. Chernov’s group was in the position of a kind of “party center,” claiming special powers to speak on behalf of the party abroad, allegedly received by it from the Central Committee.

But his group soon broke up, because... none of its members recognized a single leadership and did not want to obey Chernov. In 1927, Chernov was forced to sign a protocol according to which he did not have emergency powers giving him the right to speak on behalf of the party. As the leader of an influential political party V.M. Chernov ceased to exist from the moment of emigration and due to the complete collapse of the Socialist Revolutionary Party both in Russia and abroad.

During the period 1920-1931. V.M. Chernov settled in Prague, where he published the magazine “Revolutionary Russia”. All his journalism and published works were of a clearly anti-Soviet nature.

As for the Left Socialist Revolutionaries, it must be said that, realizing the need to cooperate with the Bolsheviks, they did not accept their tactics and did not give up hope of gaining the support of the majority not only in the Socialist Revolutionary Party, but also in the governing bodies of the country.

At the First Congress of the Left Socialist-Revolutionary Party on November 21, 1917, M. Spiridonova said about the Bolsheviks: “No matter how alien their rough steps are to us, we are in close contact with them, because the masses follow them, brought out of a state of stagnation.”

She believed that the influence of the Bolsheviks on the masses was temporary, since the Bolsheviks “have no inspiration, no religious enthusiasm, everything breathes hatred and bitterness. These feelings are good during fierce struggles and barricades. But in the second stage of the struggle, when organic work is needed, when it is necessary to create a new life based on love and altruism, then the Bolsheviks will go bankrupt. We, keeping the behests of our fighters, must always remember the second stage of the struggle.”

The alliance of the Bolsheviks with the Left Socialist Revolutionaries was short-lived. The fact is that one of the most important issues facing the revolution was the exit from the imperialist war. It must be said that at the beginning, the majority of the PLSR Central Committee supported the conclusion of an agreement with Germany. But when in February 1918 the German delegation set new, much more difficult peace conditions, the Social Revolutionaries spoke out against concluding a treaty. And after its ratification by the IV All-Russian Congress of Soviets, the Left Socialist Revolutionaries withdrew from the Council of People's Commissars.

However, M. Spiridonova continued to support the position of Lenin and his supporters. “The peace was signed not by us and not by the Bolsheviks,” she said in a polemic with Komkov at the Second Congress of the PLSR, “it was signed by need, hunger, the reluctance of the entire people - exhausted, tired - to fight. And which of us will say that the party of left socialists-revolutionaries, if it represented only power, would have acted differently than the Bolshevik party acted? Spiridonova sharply rejected the calls of some congress delegates to provoke the rupture of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty and unleash a “revolutionary war” against German imperialism.

But already in June 1918, she sharply changed her position, including in relation to the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty, since she closely linked it with the subsequent policy of the Bolshevik Party towards the peasants. At this time, a decree on food dictatorship was adopted, according to which all food policy was centralized and a fight was declared against all “bread holders” in the countryside. The Social Revolutionaries did not object to the fight against the kulaks, but they were afraid that the blow would fall on the small and middle peasantry. The decree obligated every owner of grain to hand over it, declared everyone who had a surplus and did not take it to dumping points as enemies of the people.

The opposition of the rural poor to the “toiling peasantry” seemed senseless and even blasphemous to the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries. They called the committees of the poor nothing more than “committees of idlers.” Spiridonova accused the Bolsheviks of curtailing the socialization of the land, replacing it with nationalization, of a food dictatorship, of organizing food detachments that forcibly requisitioned bread from the peasants, and of establishing committees of the poor.

At the V Congress of Soviets (July 4-10, 1918), Spiridonova warned: “We will fight locally, and the committees of the rural poor will not have a place for themselves... if the Bolsheviks do not stop imposing the committees of the poor, then the left socialist revolutionaries will take the same revolvers, the same bombs that they used in the fight against tsarist officials.”

Kamkov echoed her: “We will throw out not only your detachments, but also your committees.” According to Kamkov, workers joined these detachments to plunder the village.

This was confirmed by the letters of the peasants, which they sent to the Central Committee of the Left Socialist Revolutionary Party and personally to Spiridonova: “When the Bolshevik detachment approached, they put all their shirts and even women’s sweaters on themselves in order to prevent pain on the body, but the Red Army soldiers became so skilled that they had two shirts down at once -fell into the body of a man - a worker. They then soaked them in a bathhouse or simply in a pond; some did not lie down on their backs for several weeks. They took everything clean from us, all the women’s clothes and canvases, the men’s jackets, watches and shoes, and there’s nothing to say about bread...

Our mother, tell me who to go to now, everyone in our village is poor and hungry, we didn’t sow well - there weren’t enough seeds - we had three fists, we robbed them long ago, we don’t have a “bourgeoisie”, we have allotted ¾ - ½ per head, there was no purchased land, but an indemnity and a fine were imposed on us, we beat our Bolshevik commissar, he hurt us painfully. We were spanked a lot, we can’t tell you. Those who had a party card from the communists were not flogged.”

