Left Social Revolutionaries
The Left Social Revolutionaries ( Russian Партия левых социалистов-революционеров , German transcription: Partija lewych socijalistow-rewoljuzionerow ) were a Russian revolutionary party that split from the Social Revolution in the years 1917 to 1921 .
history
In 1917 the Social Revolutionary Party split into two factions. One supported the Provisional Government established after the February Revolution led by Kerensky, and the other sided with the Bolsheviks , who favored a communist uprising. Maria Spiridonova was a prominent leader in this group.
However, the left socialist revolutionaries initially refused to join the Council of People's Commissars , which was established on November 7, 1917 as a result of the October Revolution . From December 8th, the Left Social Revolutionary Party entered into a coalition government with the Bolsheviks under Lenin , which also corresponded to the wishes of some actors around Lenin. A total of eight Left Social Revolutionaries entered the government. Including the People's Commissariats for Agriculture ( Andrei Kolegajew ), Property ( Wladimir Karelin ), Justice ( Isaac Nachman Steinberg ), Post Office and Telegraph ( Prosch Proschjan ). Vladimir Trutovsky and Vladimir Algassov became People's Commissars without portfolios .
The peace of Brest-Litovsk in the First World War between Soviet Russia and the Central Powers on March 3, 1918 divided the two coalition partners again. Anastasia Bizenko was the only representative of the Left Social Revolutionaries involved. Shortly afterwards, the Left Social Revolutionaries left the coalition again, as they supported a continuation of the war.
From 1918 the Bolsheviks were openly opposed by the Left Social Revolutionaries. A significant part of the base of the Left Socialist Revolutionary Party and some party leaders did not support the actions of their leadership. In June 1918 they organized an armed uprising , which began with the assassination of the German diplomat Count Wilhelm von Mirbach-Harff on July 6, 1918 in Moscow , which was intended to provoke an offensive by the Germans , which in turn provoked the "revolutionary war" should. The party was defeated militarily and its leaders convicted in 1918.
fragmentation
The party subsequently split, and in September 1918 the Narodnik Communist Party and the Revolutionary Communism Party split from it, some members of which later joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union . Part of the left socialist revolutionaries, embroiled in an underground struggle against the rule of the Bolsheviks, took part in uprisings for universal self-government and limited Soviet power, which was not controlled by political parties.
A number of left SRs such as Alexander Antonov played significant political and military roles during the Russian Civil War, joining the Green Army and fighting both the Bolsheviks and the White Guard .
In the years 1919–1923 the remnants of the party had broken up into a number of factions. The “activists” of the Left Social Revolutionaries, led by Donat Cherepanov , Marija Spiridonova and Boris Kamkov , took part in armed demonstrations against the leadership of the Soviet Union. The “legalist” movement, led by Isaak Steinberg , advocated public criticism of the Bolsheviks and the fight against them only by peaceful means. The final formal dissolution of the party followed in 1921. In the years 1922–1923 the legalist movement united with the socialist-revolutionary-maximalist groups and the socialist-revolutionary group “People” (Narod) to unite left narodism (Objedinenije lewowo narodnitschestwa, OLN).
In the 1930s, many left socialist revolutionaries and left narodniki were subjected to repression. During the great purge , all former Left Social Revolutionary leaders were arrested and shot.
literature
- Lara Douds: 'The dictatorship of the democracy'? The Council of People's Commissars as Bolshevik-Left Socialist Revolutionary coalition government, December 1917 – March 1918 . In: Historical Research 90, Issue 247 (2017), pp. 32–56.
- Lutz Häfner: The party of the left social revolutionaries in the Russian revolution of 1917/18 . Böhlau, Cologne / Vienna / Weimar 1994.
Individual evidence
- ^ A b Leonard Schapiro : Party and State in the Soviet Union , Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 1965, (number of pages missing).
- ^ Kronstadt and Machno Movement. International Socialists ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . P. 9 (PDF; 252 kB).
- ↑ cf. Lutz Häfner: The Assassination of Count Mirbach and the "July Uprising" of the Left Socialist Revolutionaries in Moscow, 1918 . In: Russian Review . 50, No. 3, July 1991, pp. 324-344.
- ↑ Michail Shatrow : The Peace of Brest-Litovsk. Kiepenheuer and Witsch, Cologne 1991, p. 367 (glossary by Friedrich Hitzer; historical novel; translated from the Russian by Friedrich Hitzer ).
