Who was the leader of the Socialist Revolutionary Party. Socialist Revolutionary Party, its role in politics

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, transferring 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 Socialist Revolutionary Party (SR), 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. At first, 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 only one measure was expressed in relation to the peasantry - 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 should sooner or later pass 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 into 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 towards 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 became more and more clear - 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 in 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. As well as 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. Fundaminsky (Bunakov) and others.

The Social Revolutionaries were not a single movement. Their left wing, which in 1906 formed the independent “Union of Socialist-Revolutionary-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 reward" 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, fashionable bourgeois liberal theories, anarchist 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 their main goal The Socialist Revolutionary Party saw 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 the 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 contributes to 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 the 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 2 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 stood deep peasant democracy, the ineradicable desire of the peasant for land “levelling”, the elimination of landownership and for “freedom” in its broadest sense, including active participation 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 “no man’s”, “free” (or “God’s” ...), to the idea of ​​​​the right to trade, to make money in land ... This is precisely where the danger lies in planting and strengthening that “proprietary fanaticism”, which can then cause 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 it from those with a surplus to those with a shortage, 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. The Social 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 various types and forms of cooperation in the future, a new, collective agriculture will be created purely by evolution. 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 which, as a result of cultivation using methods 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, you need 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 for 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 Socialist 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, assembly 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, a democratic republic was envisioned, 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 in 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 identified measures in the field of legal, national economic, and in matters of communal, municipal and zemstvo economy. Here we are talking about election, changeability at any time and the jurisdiction of all officials, including deputies and judges, on the freeness of 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 strength of the working class in town and countryside. About reduction of working hours, state insurance, prohibition overtime work, work for minors under 16 years of age, restriction of work for minors, 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, broad 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 overthrow these measures with its revolutionary struggle.

A specific feature of the Socialist Revolutionary tactics, inherited from the Narodnaya Volya, was individual terror directed against representatives of the highest tsarist administration (the murder of Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, the assassination attempt on the Moscow governor general F.V. Dubasov, P.A. Stolypin, 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 Social 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 special 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 revealed to the world the full horror of Russian reality: the cruelty of the authorities (Spiridonova was not only beaten so much that the doctor could not examine for a week whether her eye was intact, but she was also raped) and the alienation of young people from the government to the point of readiness to sacrifice their lives.

Thanks to protests from 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 Akatui convicts were idealists of the highest standard, faithful 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 receive the People's Commissariat - in a blouse and torn 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 treasury, 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. The manifesto of October 17, 1905 declared an amnesty, 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 landowners' lands, 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 Party Central Committee 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 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 Constituent Assembly. There were hesitations in tactics in relation to 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 Social 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 environment in which the Socialist Revolutionary Party operated. But the Socialist Revolutionaries did not consider the ensuing 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 Social 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 an internationalist position.

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 agricultural 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 pass 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 “homogeneous socialist government,” i.e. government, consisting of representatives of socialist parties, but soon again began to seek 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 and 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 land to 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 Social Revolutionaries reacted differently to 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 taken place, 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 leave 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 turn out to be “suppliants in the Bolshevik antechamber.”

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 leadership of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries became increasingly aware 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 a 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 Socialist 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 held 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 questions work program: workers' control over production, which is understood not as the giving of factories to the workers, railways- railway workers, etc., but as organized centralized control over production on a national scale, as a transitional step to the nationalization and socialization of 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 an equalizing 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 was 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 disordered and economically underdeveloped. 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 Socialist 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 Socialist Revolutionary Party, “in this situation, socialism turns into a caricature, being reduced to a system of equalizing everyone to a lower and even lowering level... of all culture and the smuggled revival of the most primitive forms of economic life,” therefore, “Bolshevik communism has nothing in common with socialism and therefore can only compromise himself.”

They criticized the economic policies of the Bolsheviks, their proposed measures to overcome the industrial crisis and their agricultural 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 the unbreakable fiery ring of fratricidal war; the Bolsheviks' bet on world revolution only means that they "believed in own strength” and are waiting for “salvation only from 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 the Czechoslovak Legionnaires and the People's Army, created within the framework of the Samara Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly (Komuch).