The Left Socialist-Revolutionaries believed that such a situation in the countryside had developed because the Bolsheviks followed Germany’s lead, gave it all the country’s breadbaskets, and doomed the rest of Russia to famine.

On June 24, 1918, the Central Committee of the PLSR decided to break the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk by organizing terrorist attacks against the most prominent representatives of German imperialism. On July 6, 1918, the German Ambassador to Russia, Count Mirbach, was killed by the Left Social Revolutionaries. For a long time there was a point of view that this was an anti-Soviet, anti-Bolshevik rebellion. But the documents indicate otherwise. The Central Committee of the PLSR explained that the murder was carried out in order to stop the conquest of working Russia by German capital. This, by the way, was confirmed by Ya.M. Sverdlov, speaking at a meeting of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee on July 15, 1918.

After the events of July 6-7, the Socialist Revolutionary Party went underground, according to the decision of its Central Committee. But since a limited circle of people knew about the rebellion and its preparation, many Socialist Revolutionary organizations condemned the rebellion.

In August - September 1918, two independent parties were formed from among the left Socialist Revolutionaries who condemned the rebellion: revolutionary communists and populists - communists. Many printed organs of the Socialist Revolutionaries were closed, cases of leaving the party became more frequent, and contradictions between the “tops” and “bottoms” of the left Socialist Revolutionaries grew. The ultra-left created the terrorist organization “All-Russian Headquarters of Revolutionary Partisans.” However, the civil war again and again raised the question of the unacceptability of struggle - especially armed, terrorist - against the Bolsheviks. It is characteristic that it was in the summer of 1919, at the most dramatic moment, when Soviet power was hanging by a thread, that the Central Committee of the PLSR decided by a majority vote to support the ruling party.

In October 1919, a circular letter was distributed among Left Socialist Revolutionary organizations calling on various trends in the party to unite on the basis of renouncing confrontation with the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks). And in April - May 1920, in connection with the Polish offensive, it was recognized as necessary to actively participate in the life of the Soviets. A specially adopted resolution contained a call to fight counter-revolution, support the Red Army, participate in social construction and overcome devastation.

But this was not the generally accepted view. Disagreements led to the fact that in the spring of 1920 the Central Committee actually ceased to exist as a single body. The party slowly faded away. Government repression played a significant role in this. Some of the leaders of the PLSR were in prison or exile, some emigrated, and some withdrew from political activity. Many at different times joined the RCP (b). By the end of 1922, the Left Socialist Revolutionary Party virtually ceased to exist.

As for M. Spiridonova, she was arrested several times after she retired from political activity: in 1923 for attempting to flee abroad, in 1930 during the persecution of former socialists. The last time was in 1937, when the “final blow” was dealt to the former socialists. She was charged with preparing an assassination attempt on members of the government of Bashkiria and K.E. Voroshilov, who was planning to come to Ufa.

By that time, she was serving her previous sentence, working as an economist in the credit planning department of the Bashkir office of the State Bank. She no longer posed any political threat. A sick, almost blind woman. The only dangerous thing was her name, thoroughly forgotten in the country, but often mentioned in socialist circles abroad.

January 7, 1938 M.A. Spiridonova was sentenced to 25 years in prison. She served her sentence in Oryol prison. But shortly before German tanks burst into Oryol, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR changed its verdict, imposing capital punishment on her. On September 11, 1941, the sentence was carried out. Kh.G. was shot together with Spiridonova. Rakovsky, D.D. Pletnev, F.I. Goloshchekin and other Soviet and party workers, whom the administration of the Oryol prison and the NKVD did not find it possible, unlike criminals, to evacuate deep into the country.

Thus, both the right and left Socialist Revolutionaries lived out their lives in prisons and exile. Almost everyone who did not die earlier died during Stalin's terror.

It is known that in the period following the overthrow of the monarchy, the most influential political force in Russia was the Socialist Revolutionary Party (SR), which numbered about a million of its followers. However, despite the fact that its representatives occupied a number of prominent positions in the government of the country, and the program was supported by the majority of citizens, the Socialist Revolutionaries failed to retain power in their hands. The revolutionary year of 1917 became a period of their triumph and the beginning of a tragedy.

The birth of a new party

In January 1902, the underground newspaper Revolutionary Russia, published abroad, notified its readers of the appearance on the political horizon of a new party, whose members called themselves social revolutionaries. It is unlikely that this event received a significant resonance in society at that moment, since at that time structures similar to it often appeared and disappeared. Nevertheless, the creation of the Socialist Revolutionary Party was a significant milestone in Russian history.

Despite its publication in 1902, its creation occurred much earlier than was announced in the newspaper. Eight years earlier, an illegal revolutionary circle had formed in Saratov, which had close ties with the local branch of the Narodnaya Volya party, which by that time was living its last days. When it was finally liquidated by the secret police, members of the circle began to act independently and two years later they developed their own program.

