What was the Socialist Revolutionary Party of Russia?

[Bala Perdida]

As far as I know they formed in the early 1900's, around 1901-1905, and they where a very influential group up until the Russian revolution when the Bolsheviks took power. They seemed to be part of the Russian provisional government and tried to form a bond with the Bolsheviks, but where later at odds.
Their activities seemed to be militant from what I heard, in that they participated or attempted assassinations. Lenin's would-be assassin, Fanny Kaplan, was a member of this party. Ideologically they seemed to be anywhere from democratic socialist to Marxists. They where very agrarian in they're socialist ideals, which led them to have overwhelming support from the peasantry.
So, any broader information on this party? Where they a positive or negative organization in your opinion? Why did they fail to take power/gain influence?

[ArisVelouxiotis]

They were part of the provisional goverment.I think that says pretty much everything.I don't think they were marxists though.Maybe a few of them

[radiocaroline]

With the amount of leftist parties at the time, they seem like they didn't really have a unanimous collective ideology and were as you say more of a militant organisation, which I'd probably say led to their failure in gaining influence and support from the Bolsheviks

[Bala Perdida]

I just heard they ran elections in the provisional government and held more seats than the Bolsheviks. They where made at the time as a collective of different ideologies, to try to unite the socialist left.

[boiler]

I think they may have had a guerrilla section, I think they pulled off a few assassinations. I know they stiffed a couple of Bolsheviks. But I'm not sure if they were at this type of thing before the October Revolution. There was a group of left socialist revolutionaries that supported the Bolsheviks in the October revolution.

[Dave B]

The political program of the Socialist Revolutionaries (1905)
In 1905 the Socialist Revolutionary party (SRs) drafted a political manifesto, outlining its objectives:

The Socialist Revolutionary Party of Russia views its task as an organic, component part of a universal struggle of labour against the exploitation of human dignity, against all barriers that prevent its development into social forms, and conducts it in the spirit of general interests of that struggle in ways that are determined by concrete conditions of Russian reality.

Since the process of the transformation of Russia is led by non-socialist forces, the Socialist Revolutionary Party, on the basis of the above principles will advocate, defend, and seek by its revolutionary struggle the following reforms:

In the matters of politics:

The establishment of a democratic republic with broad autonomy for oblasts and communes, both urban and rural.

Increased acceptance of federal principles in relations between various nationalities, granting them unconditional right to self-determination.

Direct, secret, equal, and universal right to vote for every citizen above twenty years of age regardless of sex, religion, or national origin.

Proportional representation; direct popular legislation (referenda and initiatives); election, removability at all times, and accountability of all officials.

Complete freedom of conscience, speech, press, meetings, strikes, and unions; complete and general civil equality inviolability of the individual and home; complete separation of the church from the state and declaration that religion is a private affair for every individual.

The introduction of a compulsory, general public education at government expense; equality of languages.

Abolition of permanent armies and their replacement by a people’s militia.

In the matters of economics:

A reduction of the working time in order to relieve surplus labour.

Establishment of a legal maximum of working time based on norms determined by health conditions (an eight-hour working norm for most branches of industry as soon as possible, and lower norms for work which is dangerous or harmful to health).

Establishment of a minimum wage in agreement between administration and labour unions.

Complete government insurance (for accident, unemployment, sickness, old age, and so on), administered by the insured at the expense of the state and employers.

Legislative protection of labour in all branches of industry and trade, in accordance with the health conditions supervised by factory inspection commissions elected by workers (normal working conditions, hygienic conditions of buildings; prohibition of work for youngsters below sixteen years of age, limitation of work for youngsters, prohibition of female and child labour in some branches of industry and during specified periods, adequate and uninterrupted Sunday rest, and so forth).

Professional organisation of workers and their increased participation in determining internal rules in industrial enterprises.

In matters of agricultural policy:

Socialisation of all privately owned lands; that is, their transfer from private property of individual owners to public domain and administration by democratically organised communes and territorial associations of communes on the basis of equalised utilisation.




http://alphahistory.com/russianrevolution/the-political-program-of-the-socialist-revolutionaries-1905/#sthash.DTZwmkLT.dpbs

[Dave B]

Politically, by 1917 anyway, they were a broad church party covering a range of ideological positions that were pro peasant but not anti proletarian.