They explained their armed uprising in the Volga region, as Chernov later recalled, 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-Litovsk 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 due to central democracy undoubtedly continues in the outlying regions of Russia.”

After the defeat of the Samara Komuch by the Red Army in September 1918, the right Socialist Revolutionaries 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 against Soviet power and enter into negotiations with her. 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 convened 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 order of the day, it becomes a question of the existence of the Russian labor force.” democracy."

By that time, the Socialist Revolutionaries had 2 leadership centers: the “Foreign Delegation of the Socialist Revolutionary Party” and the “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 leaders of the Socialist Revolutionaries, 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 specific specific charges. 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 massacre of 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 against 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 indefinitely 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 they 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 five years' imprisonment and exile.

In March 1923, the Social 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 of 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 spoke about the Bolsheviks: “No matter how alien their crude 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 Central Committee of the PLSR 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 feared that the blow would fall on the small and middle peasantry. The decree obliged every owner of grain to hand over it, and 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 grain 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 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 on all the 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 two shirts fell into the body at once a man - a hard 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 we didn’t sow well - there weren’t enough seeds - we had three kulaks, we robbed them long ago, we don’t have a “bourgeoisie”, we had ¾ - ½ per capita, we didn’t have any purchased land, and we were subject to an indemnity and a fine, we They 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 Treaty of Brest-Litovsk by organizing terrorist acts 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 had withdrawn 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 Oryol was broken into German tanks, Military Collegium Supreme Court The USSR changed its sentence, giving her capital punishment. 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.

PARTY OF SOCIALIST-REVOLUTIONARIES (SRs) is a revolutionary-democratic political party in Russia, formed in 1902 on the basis of the unification of neo-populist circles, the Southern Party of Socialist Revolutionaries and the Union of Socialist Revolutionaries. She considered the peasantry to be her social support, but the main part of the party was the democratic intelligentsia and partly the workers. The party program, which consisted of two parts, was approved by the Second Congress (1906). The minimum program included demands designed to implement a bourgeois-democratic revolution: the overthrow of the autocracy and the establishment democratic republic; the introduction of universal, equal, direct and secret voting, complete freedom of conscience, speech, press and assembly; establishing the right of workers to strike and organize trade unions; legislative approval of an 8-hour working day; carrying out the socialization of all privately owned lands and transferring them to the disposal of democratically organized communities for distribution among peasants according to labor standards.

The maximum program was aimed at carrying out government reforms for the transition to socialism, expropriation of capitalist private property; reorganization of production and the entire society on socialist principles; establishment of a temporary revolutionary dictatorship of the working class.

Party tactics: various methods struggle - from legal to armed uprising; significant place was given to terror through the “Combat Organization” in order to incite a revolution, intimidate the government and force it to convene Zemsky Sobor(Constituent Assembly).

Leaders: V. M. Chernov, M. R. Gots, G. A. Gershuni, N. D. Avksentyev and others.

Print media: illegal - newspapers “Revolutionary Russia (1900-1905) and “Znamya Truda” (1907-1914), magazine “Bulletin of the Russian Revolution” (1901 - 1905); legal - the magazine “Testaments” (1912-1914), the newspaper “Land and Freedom” (1917), etc.

During the Revolution of 1905-1907. The Socialist Revolutionaries took part in armed uprisings in Moscow (December 1905), Kronstadt and Sveaborg (summer 1906), etc., and had their representatives in the Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, in the All-Russian Peasant Union, and a group in the Second State Duma (37 deputies). In 1906, the maximalists separated from the party. In 1917, the party was experiencing an ideological and organizational crisis (the Left Social Revolutionaries occupied a special position).

After February Revolution 1917, together with the Mensheviks, the Socialist Revolutionaries prevailed in the Soviets, were part of the Provisional Government, and occupied leading positions in the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, the Executive Committee of the Council of Peasant Deputies, and in the Pre-Parliament; in the fall of 1917 they received a majority in the elections to the Constituent Assembly.

