In 1917
the Socialist Revolutionaries split between
those who supported the Provisional Government
and the Bolsheviks
who favoured a communist revolution. Those like Maria
Spirdonova and Mikhail
Kalinin who supported the revolution became known as Left
Socialist Revolutionists (LSR)
After the
October Revolution the LSR
joined the in a coalition government with the Bolsheviks.
However, the LSR left the government over their disagreement with
Lenin over the signing of the Brest-Litovsk
Treaty, the lack of freedom for trade
unionists and the abandonment of the policy of workers' control
of factories.
After the
February Revolution, a former member of
the SR, Alexander Kerensky, was appointed
as Minister of Justice. Later, Victor Chernov
entered the cabinet as Minister of Agriculture and Kerensky became
prime minister.
The
party strongly opposed the Bolsheviks
during the October Revolution. In the
elections held for the Constituent Assembly
in November, 1917, the SR won 20,900,000 votes (58 per cent), whereas
the Bolsheviks won only 9,023,963 votes (25 per cent).
In
1918 the Soviet government closed down the Constituent
Assembly and banned the SR and other anti-Bolshevik parties. On
10th July the Soviet Commander at Simbirsk, a member of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries,
attempted to lead a uprising but it was soon defeated by the Red
Army.
In
July, 1918, the veteran revolutionary, Maria
Spirdonova, led a LSR anti-Bolshevik
rising. She was soon arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment in
Siberia.
Some
SRs now resorted to individual acts of terrorism. On 30th August,
1918, Vladimir Lenin was shot by Dora
Kaplan and soon afterwards Moisei Uritsky,
Commissar for Internal Affairs in the Northern Region, was assassinated
by another supporter of the SR.
(1)
Morgan Philips Price, My Three Revolutions
(1969)
Next day
the Congress met again. The Left S.R. delegates turned up. They had
come to stage another violent onslaught on the Bolsheviks and the
Government, the last, as it turned out, before they adopted other
methods. The business of the morning was a report by the Chairman,
Sverdlov, on the activities of the Government. He described in some
detail the methods now being adopted to secure food from the villages
in North and Central Russia. Committees of Poor Peasants had been
formed in the villages to obtain food deliveries from the more well-to-do
peasants.
"Leave
it to the free peasants to form their own communes inspired with revolutionary
enthusiasm,' cried Marie Spiridonova, that Valkyrie of the Russian
Revolution. Pale, and with a savage look on her face, she proceeded
to deliver an absolute Philippic against the Soviet Government and
all its works. One realized now that, if this romantic revolutionary
enthusiasm from the past could not be tamed, the Revolution would
go down in chaos. When Spiridonova sat down, roars of applause came
from the whole Left SR membership, the Bolsheviks sitting silent.
Then the Left S.R.s all rose and left the Congress, this time for
good. Sverdlov then adjourned the Congress till the afternoon.
(2)
Izvestia
(8th July 1918)
The Revolution
with extraordinary consistency brings to its logical end every one
of its stages, mercilessly exposing the stupidity and credulity of
those who use tactics unsuitable for a given situation. The Left S.R.s
have committed political suicide by striking against revolutionary
Realpolitik, just as the Mensheviks and Right S.R.s committed suicide
last summer, by clinging to their coalition with the middle-classes
long after the necessity for such a coalition had disappeared. Henceforth
we. Bolsheviks, the spokesmen of the advance guard of the proletariate,
must bear the sole burden of the Revolution.
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