Most industrial workers in Russia at that time were at most 2nd generation peasants at best if not even peasant migrant industrial workers.

And thus still attached to the idea of the family farm back home as are many of the Asian working class in Britain today, as are the Asian working class in India for example.

The problem with the SR’s is that I think they are correctly perceived as a party of intellectuals sympathetic to the peasantry and seeking their support rather than the SR party directly reflecting the peasantry itself who probably had less sophisticated ideas than the leadership and had a more parochial local communal perspective.

They were very into Baader-Meinhof targeted assassination and ‘terrorism’ in the early 1900’s and were very successful at bumping off the most egregious members of Tsarist autocracy.

Which put them at odds with the 2nd international.

Left SR’s who had formed an alliance with the Bolsheviks from October 1917 attempted a coup against the Bolsheviks around June/July 1918?

There is a book about them re the Leninist show trial of the SR’s in 1922.

There is a not too good online copy of it below which is readable.

http://archive.org/stream/cu31924028354102/cu31924028354102_djvu.txt

They also assassinated the German Ambassador in 1918 for being a conduit of German funds for the Bolsheviks.

The left wing of the Russian SR’s look like some of these 1960’s Maoists to me.

The SR’s won the constituent assembly vote in 1917 with about 60% support I think.

[Criminalize Heterosexuality]

Socialists-Revolutionaries were in many ways a continuation of the Russian Populist ("Narodnik") movement, with some Marxist phraseology (although the Esers - Russian parties being commonly referred to by their initials, in this case SR, es-er - were also inordinately fond of "subjective sociology" and such things). But their views were fundamentally utopian-socialist, their ideology resting on an idealization of the Russian mir peasant communes and the belief in the revolutionary potential of the Russian peasantry.

Their illegal militant arm - the Combat Organization - eventually surpassed the SR Central Committee in political power, and had to be reigned in, resulting in the first of a series of splits.

From the left, or what passes for the left in this situation, the split produced the Esers-Maximists, a hyperactivist and racist group that held that class was a genetic condition (!). From the right, Popular Socialists, who denounced illegal activity altogether.

During the First World War, the anti-war wing of the party split, forming the Party of Left Socialists-Revolutionists, leaving the open chauvinists and "revolutionary defencists" like Chernov in control of the Party of Socialists-Revolutionists. PSR - the "Right Esers" - participated in the Provisional Government and the White Movement. Eventually they were banned by the Bolshevik government. PLSR formed a coalition government with the Bolsheviks after the October Revolution, but withdrew when the peace of Brest-Litovsk was signed - this decision was forced by the Central Committee over the desires of the extremely war-weary rank-and-file. The PLSR CC then tried to drag Russia back into the war by assassinating the German ambassador and trying to usurp state power through the CheKa; most of the local branches denounced this action, and the PLSR split, with the remnant loyal to the Central Committee being banned. The rest - the Party of Popular Communists etc. - mostly joined the Bolsheviks. Esers would continue to inspire peasant uprisings against the food dictatorship etc., but with the end of the civil war, the foreign intervention and peasant banditry they faded into obscurity.

[G4b3n]

It is important to remember that Kerensky was a member and as such demanded the party's loyalty. While it was composed of a good deal of radical agrarian socialism, it also had a heavy deal of liberal bourgeois influence, the roots of which were evident within the provisional government, a heavy point of criticism by Lenin among others.

[Criminalize Heterosexuality]

It is important to remember that Kerensky was a member and as such demanded the party's loyalty. While it was composed of a good deal of radical agrarian socialism, it also had a heavy deal of liberal bourgeois influence, the roots of which were evident within the provisional government, a heavy point of criticism by Lenin among others.

Technically, Kerensky was a member of the Toilers' Group, the "Trudoviki", a right-wing split from the PSR close to the Popular Socialists.