After the October Revolution of 1917, the Left Socialist Revolutionaries initially took a wait-and-see attitude; in December, their representatives joined the Council of People's Commissars (I. Z. Steinberg, P. P. Proshyan, A. L. Kolegaev, V. A. Karelin), but after the conclusion of the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty of 1918, they left in protest government, began to participate in anti-Bolshevik protests and governments (Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly, etc.).

In 1922, the GPU arrested 47 party leaders, accusing them of counter-revolutionary activities. The All-Russian Central Executive Committee (June 1922) sentenced 12 people to death (the execution was suspended), the rest to various terms of imprisonment; Subsequently, most of the Social Revolutionaries were subjected to repression and extermination.

Orlov A.S., Georgieva N.G., Georgiev V.A. Historical Dictionary. 2nd ed. M., 2012, p. 383-384.

The origins of the Socialist Revolutionary Party go back to populism.

In the early 90s of the 19th century, emigrant populists formed the “Union of Russian Socialist Revolutionaries” with headquarters in Bern (Switzerland), and then, under their influence, local regional organizations, local committees and groups of Socialist Revolutionaries began to be created in Russia.

In 1902, based on the unification of neo-populist circles and groups, the Socialist Revolutionary Party was formed. The illegal newspaper “Revolutionary Russia” became the mouthpiece of the party.

The Social Revolutionaries considered the peasants to be their social support, but the composition of the party was predominantly intellectuals.

By the beginning of the first Russian revolution, the size of the Socialist Revolutionary Party reached 2.5 thousand people. Of this number, about 70% were intellectuals, approximately 25% were workers, and peasants made up just over 1.5%. The party was quite massive; its organizations operated in 500 cities and towns.

The leader and ideologist of the Socialist Revolutionaries was Viktor Mikhailovich Chernov, a native of peasants who had been involved in underground activities since his high school years. Chernov was a member of the editorial board of all central printed organs of the party, and was elected to the Central Committee of the AKP.

No less prominent figures in the Socialist Revolutionary movement were N.D. Avksentyev, E.F. Azef, G.A. Gershuni, A.R. Gots, M.A. Spiridonova, V.V. Savinkov and others.

The Social Revolutionaries were the direct heirs of the old populism, the essence of which was the idea of ​​the possibility of Russia's transition to socialism through a non-capitalist route.

In their program, adopted in 1905 at the First Congress of the AKP, the Socialist Revolutionaries retained the thesis of the peasant community as the embryo of socialism. The interests of the peasantry, in their opinion, are identical to the interests of the workers and working intelligentsia.

The coming revolution was presented to the Socialist Revolutionaries as socialist, the main role in it was given to the peasantry. The Social Revolutionaries were also supporters of a “temporary revolutionary dictatorship.”

The program provided for the expropriation of capitalist property and the reorganization of society on a collective, socialist basis, the proclamation of a people's democratic republic in Russia, the implementation of basic political rights and freedoms of citizens, the introduction of labor legislation and an 8-hour working day.

The Socialist Revolutionaries saw the solution to the agrarian question in the “socialization of the land,” that is, the destruction of private ownership of land, but turning it into non-state property (nationalization), but into public property without the right to buy and sell. All land was transferred to the management of central and local bodies of people's self-government (from rural and urban communities to regional institutions). The use of land was supposed to be equalizing labor (that is, to ensure the consumer standard based on the application of one’s own labor, individually or in partnership and without the use of hired labor).

IN national issue the Socialist Revolutionaries advocated recognition of the right of all nations and peoples to self-determination before the Social Democrats put forward a demand federal structure Russian state.

The Socialist Revolutionaries considered individual terror inherited from the Narodniks to be the main tactical means of fighting against the autocracy and used it widely.

Combat organization The Socialist Revolutionary Party, led by Grigory Gershuni, carried out a number of assassination attempts on ministers and governors; through terror, the Socialist Revolutionaries tried to spark a revolution and eliminate the government.

On the eve and during the first Russian revolution, a split occurred in the AKP. In 1904, the “maximalists” (close to the anarchists) emerged from it, and in the fall of 1906 the most right wing, the “people’s socialists” (“Enesy”), formed two independent political parties.

Before the February Revolution of 1917, the Socialist Revolutionary Party was illegal.