Initially, it was distributed in the form of leaflets printed on a hectograph - a very primitive printing device, which nevertheless made it possible to make the required number of prints. This document was published in the form of a brochure only in 1900, published in the printing house of one of the foreign branches of the party that had appeared by that time.

Merger of two branches of the party

In 1897, members of the Saratov circle, led by Andrei Argunov, moved to Moscow and in a new place began to call their organization the Northern Union of Socialist Revolutionaries. They had to introduce this geographical clarification into the name, since similar organizations, whose members also called themselves socialist-revolutionaries, had appeared by that time in Odessa, Kharkov, Poltava and a number of other cities. They in turn became known as the Southern Union. In 1904, these two branches of an essentially single organization merged, as a result of which the well-known Socialist Revolutionary Party was formed. It was headed by permanent leader Viktor Chernov (his photo is presented in the article).

The tasks that the Social Revolutionaries set for themselves

The program of the Social Revolutionary Party had a number of points that distinguished it from most of the political organizations that existed at that time. Among them were:

1. The formation of the Russian state on a federal basis, in which it will consist of independent territories (federal subjects) with the right to self-determination.
2. Universal suffrage, extending to citizens over 20 years of age, regardless of gender, nationality or religion;
3. Guarantee of respect for basic civil liberties, such as freedom of conscience, speech, press, associations, unions, etc.
4. Free public education.
5. Reducing the working day to 8 hours.
6. Reform of the armed forces, in which they cease to be a permanent state structure.
7. The distinction between church and state.

In addition, the program included several more points that, in essence, repeated the demands of other political organizations that aspired to power, just like the Socialist Revolutionaries. The highest body of party power for the social revolutionaries was the Congresses, and between them all current issues were resolved by the Soviets. The main slogan of the party was the call “Land and freedom!”

Features of the agrarian policy of the Social Revolutionaries

Of all the political parties that existed at that time, the Socialist Revolutionaries stood out for their attitude towards solving the agrarian question and towards the peasantry as a whole. This class, the most numerous in pre-revolutionary Russia, was, in the opinion of all Social Democrats, including the Bolsheviks, so backward and devoid of political activity that it could only be considered as an ally and support to the proletariat, which was assigned the role of “the locomotive of the revolution.”

Social revolutionaries took a different point of view. In their opinion, the revolutionary process in Russia should begin precisely in the countryside and only then spread to cities and industrialized areas. Therefore, in the transformation of society, peasants were given almost the leading role.

As for land policy, here the Socialist Revolutionaries proposed their own path, different from others. According to their party program, all agricultural land was not subject to nationalization, as the Bolsheviks called for, and not to distribution into ownership of individual owners, as the Mensheviks proposed, but was socialized and placed at the disposal of local self-government bodies. They called this path the socialization of the land.

At the same time, the law prohibited its private ownership, as well as purchase and sale. The final product was subject to distribution in accordance with established consumer standards, which were directly dependent on the amount of labor invested.

Social Revolutionaries during the First Russian Revolution

It is known that the Socialist Revolutionary Party (SRs) was very skeptical about the First Russian Revolution. According to its leaders, it was not bourgeois, since this class was not capable of leading the new society being created. The reasons for this lie in the reforms of Alexander II, who opened a broad path for the development of capitalism. They did not consider it socialist either, but came up with a new term - “social revolution”.

In general, the theorists of the Social Revolutionary Party believed that the transition to socialism should be carried out in a peaceful, reformist way without any social upheaval. However, a significant number of Socialist Revolutionaries took an active part in the battles of the First Russian Revolution. For example, their role in the uprising on the battleship Potemkin is well known.

Military organization of the Socialist Revolutionaries

A curious paradox is that for all its calls for a peaceful and non-violent path of transformation, the Socialist Revolutionary Party was remembered primarily for its terrorist activities, which began immediately after its creation.

Already in 1902, its military organization was created, then numbering 78 people. Its first leader was Grigory Gershuni, then at different stages this post was occupied by Yevno Azef and Boris Savinkov. It is recognized that of all the known terrorist groups of the early 20th century, this organization was the most effective. The victims of the acts committed were not only high-ranking officials of the tsarist government and representatives of law enforcement agencies, but also political opponents from other parties.

The bloody path of the SR military organization began in April 1902 with the murder of the Minister of Internal Affairs D. Sipyagin and the assassination attempt on the Chief Prosecutor of the Holy Synod K. Pobedonostsev. This was followed by a series of new terrorist attacks, the most famous of which is the murder of the Tsar's minister V. Plehve, carried out in 1904 by Yegor Sazonov, and the uncle of Nicholas II - Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, committed in 1905 by Ivan Kalyaev.