[G4b3n]

Technically, Kerensky was a member of the Toilers' Group, the "Trudoviki", a right-wing split from the PSR close to the Popular Socialists.

Yes, but it was a faction of the SRs. Support for the liberal government could be found throughout the party, though it was not official or explicit.

[Dave B]

The SR’s were a continuation of the Russian Populist ‘Narodnik’ movement; as I understand it Narodnik and Narodism means ‘populism’.

Although ‘populism’ can have two meanings ie being of the people etc and political opportunism, and saying anything to get support etc.

Fractions of them, the SR’s, which is why we have to be careful of generalisations, were utopian and anti stageists ie they had anti Marxist ‘vague and hazy’ ideas about the possibility of some kind of non capitalist/ socialist revolution in Russia.

Because they were ‘vague and hazy’ we will have to leave that there.

Criminalise Heterosexuality brings up some really interesting points with his throw away comments;

On “the Russian mir peasant communes and the belief in the revolutionary potential of the Russian peasantry” and that “that class was a genetic condition”.

Which actually has a little basis in historical fact.

But as is the usual case historical reality is unfortunately more complicated and interesting than vulgar Bolshevism.

Circa 1860 nobody, ie western intellectuals, knew much nor cared about the anthropological and economic conditions of the Russian peasantry.

Around that time some bod with a German sounding name that began with H I think travelled around the Russian hinterland and wrote a book about the Russian peasantry that caused a political storm across all spectrums.

I have not read it, but you don’t have to I think, the reaction is what is important; what this guy had ‘claimed’ to have found on the doorstep of Europe was a mass or loads of, I suppose ‘white pre-feudal’ primitive communists as in the Russian Mir communes etc.

To put it in some kind of historical context; I mean today we still stumble across this primitive communism in the likes of the Khalari bushmen or some tribes in the Amazon etc.

But this was a sensation just on the basis of quantity and proximity.

Marx and Engels of course were part of this debate ie how would European communist revolutionary movement and the accomplished revolution, deal with primitive communist societies that already had a non proletarian communist consciousness?

The 1872ish Marxist position was [ based on what they were led to believe] that these backward ‘Slavs’ would be absorbed into the European socialist Revolution which was based on and predicated on both progressive economically and socially modern industrial production etc etc.

And thus these ‘backward Slav’s’ without paying the price of having to endure, as a people, and skipping the capitalist phase would get a free ride on the backs of the suffering and advanced western workers into industrial communism.

Some leftist ‘Slav’s’ rejected this view of the ‘royal road’ to communism lies along the path of the technological development of capitalism etc.


Which is OK I think as an idea.


And that decadent capitalism was in fact antithetical to the natural and ‘genetic’ culture of Slav’s themselves who were innately communists to start with.

[Whilst the Slavophobic material from the western Marxists, like Engels, looks ‘racist’ in fact it isn’t; it is an attack on the ‘culture’- although in modern terms they are still mixed up in a nasty way as we know.]


In

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894/01/russia.htm

Engels basically retracted from their 1872 position and said that Russia and the primitive communist Mir were merely passing through the inevitable social development that the Europeans gone through 1000 years before etc.

Remnants of which still survived in the culture of the non Slavic Scottish clan system.

As it did on the Island of Saint Kilda in the outer Hebrides until the 1930’s.

There were other criticisms of the primitive communist ‘Mir’ system; as just the peasants being left to their own devices to co-operatively and superficially ‘communistically’ to organise their own necessary labour time whilst also providing surplus value in the form of taxation and feudal land rent to the ruling class etc.

Kropotkin famously used the Russian ‘Mir’ system as an example of the innate social instinct of humanity in his book ‘Mutual Aid’.

Lenin, and I am no Leninist, thought that by 1905 the Mir system had degenerated into a Kulak gang-master system at best.

The SR’s are condemned by lying Leninist historians as “Whites”.

Actually the economic and political division between the SR’s and the Landed Aristocracy or whites was greater than any other.

But some of the SR’s were it has to be said to some extent political pragmatists with an enemy of an enemy is a friend.