Thus, at the beginning of the 20th century, a multi-party system developed in Russia. This was a significant step towards moving our country towards a truly democratic society, most political parties played bright role in further Russian history.

SRs–members Russian Party socialist-revolutionaries (written: “s=r-ov”, read: “Socialist Revolutionaries”). The party was formed by uniting populist groups as the left wing of democracy in late 1901–early 1902.

In the second half of the 1890s, small populist groups and circles, predominantly intellectual in composition, existed in St. Petersburg, Penza, Poltava, Voronezh, Kharkov, and Odessa. Some of them united in 1900 into the Southern Party of Socialist Revolutionaries, others in 1901 into the “Union of Socialist Revolutionaries.” The organizers were former populists (M.R. Gots, O.S. Minor, etc.) and extremist-minded students (N.D. Avksentyev, V.M. Zenzinov, B.V. Savinkov, I.P. Kalyaev, E. S. Sozonov and others). At the end of 1901, the “Southern Socialist Revolutionary Party” and the “Union of Socialist Revolutionaries” merged, and in January 1902 the newspaper “Revolutionary Russia” announced the creation of the party. The founding congress of the party, which approved its program and charter, took place, however, only three years later and was held from December 29, 1905 to January 4, 1906 in Imatra (Finland).

Simultaneously with the establishment of the party itself, its Combat Organization (BO) was created. Its leaders - G.A. Gershuni, E.F. Azef - put forward individual terror against senior government officials as the main goal of their activities. Its victims in 1902–1905 were the ministers of internal affairs (D.S. Sipyagin, V.K. Pleve), governors (I.M. Obolensky, N.M. Kachura), as well as the leader. book Sergei Alexandrovich, killed by the famous Socialist Revolutionary I. Kalyaev. During two and a half years of the first Russian revolution, the Socialist Revolutionaries committed about 200 terrorist acts ().

In general, party members were supporters of democratic socialism, which they saw as a society of economic and political democracy. Their main demands were reflected in the Party Program drawn up by V.M. Chernov and adopted at the First Founding Congress of the Party at the end of December 1905 - beginning of January 1906.

As defenders of the interests of the peasantry and followers of the Narodniks, the Socialist Revolutionaries demanded the “socialization of the land” (transferring it into the ownership of communities and establishing egalitarian labor land use), denied social stratification, and did not share the idea of ​​​​establishing a dictatorship of the proletariat, which was actively promoted by many Marxists at that time. The program of “socialization of the earth” was supposed to provide a peaceful, evolutionary path of transition to socialism.

The Program of the Socialist Revolutionary Party contained demands for the introduction of democratic rights and freedoms in Russia - the convening of a Constituent Assembly, the establishment of a republic with autonomy for regions and communities on a federal basis, the introduction of universal voting rights and democratic freedoms (speech, press, conscience, assembly, unions, separation of church and state, universal free education, destruction of the standing army, introduction of an 8-hour working day, social insurance at the expense of the state and the owners of enterprises, the organization of trade unions.

Considering political freedom and democracy to be the main prerequisites for socialism in Russia, they recognized the importance of mass movements in achieving them. But in matters of tactics, the Socialist Revolutionaries stipulated that the struggle for the implementation of the program would be carried out “in forms corresponding to the specific conditions of Russian reality,” which implied the use of the entire arsenal of means of struggle, including individual terror.

The leadership of the Socialist Revolutionary Party was entrusted to the Central Committee (Central Committee). There were special commissions under the Central Committee: peasant and workers. military, literary, etc. Special rights in the structure of the organization were vested in the Council of members of the Central Committee, representatives of the Moscow and St. Petersburg committees and regions (the first meeting of the Council was held in May 1906, the last, the tenth in August 1921). Structural parts of the party were also the “Peasant Union” (since 1902), the “Union folk teachers"(since 1903), separate workers' unions (since 1903). Members of the Socialist Revolutionary Party took part in the Paris Conference of Opposition and Revolutionary Parties (autumn 1904) and the Geneva Conference of Revolutionary Parties (April 1905).

