In 1896
the Northern Union of Socialist Revolutionaries was formed. This was
followed by other such groups in other parts of Russia. In 1901, some
of the leading figures in these groups, including Catherine
Breshkovskaya, Victor Chernov, Gregory
Gershuni, Nikolai Avksentiev,
Alexander Kerensky and Evno
Azef, founded the Party of Socialist Revolutionaries (SR).
The main
policy of the SR was the confiscation of all land. This would then
be distributed among the peasants according to need. The party was
also in favour of the establishment of a democratically elected constituent
assembly and a maximum 8-hour day for factory workers.
Victor
Chernov edited the SR journal, Revolutionary
Russia, where he argued against Marxists
who claimed that the peasants were a totally reactionary social class.
The SR,
great influenced by the tactics used by the People's
Will, also had a terrorist wing, the SR
Combat Organization. Membership
of this group was secret and independent of the rest of the party.
Gregory Gershuni, became its head and
was responsible for planning the assassination of the Minister of
the Interior, D. S. Sipyagin. The following year he arranged the assassination
of N. M. Bogdanovich, the Governor of Ufa.
Gregory
Gershuni was unaware that his deputy, Evno
Azef, was in the pay of the Okhrana.
In 1904 Azef secretly provided the secret police with the information
needed to arrest and try Gershuni with terrorism.
After Gershuni's
arrest Evno Azef became the new leader of
the SR
Combat Organization and
organized the assassination of Vyacheslav
Plehve in 1904 and Father
Gregory Gapon in 1906. At the same time
he was receiving 1,000 rubles a month from the Okhrana.
Several members of the police leaked information to the leadership
of the SR about the undercover activities of Azef. However, they refused
to believe the stories and assumed the secret service was trying to
undermine the success of the terrorist unit.
The SR
played an important role during the 1905 Revolution.
It led a rising in support of the Potemkin
Mutiny and Nikolai Avksentiev
was one of the main leaders of the St Petersburg
Soviet.
Although
the Socialist Revolutionaries decided to boycott the Duma
elections in 1905, some members stood as Trudovik (Labour) candidates.
In February, 1907, the SR stood won 34 seats while the Trudovik had
over 100 successful candidates.
The Socialist
Revolutionaries continued to infiltrated by agents employed by Okhrana.
Between 1911 and 1914, Dmitri Bogrov supplied
information about the party. However, in what appeared to be an act
of remorse, Bogrov entered the Kiev
Opera House on 1st September, 1911, and assassinated the
Minister of the Interior, Peter
Stolypin.
The First
Congress of Soviets that was held in June, 1917, had 1,090 delegates
representing more than 400 different soviets. Of these, 285 were Socialist
Revolutionaries, 248 Mensheviks and
105 Bolsheviks.
In 1917
the SRs 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 revolution became known as Left
Socialist Revolutionists.
The First
Congress of Soviets that was held in June, 1917, had 1,090 delegates
representing more than 400 different soviets. Of these, 285 were Socialist
Revolutionaries, 248 Mensheviks and
105 Bolsheviks.
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. Some
SRs now resorted to 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)
David Shub was a member of the Social
Democratic Labour Party who emigrated to the United States. Later
he wrote about the leadership of the Socialist Revolutionaries.
While conflict raged in Social Democratic ranks, the
Revolutionary movement was not marking time in Russia. A new party
had come on the scene and had stirred fresh currents in the Russian
people. This was the Socialist Revolutionary Party. The leaders of
the party were Catherine Breshkovsky, who had served six prison terms
and spent more than twenty years in Siberia; Mikhail Gotz, son of
a Moscow millionaire and a famous Siberian exile; Gregory Gershuni,
whose Terrorist Brigade carried out the assassination of leading reactionary
Ministers and Governors; Victor Chernov; and a number of old revolutionaries
of the People's Will.
(2)
Victor Serge, Year
One of the Revolution (1930)
The SR
Battle Organization was founded by Gregory Gershuni in 1902; its first
act, in the same year, was the execution of the Minister of Education
Sipyagin by the student Balmashev (who was later hanged). On the day
after the murder, the SR party published under a similar verdict.