The peak of the terrorist activities of the Social Revolutionaries occurred in 1905-1907. According to available data, the leader of the Socialist Revolutionary Party V. Chernov and the leadership of the combat group were responsible for committing 223 terrorist attacks during this period alone, as a result of which 7 generals, 33 governors, 2 ministers and the Moscow governor-general were killed. These bloody statistics continued in subsequent years.

Events of 1917

After the February Revolution, as a political party, the Socialist Revolutionaries became the most influential public organization in Russia. Their representatives occupied key positions in many newly formed government structures, and their total membership reached a million people. However, despite the rapid rise and popularity of the main provisions of its program among the Russian population, the Socialist Revolutionary Party soon lost political leadership, and the Bolsheviks seized power in the country.

Immediately after the October coup, the leader of the Socialist Revolutionary Party V. Chernov, together with members of the Central Committee, addressed all political organizations in Russia, in which he characterized the actions of Lenin’s supporters as madness and a crime. At the same time, at an internal party meeting, a coordination committee was created to organize the fight against the usurpers of power. It was headed by the prominent Socialist Revolutionary Abram Gots.

However, not all party members had an unambiguous attitude to what was happening, and representatives of its left wing expressed support for the Bolsheviks. From that time on, the Left Socialist Revolutionary Party tried to implement its policies on many issues. This caused a split and a general weakening of the organization.

Between two fires

During the Civil War, the Socialist Revolutionaries tried to fight both the Reds and the Whites, alternately entering into an alliance with one or the other. The leader of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, who at the beginning of the war declared that the Bolsheviks were the lesser of two evils, very soon began to point out the need for joint actions with the White Guards and interventionists.

Of course, none of the representatives of the main warring parties took the alliance with the Social Revolutionaries seriously, realizing that as soon as circumstances changed, yesterday’s allies could defect to the enemy camp. And there were many such examples during the war.

The defeat of the Socialist Revolutionary Party

In 1919, wanting to make fullest use of the potential that the Socialist Revolutionary Party had, Lenin’s government decided to legalize it in the territories under its control. However, this did not bring the expected result. The Social Revolutionaries did not stop their attacks on the Bolshevik leadership and the methods of struggle resorted to by the party they led. Even the danger posed by their common enemy could not reconcile the Bolsheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries.

As a result, the temporary truce soon gave way to a new series of arrests, as a result of which, by the beginning of 1921, the Central Committee of the Social Revolutionary Party practically ceased to exist. Some of its members had been killed by that time (M. L. Kogan-Bernstein, I. I. Teterkin, etc.), many emigrated to Europe (V. V. Samokhin, N. S. Rusanov, as well as party leader V. M. Chernov), and the bulk were in prisons. From that time on, the Socialist Revolutionaries, as a party, ceased to represent a real political force.

Years of emigration

The further history of the Socialist Revolutionaries is inextricably linked with the Russian emigration, the ranks of which were intensively replenished in the first post-revolutionary years. Having found themselves abroad after the defeat of the party, which began back in 1918, the Socialist Revolutionaries were met there by their fellow party members who settled in Europe and created a foreign department there long before the revolution.

After the party was banned in Russia, all its surviving and free members were forced to emigrate. They settled mainly in Paris, Berlin, Stockholm and Prague. The general management of the activities of foreign cells was carried out by the former head of the party, Viktor Chernov, who left Russia in 1920.

Newspapers published by the Social Revolutionaries

Which party, having found itself in exile, did not have its own press organ? Social revolutionaries were no exception. They published a number of periodicals, such as the newspapers “Revolutionary Russia”, “Modern Notes”, “For the People!” and some others. In the 1920s, they were able to be smuggled across the border illegally, and therefore the material published in them was aimed at the Russian reader. But as a result of the efforts undertaken by the Soviet intelligence services, the delivery channels were soon blocked, and all newspaper circulations began to be distributed among emigrants.

Many researchers note that in articles published in Socialist Revolutionary newspapers, not only the rhetoric, but also the general ideological orientation changed from year to year. If at first the party leaders stood mainly in their previous positions, exaggerating the same theme of creating a classless society in Russia, then at the end of the 30s, they openly declared the need to return to capitalism.

Afterword

This is where the Social Revolutionaries (party) practically completed their activities. The year 1917 went down in history as the most successful period of their activity, which soon gave way to unsuccessful attempts to find their place in new historical realities. Unable to withstand the struggle with a stronger political opponent in the person of the RSDLP (b), led by Lenin, they were forced to leave the historical scene forever.

However, for many years in the Soviet Union, people who had nothing to do with it were accused of belonging to the Socialist Revolutionary Party and promoting its ideology. In the atmosphere of total terror that gripped the country, the very word “Socialist Revolutionary” was used as a designation of the enemy and was applied as a label to obvious, and more often imaginary, oppositionists for their illegal condemnation.

