Party of Left Socialist Revolutionaries

After the February Revolution of 1917, the left wing of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, united around the newspaper Zemlya i Volya , came up with anti-war slogans. At the Third Congress of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party (May-June 1917), the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries formed the so-called "Left Opposition", declaring their political differences with the Central Committee of the Party. Left Social Revolutionaries demanded:

• to condemn the war as imperialist and immediately get out of it;
• stop cooperation of the Social Revolutionary Party with the Provisional Government ;
• immediately solve the land issue in accordance with the party program, transferring land to the peasants.

In October 1917, the Left Socialist Revolutionaries entered the Military Revolutionary Committee of the Petrograd Soviet created at the suggestion of L. D. Trotsky and took part in the October armed uprising; supported the Bolshevik party at the II All-Russian Congress of Soviets on October 25–27 (November 7–9) 1917, refusing to leave the congress with the right-wing Social Revolutionaries, voted for his decisions and became a member of the All -Russian Central Executive Committee - the All-Russian Central Executive Committee.

Right-wing Socialist-Revolutionaries refused to participate in the work of the II All-Russian Congress of Soviets and did not support the new government. On October 27 (November 9), 1917, the AKP Central Committee, the majority of which belonged to the right and the center, adopted a decision to expel from the party "all who took part in the Bolshevik adventure and did not leave the Congress of Soviets" ^[1] . Disagreements within the Socialist Revolutionary Party gradually intensified and led initially to the formation of a Left Socialist Revolutionary faction, and after the October Revolution to the final split and the creation of a new party. ^[2] At the end of November, this decision was confirmed by the Fourth Congress of the AKP . The Left Social Revolutionaries in December 1917 organizationally took shape in an independent party.

In general, supporting the Bolsheviks, the Left Social Revolutionaries, however, at first refused to enter the Soviet government - the Council of People's Commissars (SNK), demanding the creation of a "homogeneous socialist government" - from representatives of all socialist parties. Nevertheless, already at the end of 1917, representatives of the Left Socialist Revolutionary Party entered the SNK, heading the People’s Commissariats for Agriculture ( Kolegaev ), property ( Karelin ), Justice (Steinberg), post offices and telegraphs ( Proshyan ), local government ( Trutovsky ), and Algasov received the post of People’s Commissar without a briefcase.

Many representatives of the Left Socialist Revolutionary Party participated in the creation of the Red Army , in the work of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission ( VChK ). At the same time, on a number of fundamental issues, the Left Social Revolutionaries at the very beginning disagreed with the Bolsheviks.

The gap already occurred in February 1918 - at a meeting of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee on February 23, the Left Social Revolutionaries voted against the signing of the Brest Peace with Germany , and then, at the Fourth Extraordinary Congress of Soviets (March 14-16, 1918) - and against its ratification . Since their opinion was not taken into account, the Left Socialist Revolutionaries withdrew from the SNK and announced the termination of the agreement with the Bolsheviks. At the same time, they continued to work in the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and other Soviet institutions.

Meanwhile, decrees adopted by the Soviet government on the committees of the poor hit the interests of the main social base of the Left Socialist Revolutionaries - the laboring peasantry. In this connection, in June 1918, the Central Committee of the Left Socialist Revolutionary Party and the Third Party Congress decided to use all available means in order to "straighten the line of Soviet policy."

At the Fifth All-Russian Congress of Soviets (July 4–10, 1918), the Left Socialist Revolutionaries, being in the minority (about 353 out of 1,164 deputies = 30%), openly opposed their former Bolshevik allies. Having not received support, they embarked on "active" actions. On July 6, 1918, the Left Social Revolutionaries Yakov Blyumkin and Nikolai Andreev killed the German ambassador Mirbach in Moscow. Further, several Bolsheviks were arrested by the leaders of the Left Socialist Revolutionaries, including the chairman of the Cheka, Dzerzhinsky , and the telegraph and main post office were seized (see Uprising of the Left Socialist Revolutionaries ). This was regarded by the Bolsheviks as an attempt to overthrow the Soviet regime and was the reason for the arrest at the Congress of the Left Socialist Revolutionary faction in full force (as well as representatives of all other parties except the Bolsheviks).

According to another version, and as it follows from the letter of the leader of the Left Social Revolutionaries Maria Spiridonova, the murder of Mirbach was a personal initiative of several leaders of the Social Revolutionaries, and there was no rebellion, and all further actions of the Left Social Revolutionaries were "self-defense". However, it was beneficial for the Bolsheviks to use the assassination of the ambassador as a pretext for defeating the last opposition party ^[3] . For many historians, precisely July 1918 is considered the milestone of the final formation of a one-party Bolshevik dictatorship in the country, since after July 1918 the representation of other parties in the soviets became insignificant ^{[4] [5] [6] [7]} .