The arrest of Gershuni, who was delivered to the police by Azef, caused
the latter's promotion to the top leadership of the terrorist detachment.
A man named Boris Savinkov, for whom terrorism was a vocation and
whose courage was indomitable, now found himself under the orders
of the agent-provacateur. In 1904 the Prime Minister, Plehve, fell
mutilated by Yegor Sazonov's bomb. Sazonov had organized the assassination
on instructions from Azef.
(3)
Praskovia Ivanovskaia
,
who served fifteen years in prison for her part in the assassination
of Alexander II, also helped to murder
Vyacheslav
Plehve.
The conclusion of this affair gave me some satisfaction
- finally the man who had taken so many victims had been brought to
his inevitable end, so universally desired.
(4)
Edward Judge, Plehve: Repression
and Reform in Imperial Russia (1983)
Azef sat
in a very dangerous position, especially after Gershuni's arrest,
and he had to think first of his own safety. A continual series of
arrests, and a long train of assassination attempts gone awry, could
only help convince his SR colleagues that they had a traitor in their
midst. If he were found out, his game would be over, and so, most
probably, would be his life. On the other hand, if he could successfully
plan and accomplish the murder of Plehve, his position among the SRs
would be secured. Azef had little love for Plehve: as a Jew, he could
not help but resent the Kishinev pogrom and the minister's reputed
role.
(5)
Robert Bruce Lockhart, report sent to
the British government (13th March, 1917)
So far
the people of Moscow have behaved with exemplary restraint. For the
moment, only enthusiasm prevails, and the struggle which is almost
bound to ensure between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat has not
yet made its bitterness felt.
The Socialist
Party is at present divided into two groups: the Social Democrats
and Soviet Revolutionaries. The activities of the first named are
employed almost entirely among the work people, while the Social Revolutionaries
work mainly among the peasantry.
The Social
Democrats, who are the largest party, are, however, divided into two
groups known as the Bolsheviki and the Mensheviki. The Bolsheviki
are the more extreme party. They are at heart anti-war. In Moscow
at any rate the Mensheviki represent today the majority and are more
favourable to the war.
(6)
George Buchanan, My Mission to Russia
and Other Diplomatic Memories (1922).
The Social
Revolutionaries (SRs) were agrarian, in contradistinction to the Social
Democrats, who represented the interests of the proletariats of the
towns. The watchword of the former had always been "Land and
Liberty". During the latter part of the last and the commencement
of the present century they had adopted terrorism as a weapon for
attaining their ends.
(7)
Nikolai Sukhanov, was a leading member
of the Petrograd Soviet. In his book The
Russian Revolution 1917, he recalled his impression of Victor
Chernov.
In the
creation of the SR Party Chernov had played an absolutely exceptional
role. Chernov was the only substantial theoretician of any kind it
had - and a universal one at that. If Chernov's writings were removed
from the SR party literature almost nothing would be left.
Without
Chernov the SR Party would not have existed, any more than the Bolshevik
Party without Lenin - inasmuch as no serious political organization
can take shape round an intellectual vacuum.
But Chernov
- unlike Lenin - only performed half the work in the SR Party. During
the period of pre-Revolutionary conspiracy he was not the party organizing
centre, and in the broad area of the revolution, in spite of his vast
authority amongst the SRs, Chernov proved bankrupt as a political
leader.
Chernov
never showed the slightest stability, striking power, or fighting
ability - qualities vital for a political leader in a revolutionary
situation. He proved inwardly feeble and outwardly unattractive, disagreeable
and ridiculous.
(8)
Mark Vishniak, a member of the Socialist Revolutionaries,
later wrote about his impressions of Victor
Chernov at the first meeting of the Constituent Assembly.
His speech
was couched in the language of internationalist and socialist ideas,
with occasional undertones of demagogy. It was as though the speaker
was deliberately seeking a common language with the Bolsheviks, and
trying to persuade them of something instead of dissociating himself
from them and standing up against them as representatives of Russian
democracy.
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