Everyone knows that as a result of the October Revolution and the subsequent Civil War, the Bolshevik Party came to power in Russia, which, with various fluctuations in its general line, remained in leadership almost until the collapse of the USSR (1991). The official historiography of the Soviet years instilled in the population the idea that it was this force that enjoyed the greatest support of the masses, while all other political organizations, to one degree or another, sought to revive capitalism. This is not entirely true. For example, the Socialist Revolutionary Party stood on an irreconcilable platform, in comparison with which the position of the Bolsheviks sometimes looked relatively peaceful. At the same time, social revolutionaries criticized the “combat detachment of the proletariat” led by Lenin for usurping power and oppressing democracy. So what kind of party was this?

One against all

Of course, after many artistic images created by the masters of “socialist realistic art”, the Socialist Revolutionary Party looked ominous in the eyes of the Soviet people. The Social Revolutionaries were remembered when the story was about the 1918 murder of Uritsky, the Kronstadt uprising (rebellion) and other facts unpleasant for the communists. It seemed to everyone that they were “grist to the mill” of the counter-revolution, seeking to strangle Soviet power and physically eliminate the Bolshevik leaders. At the same time, it was somehow forgotten that this organization waged a powerful underground struggle against the “tsarist satraps”, carried out an unimaginable number of terrorist attacks during the period of two Russian revolutions, and during the Civil War caused a lot of trouble to the White movement. Such ambiguity led to the fact that the Socialist Revolutionary Party turned out to be hostile to almost all warring parties, entering into temporary alliances with them and dissolving them in the name of achieving its own independent goal. What did it consist of? It is impossible to understand this without familiarizing yourself with the party program.

Origins and creation

It is believed that the creation of the Socialist Revolutionary Party occurred in 1902. This is true in a sense, but not entirely. In 1894, the Saratov Narodnaya Volya Society (underground, of course) developed its own program, which was somewhat more radical in nature than before. It took a couple of years to develop the program, send it abroad, publish it, print leaflets, deliver them to Russia and other manipulations associated with the emergence of a new force in the political firmament. At the same time, a small circle at first was headed by a certain Argunov, who renamed it, calling it the “Union of Socialist Revolutionaries.” The first measure of the new party was the creation of branches and the establishment of stable connections with them, which seems quite logical. Branches were created in the largest cities of the empire - Kharkov, Odessa, Voronezh, Poltava, Penza and, of course, in the capital, St. Petersburg. The process of party building was crowned by the appearance of a printed organ. The program was published on the pages of the newspaper “Revolutionary Russia”. This leaflet announced that the creation of the Socialist Revolutionary Party had become a fait accompli. This was in 1902.

Goals

Any political force acts guided by a program. This document, adopted by the majority of the founding congress, declares the goals and methods, allies and opponents, the main and those obstacles to be overcome. In addition, principles of governance, governing bodies and conditions of membership are specified. The Social Revolutionaries formulated the party's tasks as follows:

1. The establishment in Russia of a free and democratic state with a federal structure.

2. Granting equal voting rights to all citizens.

4. The right to free education.

5. Abolition of the armed forces as a permanent state structure.

6. Eight-hour working day.

7. Separation of state and church.

There were a few more points, but in general they largely repeated the slogans of the Mensheviks, Bolsheviks and other organizations that were just as eager to seize power as the Socialist Revolutionaries. The party program declared the same values ​​and aspirations.

The commonality of the structure was also evident in the hierarchical ladder described by the charter. The form of government of the Socialist Revolutionary Party included two levels. Congresses and Councils (during the inter-congress period) made strategic decisions that were carried out by the Central Committee, which was considered the executive body.

Social Revolutionaries and the agrarian question

At the end of the 19th century, Russia was a predominantly agricultural country in which the peasantry made up the majority of the population. The class in particular and the Social Democrats in general were considered politically backward, subject to private property instincts, and assigned to its poorest part only the role of the closest ally of the proletariat, the locomotive of the revolution. The Socialist Revolutionaries looked at this issue somewhat differently. The party program provided for the socialization of the land. At the same time, the talk was not about its nationalization, that is, its transition into state ownership, but also not about distributing it to the working people. In general, according to the socialist-revolutionaries, true democracy should not have come from the city to the village, but vice versa. Therefore, private ownership of agricultural resources should have been abolished, their purchase and sale should have been prohibited and transferred to local governments, which would distribute all the “goods” according to consumer standards. All together this was called the “socialization” of the land.

Peasants

It is interesting that, while declaring the village the source of socialism, the Socialist Revolutionary Party treated its inhabitants themselves quite cautiously. The peasants have never really been particularly politically literate. The leaders and ordinary members of the organization did not know what to expect; the life of the villagers was alien to them. The Social Revolutionaries “sickened at heart” for the oppressed people and, as often happens, believed that they knew how to make them happy better than they themselves. Their participation in the councils that arose during the First Russian Revolution increased their influence both among peasants and workers. As for the proletariat, there was a critical attitude towards it too. In general, the working masses were considered amorphous, and much effort had to be made to unite them.

