Abstract
At the time of the bolshevik revolution the left wing of the Socialist Revolutionaries offered its support to the Bolsheviks and soon after set itself up as a separate political party. In December 1917 its members formed a coalition with the new ruling party; on 6 July of the following year they were fighting the Bolsheviks in the streets of Moscow and Petrograd. These Socialist Revolutionaries had been won over to the Bolsheviks by their resolute policies on peace and on the land question. The gulf between the non-marxist Socialist Revolutionaries and the Bolsheviks was in reality far greater than that between the marxist internationalist Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks. Yet, carried away by enthusiasm in which emotion predominated over reason, the more extreme Socialist Revolutionaries attempted a union which the greater foresight of Martov’s left menshevik group realized was impossible.
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Notes
Proletarskaya revolyutsiya, no. 10 (69), 1927, pp. 296–8.
P. Lavrov, Gosudarstvennyy element v budushchem obshchestve (1876), p. 175 of the edition published in Petrograd in 1920.
If they can be blamed for not resisting more actively the ever-increasing bolshevik lawlessness at a time when they were still in a position to do so, it is to their credit that one of their few leaders to escape, Steinberg, later admitted this failure in moral courage. See Nravstvennyy lik revolyutsii, p. 31 (1923).
Znamya truda, 20 (7) February 1918. It was written on 29 and 30 January—see A. Blok, Polnoe sobranie stikhotvoreniy, Vol. I, p. 678. It was the last poem of importance which Blok wrote before his death in 1921. In addition to Blok, Andrey Bely, Esenin, Remizov, and Kluev contributed to the left socialist revolutionary papers. Together with R. Ivanov-Razumnik they formed in 1917 a literary group known as Skify (‘the Scythians’)—see the latter’s Pisatel’skie sud’by, New York, 1951, p. 3.
See Chicherin, p. 9. The negotiations did not start until the end of May. Milyukov suggests, from private information, that the Germans had already concerted a plot with anti-Communists to seize Moscow, fixed for mid-June, and that the plan was suddenly called off on 18 June—see P. Milyukov, Rossiya na perelome, Vol, II, pp. 20–3
Krasnaya kniga, p. 321. An account of the event by A. Minichev in krasnaya letopis’, No. 1 (25), 1928, pp. 65–9, also confirms that there was no planned rising. In a private letter from prison later Spiridonova wrote: ‘How is one to persuade them that there was no plot, no rising? … I am beginning to believe they have convinced themselves of it … and now believe it. After all they are maniacs.’ See Kreml’ za reshetkoy, p. 13. See also Steinberg, Spiridonova, pp. 214 ff., for an account of the July events.
Helfferich, Vol. III, pp. 469–70; when Helfferich, Mirbach’s successor, complained at the end of July to Chicherin, he was met with the reply that Russia was a revolutionary state where freedom of speech prevailed and the Soviet government was powerless to take any action (ibid., p. 482). cf. Lenin, Vol. XXIII, pp. 257–8, for a German note of 5 November 1918.
For an account of events in Petrograd guberniya (province), see A. Kuzmin, in Krasnaya letopis’, no. 3 (27), 1928, at p. 246; for the Left Socialist Revolutionaries in the Petrograd Soviet see a spirited illegal leaflet, undated (but apparently after February 1919, in view of the reference to Spiridonova’s recent re-arrest, which took place in February 1919), headed ‘Otvet fraktsii levykh S-r Petrogradskomu Sovetu na zapros ot 14-go fevralya’, in the British Museum.
See Voennoe delo, no. 3 (32), 31 January 1919, p. 174; Il’in-Zhenevsky, Bol’sheviki u vlasti, pp. 145–6; and I. Flerovsky in Proletarskaya revolyutsiya, 1926, no. 55 (8), pp. 218 ff., for the revolt of the Baltic sailors; and for the Moscow explosion see M. M. Pokrovsky, Oktyabr’skaya revolyutsiya, pp. 362–8; Krasnaya kniga Vecheka, pp. 391 ff., and Pravda, 6 November 1919.
Znamya, no. 1 (3), April 1920. This periodical first reappeared legally early in 1919, but was closed down after two issues (see Postnikov, p. 392).
On Esenin see his Stikhotvoreniya, 1910–1925, Paris, n.d., pp. 5–19. For a moving account of Blok’s last years and his bitter remorse regarding The Twelve, see G. Ivanov, Peterburgskie zimy, New York, 1952, pp. 208–10.
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© 1977 Leonard Schapiro
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Schapiro, L. (1977). The Left Socialist Revolutionaries. In: The Origin of the Communist Autocracy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-09509-4_7
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