[Criminalize Heterosexuality]

Concerning SR-Maximalist ideas about the heredity of class, see Pavlov, Ochistka Chelovechestva ("Purge of Mankind"). As for the SR participation in the White Movement, I would merely note that in a previous thread you, yourself, provided sources concerning SR involvement in various White governments.

And to associate the Esers with a rejection of stagism is ridiculous - Chernov was one of the foremost proponents of the theory, only he called the bourgeois-democratic stage "popular-democratic". Some difference. Maximalists rejected stagism, as did some members of the PLSR. But not the main PSR, and definitely not the Toilers' Group and Popular Socialists.

Finally, concerning "primitive communism", Marx and Engels really called a lot of things "communism". In addition to the usual use - what one might call proletarian-communism - they also talked about barracks communism (in order to lampoon the Narodnik Nechayev, no less), primitive communism (which was a classless society, but emphatically not one where the entire means of production were socialized on a global scale), consumer communism ("military communism" was a play on this term) etc.

Marx never claimed that Russia might become socialist through an expansion of the mir system - that is tantamount to slander - merely that in the specific conditions that Russia found itself in in 1877, destroying the mir was no priority of progressive Russians. Marx, it needs to be said, did not seem to appreciate the squalor and oppression of the peasant commune - perhaps he had taken the good Prussian state councilor at his word a bit too readily - but his conclusion is still good. Albeit for another reason: it is no business of ours to tell the bourgeois state how to conduct its affairs. Our business is to smash it.

[bropasaran]

In 1861 Russia abolished serfdom, but the situation or the living standard of the peasant didn't really change, being that the minority that got their own land had to pay a high tax, and the rest were just turned into employees of the landowners, a lot of times the same people who were their past feudalist.

Among the people there appeared ideas called "narodnichestvo" (people-ism, or populism) and supporters were called narodniki (people-ists, populists) which just noticed the obvious situation that the peasants in being emancipated from serfdom weren't really emancipated, but that one master was replaced with another, and wanted to fight against that.

They had suggestions, either to give the land individually to the families that till it, or to give the land to the village as a whole which would function democratically. There were villages like that before, they were called "obshchina"s (a word for municipality) and they either tilled the entire village land collectively, or they rotated the parcels among household from year to year, and the products were managed collectivelly and democratically on village assemblies. Also, to mention, in the villages where peasants would all possess land individually, there would be some collective measures, just like a lot of villages had throughout centuries, e.g. every (better off) peasant giving a tithe to the village warehouse that would be used to help peasants who have a smaller yield; collective mowing and reaping, collective building (like amish do with barns) especially after accidents, etc.

Anyways, the first narodniki organization was Land and Freedom (Zemlya i Volya), a decentralized informal-agitation and insurrectionary organization. By informal agitation I refer to spreading the message by sort of itinerant preachers, it was done mostly by word in small informal talks, and in a small part by pamphlets and some novels. They advocated that peasants have decentralized revolts, chase away the landowners and apply one of those two suggestion of land socialization. There were a number of small revolts, and some assassinations of large landowners.

Land and Freedom evolved into two organizations, which were somewhat connected, they had basically the same ideology, only differing in tactics. The first organization was People's Freedom (Narodnaya Volya) which was also an informal-agitation and insurrectionary organization, they instigated revolts and did assassinations, they remain famous for their assassination of the emperor Alexander II and attempts on Alexander III. The second one was Party of Socialist-Federalists, which was primarilly agitational organization, with agitation being done among the people by educational courses, public talks, pamphlets, political books, novels, and magazines- their biggest magazine was Black Redistribution (Chornayi peredel), and many people called the organization by that name. They also organized protests and appeals to the government, and their final goal was to change to economical and political system.

As I said, they were sort of a single movement, they had the same ideology, namely, they continued advocating the socialiazation of land like their parent organization, but besied doing it a bit more seriously organization, they had some addition. There were two main sort of expansions of ideology. One- they expanded the fight from villages to towns and cities, they didn't advocate only that peasants should possess the land they till, but also that workers should possess the workshops and factories thay work in. Two- they expanded the fight from economics to politics- they didn't want only economic, but also political democracy. They spread their views among the people, and they had sort of a general programme:

- Socialization of land, either to families or to villages, managed by a democratic village assembly.