Terror

The Socialist Revolutionary Party in Russia gained fame already in the year of its creation. Minister of Internal Affairs Sipyagin was shot by Stepan Balmashev, and this murder was organized by G. Girshuni, who led the military wing of the organization. Then there were many terrorist attacks (the most famous of them are the successful assassination attempts on S. A. Romanov, uncle of Nicholas II, and Minister Plehve). After the revolution, the Left Socialist Revolutionary Party continued its murderous list; many Bolshevik figures became its victims, with whom there were significant disagreements. No political party could compete with the AKP in its ability to organize individual terrorist attacks and reprisals against individual opponents. The Social Revolutionaries actually eliminated the head of the Petrograd Cheka, Uritsky. As for the assassination attempt committed at the Mikhelson plant, this story is vague, but their involvement cannot be completely ruled out. However, in terms of the scale of mass terror, they were far from the Bolsheviks. However, perhaps if they came to power...

Azef

Legendary personality. Yevno Azef led the military organization and, as was irrefutably proven, collaborated with the detective department of the Russian Empire. And most importantly, both of these structures, so different in goals and objectives, were very pleased with him. Azef organized a series of terrorist attacks against representatives of the tsarist administration, but at the same time surrendered a huge number of militants to the secret police. Only in 1908 did the Socialist Revolutionaries expose him. What party would tolerate such a traitor in its ranks? The Central Committee pronounced the sentence - death. Azef was almost in the hands of his former comrades, but was able to deceive them and escape. How he managed this is not entirely clear, but the fact remains: he lived until 1918 and died not from poison, a noose or a bullet, but from kidney disease, which he “earned” in a Berlin prison.

Savinkov

The Socialist Revolutionary Party attracted many adventurers in spirit who were looking for an outlet for their criminal talents. One of them was someone who started his political career as a liberal and then joined terrorists. He joined the Social Revolutionary Party a year after its creation, was Azef’s first deputy, took part in the preparation of many terrorist attacks, including the most resonant ones, was sentenced to death, and fled. After the October Revolution he fought against Bolshevism. He laid claim to supreme power in Russia, collaborated with Denikin, and was acquainted with Churchill and Pilsudski. Savinkov committed suicide after his arrest by the Cheka in 1924.

Gershuni

Grigory Andreevich Gershuni was one of the most active members of the military wing of the Socialist Revolutionary Party. He directly supervised the execution of terrorist acts against Minister Sipyagin, the attempted assassination of the governor of Kharkov Obolensky and many other actions designed to achieve people's well-being. He acted everywhere - from Ufa and Samara to Geneva - doing organizational work and coordinating the activities of local underground circles. He was arrested, but Gershuni managed to avoid severe punishment, since he, in violation of party ethics, stubbornly denied his involvement in the conspiratorial structure. In Kyiv, a failure nevertheless occurred, and in 1904 the verdict followed: exile. The escape led Grigory Andreevich to Parisian emigration, where he soon died. He was a true artist of terror. The main disappointment of his life was Azef's betrayal.

Party in the Civil War

The Bolshevikization of the Soviets, implanted, according to the Socialist Revolutionaries, artificially, and carried out by dishonest methods, led to the withdrawal of party representatives from them. Further activities were sporadic. The Social Revolutionaries entered into temporary alliances with either the whites or the reds, and both sides understood that this was dictated only by momentary political interests. Having received a majority, the party was unable to consolidate its success. In 1919, the Bolsheviks, taking into account the value of the organization’s terrorist experience, decided to legalize its activities in the territories they controlled, but this step did not in any way affect the intensity of anti-Soviet protests. However, the Socialist Revolutionaries at times declared a moratorium on speeches, supporting one of the fighting parties. In 1922, members of the AKP were finally “exposed” as enemies of the revolution, and their complete eradication began throughout Soviet Russia.

In exile

The foreign delegation of the AKP arose long before the actual defeat of the party, in 1918. This structure was not approved by the central committee, but nevertheless existed in Stockholm. After the actual ban on activities in Russia, almost all the surviving and free members of the party ended up in exile. They concentrated mainly in Prague, Berlin and Paris. The work of foreign cells was headed by Viktor Chernov, who fled abroad in 1920. In addition to “Revolutionary Russia,” other periodicals were published in exile (“For the People!”, “Modern Notes”), which reflected the main idea that gripped the former underground workers who had recently fought against the exploiters. By the end of the 30s they realized the need for the restoration of capitalism.

The end of the Socialist Revolutionary Party

The struggle of the Chekists with the surviving Socialist Revolutionaries became the theme of many fiction novels and films. In general, the picture of these works corresponded to reality, although it was presented distortedly. In fact, by the mid-20s the Socialist Revolutionary movement was a political corpse, completely harmless to the Bolsheviks. Inside Soviet Russia, the (former) Social Revolutionaries were mercilessly caught, and sometimes social revolutionary views were even attributed to people who never shared them. Successfully carried out operations to lure particularly odious party members to the USSR were aimed rather at justifying future repressions, presented as yet another exposure of underground anti-Soviet organizations. The Socialist-Revolutionaries were soon replaced in the dock by Trotskyists, Zinovievites, Bukharinites, Martovites and other former Bolsheviks who suddenly became objectionable. But that's a different story...