After the uprising was suppressed, the Fifth All-Russian Congress of Soviets decided to exclude the Left Social Revolutionaries from the Soviets, who supported the political line of the Central Committee of their party.

A significant part of the rank and file of the Left Socialist Revolutionary Party and some party leaders did not support the actions of their leadership. The party split, and in September 1918 the Party of Narodnik Communists and the Party of Revolutionary Communism stood out from it, some of whose members subsequently joined the RCP (B.). Part of the Left Socialist Revolutionaries engaged in an underground struggle against the power of the Bolsheviks, took part in the uprisings for universal self-government and purified Soviet power, which was not controlled by political parties.

A number of Left Social Revolutionaries, such as Alexander Antonov , played a significant political and military role during the Civil War , adjoining the green rebels and fighting both the Bolsheviks and the White Guards .

In the years 1919-1923. Left Social Revolutionaries divided into a number of factions. Left Social Revolutionaries (activists) took part in armed demonstrations against the leadership of the Soviet Union (leaders: Donat Cherepanov , Maria Spiridonova , Boris Kamkov ). The legalist movement, led by Isaac Steinberg, advocated only public criticism of the Bolsheviks and the struggle against them by peaceful means. In the years 1922-1923. the legalist movement merged with the Socialist-Revolutionary-Maximalist groups and the Socialist-Revolutionary group "People" in the Association of Left Narodism (OLN).

In the 1930s, many Left Socialist Revolutionaries and Left Narodniks were repressed. During the " great terror " of the leaders of the PLSR were shot: B. D. Kamkov, V. A. Karelin, A. L. Kolegaev, V. A. Algasov, A. A. Bitsenko , Yu. V. Sablin . Arrested in the late 30s and shot in September 1941 near Orel: M. A. Spiridonova, I. A. Mayorov .

In the field of the political and economic program, the Left Social Revolutionaries, after the Fourth Party Congress (September-October 1918), moved to positions close to anarchism and revolutionary syndicalism (syndical-cooperative federation). In their opinion, industrial enterprises should be transferred to the self-government of labor collectives, united in a common federation of manufacturers. Consumption had to be organized through a union of cooperatives - local self-governing consumer societies, also united in a common federation. Economic life should be organized by the joint arrangements of these two associations, for which it was necessary to create special economic councils, elected from production and consumer organizations. Political and military power should have been concentrated in the hands of political councils elected by the working people on a territorial basis.

The Ukrainian Left Socialist Revolutionaries ( Yakov Brown , Mikhail Shelonin) believed that along with economic and political councils (elections there are based on production or territorial grounds without distinction of ethnicity, that is, jointly and mixedly working people of all nationalities), councils on ethnic affairs, elected by representatives of various ethnic communities of workers - Jews, Ukrainians, Russians, Greeks, etc., which, in their opinion, is especially relevant for multinational Ukraine.

Each person received the right to freely "enroll" in any community of his choice - ethnicity was considered by the Left Social Revolutionaries to be a matter of free self-determination of a person, the result of his personal choice, and not a question of blood. The ethnic councils of workers, forming, as it were, the third chamber of power of councils, were to deal with the development of culture, schools, institutions, educational systems in local languages, etc.

• Gusev K.V. The collapse of the party of the Left Social Revolutionaries. - M .: Sotsekgiz, 1963 .-- 259 p.
• Left SRs: program and tactics (some issues) / Litvin A. L. , Ovrutsky L. M. - Kazan: Kazan.un-ta Publishing House, 1992. - 143 p.
• Left SRs and the Cheka: Sat. doc / Comp. V.K. Vinogradov and others; Scientific ed. A.L. Litvin. - Kazan: NTK, 1996 .-- 509 p.
• Leontyev Y. V. "Scythians" of the Russian revolution. The party of the Left Socialist Revolutionaries and its literary companions. - M.: AIRO-XX, 2007 .-- 328 p.
• Felshtinsky Yu. G. Bolsheviks and Left Social Revolutionaries. October 1917 - July 1918. - Paris: Imka-Press, 1985. - 287 p.

• Spiridonova M. A. Open letter to the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party
• Insarov M. Left SRs - fighters for Soviet power and against state capitalism
• List of bibliography on the Left Socialist Revolutionaries