By the beginning of the revolution of 1905–1907, over 40 Socialist Revolutionary committees and groups were operating in Russia, uniting about 2.5 thousand people, mostly intellectuals; more than a quarter of the composition were workers and peasants. Members of the BO party were engaged in the delivery of weapons to Russia, created dynamite workshops, and organized fighting squads. The party leadership was inclined to consider the publication of the Manifesto on October 17, 1905 as the beginning of the constitutional order, so it was decided to dissolve the BO of the party as not corresponding to the constitutional regime. Together with other left-wing parties, the Social Revolutionaries co-organized the Labor Group consisting of deputies of the First State Duma (1906), which actively participated in the development of projects related to land use. In the Second State Duma, the Socialist Revolutionaries were represented by 37 deputies, who were especially active in debates on the agrarian issue. At that time, the left wing separated from the party (creating the “Union of Socialist-Revolutionary Maximalists”) and the right wing (“People’s Socialists” or “Enesy”). At the same time, the size of the party increased in 1907 to 50–60 thousand people; and the number of workers and peasants in it reached 90%.

However, the lack of ideological unity became one of the main factors explaining the organizational weakness of the Socialist Revolutionary Party in the climate of political reaction of 1907–1910. A number of prominent figures, and above all B.V. Savinkov, tried to overcome the tactical and organizational crisis that arose in the party after the exposure of the provocative activities of E.F. Azef at the end of 1908 - beginning of 1909. The crisis of the party was aggravated by the Stolypin agrarian reform, which strengthened the sense of ownership among the peasants and undermined the foundations of Socialist Revolutionary agrarian socialism. In a situation of crisis in the country and in the party, many of its leaders, disillusioned with the idea of ​​preparing terrorist attacks, focused almost entirely on literary activity. Its fruits were published by legal Socialist Revolutionary newspapers - “Son of the Fatherland”, “Narodny Vestnik”, “Working People”.

After the victory of the February Revolution of 1917, the Socialist Revolutionary Party became completely legal, influential, mass, and one of the ruling parties in the country. In terms of growth rates, the Socialist Revolutionaries were ahead of other political parties: by the summer of 1917 there were about 1 million people, united in 436 organizations in 62 provinces, in the fleets and at the fronts active army. Entire villages, regiments and factories joined the Socialist Revolutionary Party that year. These were peasants, soldiers, workers, intellectuals, petty officials and officers, students who had little idea about the theoretical guidelines of the party, its goals and objectives. The range of views was enormous - from Bolshevik-anarchist to Menshevik-ENES. Some hoped to gain personal benefit from membership in the most influential party and joined for selfish reasons (they were later called the “March Social Revolutionaries”, since they announced their membership after the Tsar’s abdication in March 1917).

The internal history of the Socialist Revolutionary Party in 1917 is characterized by the formation of three currents in it - right, center and left.

The right Socialist Revolutionaries (E. Breshko-Breshkovskaya, A. Kerensky, B. Savinkov) believed that the issue of socialist reconstruction was not on the agenda and therefore believed it was necessary to focus on issues of democratization of the political system and forms of ownership. The right were supporters of coalition governments, “defencism” in foreign policy. The Right Socialist Revolutionaries and Popular Socialist Party (since 1917 – the Labor People's Socialist Party) were even represented in the Provisional Government, in particular A.F. Kerensky was first the Minister of Justice (March-April 1917), then the Minister of War and Navy (in the 1st and 2nd coalition governments), and from September 1917 - the head of the 3rd coalition government. Other right-wing Social Revolutionaries also participated in the coalition composition of the Provisional Government: N.D. Avksentyev (Minister of Internal Affairs in the 2nd composition), B.V. Savinkov (administrator of the Military and Naval Ministry in the 1st and 2nd composition) .

The Left Socialist Revolutionaries who disagreed with them (M. Spiridonova, B. Kamkov and others, who published their articles in the newspapers “Delo Naroda”, “Land and Freedom”, “Banner of Labor”) believed the current situation was possible for a “breakthrough to socialism”, and therefore they advocated the immediate transfer of all land to the peasants. They considered the world revolution capable of ending the war, and therefore some of them called (like the Bolsheviks) not to trust the Provisional Government, to go to the end, until democracy was established.