At the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, revolutionary sentiments were gaining strength in the Russian Empire. Like mushrooms after rain, political parties are growing that see the future development and prosperity of Russia in the overthrow of the monarchy and the transition to a democratic form of collective governance. One of the largest and most organized parties of the left wing were the Social Revolutionaries, or Socialist Revolutionaries for short (in accordance with their abbreviation SR).

This party had enormous influence both before and after 1917, but was unable to retain power in its hands.

A little history

Since the mid-nineteenth century, all political circles could be divided into:

• Conservative, right-wing. Their motto was “Orthodoxy, autocracy and nationality.” They did not see the need for any changes.
• Liberal. For the most part, they did not seek to overthrow the monarchy, but they also did not consider autocracy the best form of state power. In their understanding, Russia was supposed to achieve a constitutional monarchy through liberal reforms. Disagreements arose only in the proportions of the division of power between the monarch and the elected body of government.
• Radical, left. They did not see a future in autocratic Russia and believed that the transition from a monarchy to the rule of an elected council could only be accomplished through revolution.

At the end of the nineteenth century The Russian Empire is experiencing a colossal economic boom thanks to Witte's reforms. The downside of these reforms was the nationalization of production and an increase in excise taxes. Most of the tax burden falls on the poorest segments of the population. Hard life and sacrifices in the name of economic development are causing more and more discontent, including among the educated segments of the population. This leads to a serious strengthening of leftist sentiments in political circles.

At the same time, the liberal-minded intelligentsia is gradually leaving the political arena. The so-called theory of “small deeds” is gaining more and more momentum among liberals. Instead of fighting to promote the desired reforms that will improve the lives of the poor, liberals decide to do something on their own for the benefit of the common people. Most of them go to work as doctors or teachers to help peasants and workers receive education and medical care now, without waiting for reforms. This leads to a clash between the remaining circles of the extreme left and right. In the nineties, a party of social revolutionaries was formed - future ideologists of the left movement.

Formation of the Socialist Revolutionary Party

In 1894 A circle of socialist revolutionaries was formed in Saratov. They maintained contact with some groups of the terrorist organization “People's Will”. When the Narodnaya Volya members were dispersed, the Saratov social revolutionary circle began to act independently, developing its own program. Their press organ published this program in 1896. A year later, this circle ended up in Moscow.

At the same time, in other cities of the Russian Empire there were people's will, socialist circles, which gradually united with each other. At the beginning of the 1900s, a single Social Revolutionary Party was formed.

Pre-revolutionary activities of the Social Revolutionaries

The Socialist Revolutionary Party also had a military organization that carried out terrorist attacks against high-ranking officials. In 1902, they made an attempt on the life of the Minister of the Interior. However, four years later the organization was dissolved and was replaced by flying squads - small terrorist groups that did not have centralized control.

At the same time, preparations were made for the revolution. The Social Revolutionaries saw the peasants, as well as the proletariat, as the driving force of the revolution. The social revolutionaries considered the peasant question to be the main bone of contention between the state and the people. It was with the peasants that the Socialist Revolutionaries carried out propaganda work and formed political associations. They managed to incite peasants to revolt in several provinces, but there was no mass uprising throughout Russia.

Party numbers at the beginning of the twentieth century increased and its composition changed. During the first revolutions of 1905-1907, its extreme right and extreme left wings separated from the party. They formed the People's Socialists Party and the Union of Revolutionary Maximalist Socialists.

By the beginning of the First World War, the Socialist Revolutionary Party was again divided into centrists and internationalists. The internationalists soon received the name “Left Social Revolutionaries.” The radical left Socialist Revolutionaries were close to the Bolshevik Party, which the Internationalist Socialist Revolutionaries would soon join. But so far at the beginning of 1917, the Social Revolutionary Party was the largest and most influential revolutionary party.

February Revolution

World War I further shook the people's faith in the Russian autocracy. Here and there, riots of peasants and workers broke out, skillfully fueled by the agitation activities of the Socialist Revolutionaries. The general February strike in Petrograd turned into an armed uprising when the striking workers were supported by soldiers. The result of this uprising was the overthrow of the monarchy and the formation of a provisional government as the main authority in post-revolutionary Russia.

Social Revolutionaries in the provisional government

Since the main inspiring force of the February Revolution was the SR party, many positions in the provisional government went to them, although the cadet Lvov became the chairman of the government. Here are the most famous Social Revolutionary ministers of that time:

• Kerensky,
• Chernov,
• Avksentiev,
• Maslov.