- Socialization of workshops and factories, either to the workers of the individual workershops, or to the workers' assembly of a town or city.

- Decentralized republic. Abolition of monarchy and aristocracy, establishment of constitution with basic liberties like freedom of speech, press and assembly. Large autonomy for local institutions that are to be run democratically. A national parliament made out of representatives- in both organizations there were two groups- one thinking that the parliament should be for political parties, the other that it should be made out of representatives of self-governing districts.

- People's millitia. Replacing the standing professional army with a volunteer millitia of armed populace.

- National self-determination. People's Freedom was for self-determination after the revolution is carried through, S-F Party supported self-determination even before it.


Because of violence carried by People's Freedom both political and economic assassinations, state went really oppressive, basically cruched both organizations, a lot of killings of activists.

When the situation calmed down a little, the narodiks organized again as the Part of Socialist-Revolutionaries, basically with this same programme. They became more and more popular, a huge organization, they had way more support then the marxist groups, mainly because most of the population was peasants, and the Esers (from S-R) advocated socialization of land as oppossed to nationalization. They were actually the main force behing the uprisings of 1905 and February 1917, and they played a big role both in October 1917 and the Ukraine anarchist revolution. In fact, after the October 1917, when Bolsheviks pretty much attained power (gaining popular support for their party and the Red Guards opportunistically using narodnik/ anarchist slogans that made it appear as if they are for socialization and not nationalization of the economy) Lenin allowed elections for a Constitutent Assembly to take place, thinking that the bolsheviks would win, but they came second, with Esers having twice as much votes. Aftermath- Assembly was banned, and later all parties except the bolshevik.

How did the Esers lose? My opinion is because their decentralized form of organizing tured into disorganization. That was obvious in the civil war, when the different parts of their Green Army scarcely even coordinated, and a lot of Esers fought in the White, Red or Black armies. Even before the civil war, their political organization wasn't unified, they had internal groups that disagreed on the basis of the programme, some supported nationalization of land, some rejected socialization of urban economy, said that that only land should be socialized, but that workshops and factories should stay capitalist, they had groups forming from dissagreements over questions like stages of the revolution, over participating in the Duma of 1905, over participation in the world war, over working together with capitalist or marxist parties, over using assassinatins, and some of those because splinter groups that stopped cooperating with each other even if they agreed on the question of the socialization of economy.


.

[bropasaran]

Marx never claimed that Russia might become socialist through an expansion of the mir system - that is tantamount to slander

The 1882 Russian Edition, Manifesto of the Communist Party

It ends like this:

"The Communist Manifesto had, as its object, the proclamation of the inevitable impending dissolution of modern bourgeois property. But in Russia we find, face-to-face with the rapidly flowering capitalist swindle and bourgeois property, just beginning to develop, more than half the land owned in common by the peasants. Now the question is: can the Russian obshchina, though greatly undermined, yet a form of primeval common ownership of land, pass directly to the higher form of Communist common ownership? Or, on the contrary, must it first pass through the same process of dissolution such as constitutes the historical evolution of the West?

The only answer to that possible today is this: If the Russian Revolution becomes the signal for a proletarian revolution in the West, so that both complement each other, the present Russian common ownership of land may serve as the starting point for a communist development.

Karl Marx & Frederick Engels
January 21, 1882, London"

[GiantMonkeyMan]

John Reed in 'Ten Days That Shook the World' writes:

5. Socialist Revolutionary party. Called Essaires from the initials of their name. Originally the revolutionary party of the peasants, the party of the Fighting Organisations—the Terrorists. After the March Revolution, it was joined by many who had never been Socialists. At that time it stood for the abolition of private property in land only, the owners to be compensated in some fashion. Finally the increasing revolutionary feeling of peasants forced the Essaires to abandon the “compensation” clause, and led to the younger and more fiery intellectuals breaking off from the main party in the fall of 1917 and forming a new party, the Left Socialist Revolutionary party. The Essaires, who were afterward always called by the radical groups “Right Socialist Revolutionaries,” adopted the political attitude of the Mensheviki, and worked together with them. They finally came to represent the wealthier peasants, the intellectuals, and the politically uneducated populations of remote rural districts. Among them there was, however, a wider difference of shades of political and economic opinion than among the Mensheviki. Among their leaders mentioned in these pages: Avksentiev, Gotz, Kerensky, Tchernov, “Babuschka” Breshkovskaya.