However, the general course of the party was determined by the centrists (V. Chernov and S.L. Maslov).

From February to July-August 1917, the Socialist Revolutionaries actively worked in the Councils of Workers', Soldiers' and Sailors' Deputies, considering them "necessary to continue the revolution and consolidate fundamental freedoms and democratic principles" in order to "push" the Provisional Government along the path of reforms, and at the Constituent Assembly - to ensure the implementation of its decisions. If the right Socialist Revolutionaries refused to support the Bolshevik slogan “All power to the Soviets!” and considered the coalition government a necessary condition and a means to overcome the devastation and chaos in the economy, win the war and bring the country to the Constituent Assembly, then the left saw the salvation of Russia in a breakthrough to socialism through the creation of a “homogeneous socialist government” based on a bloc of labor and socialist parties. During the summer of 1917 they actively participated in the work of land committees and local councils in various provinces of Russia.

The October Revolution of 1917 was carried out with the active assistance of the Left Socialist Revolutionaries. Decree on land, adopted by the Bolsheviks at the Second Congress of Soviets on October 26, 1917, legitimized what was done by the Soviets and land committees: the seizure of land from landowners, the royal house and wealthy peasants. His text included Order on land, formulated by the Left Social Revolutionaries on the basis of 242 local orders (“Private ownership of land is abolished forever. All lands are transferred to the disposal of local councils”). Thanks to the coalition with the left Socialist Revolutionaries, the Bolsheviks were able to quickly establish new power in the countryside: the peasants believed that the Bolsheviks were the very “maximalists” who approved of their “black redistribution” of the land.

The Right Socialist Revolutionaries, on the contrary, did not accept the October events, regarding them as “a crime against the homeland and the revolution.” From the ruling party, after the Bolsheviks seized power, they again became the opposition. While the left wing of the Socialist Revolutionaries (about 62 thousand people) transformed into the “Party of Left Socialist Revolutionaries (Internationalists)” and delegated several of its representatives to the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, the right wing did not lose hope of overthrowing the power of the Bolsheviks. Late autumn In 1917 they organized a revolt of cadets in Petrograd, tried to recall their deputies from the Soviets, and opposed the conclusion of peace between Russia and Germany.

The last congress of the Socialist Revolutionary Party in history worked from November 26 to December 5, 1917. Its leadership refused to recognize “the Bolshevik socialist revolution and the Soviet government as not recognized by the country.”

During the elections to the Constituent Assembly, the Socialist Revolutionaries received 58% of the votes, at the expense of voters from the agricultural provinces. On the eve of its convening, the right-wing Socialist Revolutionaries planned “the seizure of the entire Bolshevik head” (meaning the murder of V.I. Lenin and L.D. Trotsky), but they were afraid that such actions could lead to “a reverse wave of terror against the intelligentsia.” On January 5, 1918, the Constituent Assembly began its work. The head of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, V.M. Chernov, was elected its chairman (244 votes against 151). The Bolshevik Ya.M. Sverdlov, who came to the meeting, proposed to approve the document drawn up by V.I. Lenin Declaration of the Rights of Workers and Exploited People, but only 146 deputies voted for this proposal. As a sign of protest, the Bolsheviks left the meeting, and on the morning of January 6 - when V.M. Chernov read Draft Basic Law on Land– forced to stop reading and leave the room.

After the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly, the Socialist Revolutionaries decided to abandon conspiratorial tactics and wage an open struggle against Bolshevism, consistently winning back the masses, taking part in the activities of any legal organizations - Soviets, All-Russian Congresses of Land Committees, Congresses of Women Workers, etc. After the conclusion of the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty in March 1918, one of the first places in the propaganda of the Social Revolutionaries was occupied by the idea of ​​​​restoring the integrity and independence of Russia. True, the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries continued in the spring of 1918 to look for compromise ways in relations with the Bolsheviks, until the creation of the Committees of Poor People and the confiscation of grain from the peasants the Bolsheviks overflowed their cup of patience. This resulted in the rebellion on July 6, 1918 - an attempt to provoke a military conflict with Germany in order to break the shameful Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and at the same time stop the development of the “socialist revolution in the countryside,” as the Bolsheviks called it (the introduction of surplus appropriation and the forcible confiscation of grain “surplus” from the peasants). The rebellion was suppressed, the Left Socialist Revolutionary Party split into “populist communists” (existed until November 1918) and “revolutionary communists” (existed until 1920, when they decided to merge with the RCP (b)). Individual groups The left Socialist Revolutionaries did not join either one or the other newly formed parties and continued to fight the Bolsheviks, demanding the abolition of emergency commissions, revolutionary committees, committees of the poor, food detachments, and surplus appropriation.