The provisional government could not cope with the hunger and devastation that engulfed the state. The Bolsheviks took advantage of this in an attempt to gain power. The failure of the provisional government forced Lvov to resign. In August, the post of chairman of the provisional government went to the Socialist Revolutionary Kerensky. At the same time, a counter-revolutionary uprising occurred, to suppress which Kerensky took on the role of commander in chief. The uprising was successfully suppressed.

However, dissatisfaction with the provisional government grew as socio-economic reforms were delayed and the peasant issue was never resolved. And in October of the same year, as a result of an armed riot, the entire provisional government, with the exception of Kerensky, was arrested. The chairman managed to escape.

October Revolution and the fall of the Social Revolutionary Party

It was with the arrest of the provisional government that the October Revolution began. Peasants and workers became disillusioned with the provisional government and went over to the banner of the Bolsheviks. After the revolution, the Executive Committee, an executive body, and the Council of People's Commissars, a legislative body, were created. The first two decrees of the Council of People's Commissars were two decrees: the Decree on Peace and the Decree on Land. The first called for an end to the world war. The second decree defended the interests of the peasants and was completely taken from the program of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, since the Bolsheviks were a workers' party and did not deal with the peasant issue.

Meanwhile, the Socialist Revolutionaries continued to remain an influential party and were members of the All-Russian Constituent Assembly. But when the left Socialist Revolutionaries joined the Bolsheviks, the right saw their goal as the overthrow of the Bolshevik dictatorship and a return to true democracy. However, the Right Socialist Revolutionary Party was still legalized, since the Bolsheviks planned to use it in the fight against the white movement. However, social revolutionaries in their printed publications continued to criticize the policies of the Bolsheviks, which led to mass arrests.

By 1919 the leadership of the SR party was already in exile. It considered foreign intervention to overthrow the Bolsheviks justified. However, the right-wing Social Revolutionaries who remained in the country saw in the intervention only the selfish interests of the imperialists. They abandoned the armed struggle against the Bolsheviks, since the country was already exhausted by the war. At the same time, they continued to conduct anti-Bolshevik campaigning in their printed publications.

The Social Revolutionaries, indeed, contributed to the fight against the whites. It was at the Zemsky Congress organized by the Socialist Revolutionaries that it was decided to overthrow the rule of Kolchak. However, in the early twenties, the Social Revolutionaries were accused of counter-revolutionary activities and the party was dissolved.

SR party program

The program of the Socialist Revolutionary Party was based on the works Chernyshevsky, Mikhailovsky and Lavrov. This program was generously published in the printed publications of social revolutionaries: the newspapers “Revolutionary Russia”, “Conscious Russia”, “Narodny Vestnik”, “Mysl”.

General provisions

The general idea of ​​the Socialist Revolutionary program was Russia's transition to socialism, bypassing capitalism. They called their non-capitalist path democratic socialism, which was to be expressed through the rule of the following organized parties:

• The trade union is a party of producers,
• The Cooperative Union is a party of consumers,
• Parliamentary bodies of self-government consisting of organized citizens.

The central place in the Socialist Revolutionary program was occupied by the peasant question and the socialization of agriculture.

A look at the peasant question

The Social Revolutionaries' view of the peasant question was very original for that time. Socialism, according to the Socialist Revolutionaries, was supposed to begin in the countryside and from there expand throughout the country. And it had to begin precisely with the socialization of the land. What did this mean?

This meant, first of all, the abolition of private ownership of land. But at the same time, land could not be state property either. It was supposed to become public peasant property without the right to sell or buy it. This land was to be managed by elected bodies of collective people's self-government.

The provision of land for the use of peasants, according to the Social Revolutionaries, should have been equalization-labor. Namely, an individual peasant or a partnership of peasants could receive for use such an allotment of land that they could independently cultivate and which would be enough for them to feed themselves.

It was these ideas that later migrated to the “Decree on Land” of the Council of People’s Commissars.

Democratic ideas

The political ideas of the social revolutionaries gravitated towards democracy. During the transition to socialism, the Socialist Revolutionaries saw a democratic republic as the only acceptable form of power. With this form of power The following rights and freedoms of citizens had to be respected:

The last point implied that all categories of the population should be represented in government bodies in proportion to the number of these categories. Later, the same idea was put forward by the Social Democrats.

Legacy of the Social Revolutionary Party

What mark did the social revolutionaries leave in history? with their political and social program? First, there is the idea of ​​collective stewardship of the land. The Bolsheviks already introduced it into life, and in general the idea turned out to be so successful that other communist and socialist states adopted it.

Secondly, most of the rights and freedoms of citizens that the Social Revolutionaries defended just a hundred years ago now seem so obvious and inalienable that it is hard to believe that not so long ago they had to be fought for. Thirdly, the idea of ​​proportional representation of different categories of the population in government is also partially used in some countries in our time. In the modern world, this idea has taken the form of quotas in the government and beyond.

Social revolutionaries gave the modern world a lot of ideas about fair power and fair distribution of resources.