At this time, the right Socialist Revolutionaries, having proposed in May 1918 to begin an armed struggle against Soviet power with the goal of “planting the banner of the Constituent Assembly” in the Volga region and the Urals, managed to create (with the help of rebel Czechoslovak prisoners of war) by June 1918 in Samara a Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly (Komuch) headed by V.K. Volsky. These actions were regarded by the Bolsheviks as counter-revolutionary, and on June 14, 1918 they expelled the Right Socialist Revolutionaries from the All-Russian Central Executive Committee.

From that time on, the right Socialist Revolutionaries embarked on the path of creating numerous conspiracies and terrorist acts, participated in military revolts in Yaroslavl, Murom, Rybinsk, in the assassination attempts: June 20 - on the member of the presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee V.M. Volodarsky, on August 30 on the chairman of the Petrograd Extraordinary Commission ( Cheka) M.S. Uritsky in Petrograd and on the same day - on V.I. Lenin in Moscow.

The Socialist Revolutionary Siberian Regional Duma in Tomsk declared Siberia an autonomous region, creating a Provisional Siberian Government with a center in Vladivostok and a branch (West Siberian Commissariat) in Omsk. The latter, with the approval of the Siberian Regional Duma, transferred government functions in June 1918 to the coalition Siberian government led by former cadet P.A. Vologodsky.

In September 1918 in Ufa, at a meeting of anti-Bolshevik regional governments and groups, the Right Socialist Revolutionaries formed a coalition (with the Cadets) Ufa Directory - the Provisional All-Russian Government. Of its 179 members, 100 were Social Revolutionaries, many famous figures of previous years (N.D. Avksentyev, V.M. Zenzinov) entered the management of the directory. In October 1918, Komuch ceded power to the Directory, under which the Congress of Members of the Constituent Assembly, which did not have any real administrative resources, was created. In those same years, the Government of Autonomous Siberia operated in the Far East, and the Supreme Administration of the Northern Region operated in Arkhangelsk. All of them, which included right-wing Social Revolutionaries, actively abolished Soviet decrees, especially those relating to land, liquidated Soviet institutions and considered themselves a “third force” in relation to the Bolsheviks and the White Movement.

The monarchist forces, led by Admiral A.V. Kolchak, were suspicious of their activities. On November 18, 1918, they overthrew the Directory and formed the Siberian government. The top of the Socialist Revolutionary groups that were part of the Directory - N.D. Avksentyev, V.M. Zenzinov, A.A. Argunov - were arrested and expelled by A.V. Kolchak from Russia. They all reached Paris, marking the beginning of the last wave of Socialist Revolutionary emigration there.

The scattered Socialist Revolutionary groups that remained out of action tried to compromise with the Bolsheviks, admitting their mistakes. The Soviet government temporarily used them (not to the right of the center) for its own tactical purposes. In February 1919, it even legalized the Socialist Revolutionary Party with its center in Moscow, but a month later the persecution of the Socialist Revolutionaries was resumed and arrests began. Meanwhile, the Socialist Revolutionary Plenum of the Central Committee tried in April 1919 to restore the party. He admitted that the participation of the Social Revolutionaries in the Ufa Directory and in regional governments, expressed a negative attitude towards foreign intervention in Russia. However, the majority of those present believed that the Bolsheviks “rejected the basic principles of socialism - freedom and democracy, replaced them with the dictatorship of the minority over the majority, and thereby excluded themselves from the ranks of socialism.”

Not everyone agreed with these conclusions. The deepening split in the party was along the lines of recognizing the power of the Soviets or fighting against it. Thus, the Ufa organization of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, in an appeal published in August 1919, called for recognizing the Bolshevik government and uniting with it. The People group, led by former chairman Samara Komuch V.K. Volsky, called on the “labor masses” to support the Red Army in the fight against Denikin. Supporters of V.K. Volsky in October 1919 announced their disagreement with the line of the Central Committee of their party and the creation of the group “Minority of the Socialist Revolutionary Party”.

In 1920–1921 during the war with Poland and the offensive of General. P.N. Wrangel, the Central Committee of the Socialist Revolutionary Party called on, without stopping the fight against the Bolsheviks, to devote all efforts to the defense of the homeland. He rejected participation in the party mobilization announced by the Revolutionary Military Council, but condemned the sabotage of volunteer detachments that carried out raids during the war with Poland on Soviet territory, in which convinced right-wing Socialist Revolutionaries and, above all, B.V. Savinkov participated.

After graduation Civil War the Socialist Revolutionary Party found itself in an illegal position; its numbers sharply decreased, most organizations collapsed, many members of the Central Committee were in prison. In June 1920, the Central Organizational Bureau of the Central Committee was created, uniting the members of the Central Committee who survived the arrests and other influential party members. In August 1921, the last in the history of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, the 10th Party Council, was held in Samara, which defined the “organization of the forces of labor democracy” as the immediate task. By this time, most of the prominent figures of the party, including one of its founders, V.M. Chernov, had long been in exile. Those who remained in Russia tried to organize a non-party Union of the Working Peasantry and declared their support for the rebellious Kronstadt (where the slogan “For Soviets without Communists” was raised).

In the conditions of the post-war development of the country, the Socialist Revolutionary alternative to this development, which provided for the democratization of not only economic, but also political life country could become attractive to the broad masses. Therefore, the Bolsheviks hastened to discredit the policies and ideas of the Socialist Revolutionaries. With great haste, “cases” began to be fabricated against former allies and like-minded people who did not have time to leave abroad. On the basis of completely fictitious facts, the Socialist Revolutionaries were accused of preparing a “general uprising” in the country, sabotage, destruction of grain reserves and other criminal actions; they were called (following V.I. Lenin) “avant-garde of reaction.” In August 1922, in Moscow, the Supreme Tribunal of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee tried 34 representatives of the Socialist Revolutionary Party: 12 of them (including old party leaders - A.R. Gots and others) were sentenced to death, the rest received prison sentences from 2 to 10 years . With arrest in 1925 last composition The Central Bank of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, it practically ceased to exist in Russia.

In Revel, Paris, Berlin, and Prague, the Socialist Revolutionary emigration, led by the Foreign Delegation of the Party, continued to operate. In 1926 it split, as a result of which groups emerged: V.M. Chernov (who created the “League of the New East” in 1927), A.F. Kerensky, V.M. Zenzinov and others. The activities of these groups had almost come to a standstill by the early 1930s. Some excitement was brought only by discussions about events in their homeland: some of those who left completely rejected collective farms, others saw in them similarities with communal self-government.

During the Second World War, some emigrant Socialist Revolutionaries advocated unconditional support for the Soviet Union. Some leaders of the Socialist Revolutionary Party participated in the French resistance movement and died in fascist concentration camps. Others - for example, S.N. Nikolaev, S.P. Postnikov - after the liberation of Prague agreed to return to their homeland, but, having received “sentences”, were forced to serve their sentences until 1956.

During the war years, the Paris and Prague groups of the Socialist Revolutionary Party ceased to exist. A number of leaders moved from France to New York (N.D. Avksentyev, V.M. Zenzinov, V.M. Chernov, etc.). A new center of Socialist Revolutionary emigration was formed there. In March 1952, an appeal appeared from 14 Russian socialists: three Socialist Revolutionary Party members (Chernov, Zenzinov, M.V. Vishnyak), eight Mensheviks and three non-party socialists. It said that history had removed from the order of the day all controversial issues that divided the socialists and expressed the hope that in the future “post-Bolshevik Russia” there should be one “broad, tolerant, humanitarian and freedom-loving socialist party.”

Irina Pushkareva