a. Left Socialist Revolutionaries. Although theoretically sharing the Bolshevik programme of dictatorship of the working-class, at first were reluctant to follow the ruthless Bolshevik tactics. However, the Left Socialist Revolutionaries remained in the Soviet Government, sharing the Cabinet portfolios, especially that of Agriculture. They withdrew from the Government several times, but always returned. As the peasants left the ranks of the Essaires in increasing numbers, they joined the Left Socialist Revolutionary party, which became the great peasant party supporting the Soviet Government, standing for confiscation without compensation of the great landed estates, and their disposition by the peasants themselves. Among the leaders: Spiridonova, Karelin, Kamkov, Kalagayev.

b. Maximalists. An off-shoot of the Socialist Revolutionary party in the Revolution of 1905, when it was a powerful peasant movement, demanding the immediate application of the maximum Socialist programme. Now an insignificant group of peasant anarchists.

[Criminalize Heterosexuality]

The 1882 Russian Edition, Manifesto of the Communist Party

It ends like this:

"The Communist Manifesto had, as its object, the proclamation of the inevitable impending dissolution of modern bourgeois property. But in Russia we find, face-to-face with the rapidly flowering capitalist swindle and bourgeois property, just beginning to develop, more than half the land owned in common by the peasants. Now the question is: can the Russian obshchina, though greatly undermined, yet a form of primeval common ownership of land, pass directly to the higher form of Communist common ownership? Or, on the contrary, must it first pass through the same process of dissolution such as constitutes the historical evolution of the West?

The only answer to that possible today is this: If the Russian Revolution becomes the signal for a proletarian revolution in the West, so that both complement each other, the present Russian common ownership of land may serve as the starting point for a communist development.

Karl Marx & Frederick Engels
January 21, 1882, London"

Well, yes. In circumstances outlined by Marx and Engels, communist construction in the former Russian Empire would have proceeded from the mir system in agriculture. Just as in reality it proceeded from petty individual ownership in Russia, from latifundial estates in Hungary, how it would proceed from developed capitalist agriculture in today's France, for example, etc. etc.

This does not mean that communist development would mean the strengthening of the mir system. Quite the contrary. Mir communes were a form of collective private property, and would have to be abolished just like all forms of private property, no matter if it is individual or collective (as in communes, cooperatives, joint-stock companies, and so on).


Lenin allowed elections for a Constitutent Assembly to take place, thinking that the bolsheviks would win, but they came second, with Esers having twice as much votes. Aftermath- Assembly was banned, and later all parties except the bolshevik.

Ah, I always love debunking this myth.

After the preparations for the election were completed, but before the election, the PSR split, with the PLSR having less members but the allegiance of a greater proportion of the peasantry (the composition of peasant soviets is evidence enough of that). But the voting material didn't record this; many people ended up voting for the right Esers when they had meant to vote for the PLSR.

The Constituent Assembly duly assembled after the election (the Bolsheviks roundly defeating the Menshevik in proletarian areas, which are really the only areas that matter - unless one is a vulgar democrat, of course), and refused to recognize the Bolshevik-PLSR decrees on land and peace.

After that the new Soviet executive simply ignored them. They were dispersed when the guards of Tauride Palace, led by an anarchist (and mostly consisting of anarchist sailors), grew tired of the speeches and ordered the delegates to disperse.

Thus ended the Constituent Assembly, with no one shedding even a tear for such a monstrously unrepresentative and out-of-touch body.

[Dave B]

Nobody is saying communism could be brought about through the further development of the Mir system.

The argument had been that somehow or other a western communist revolution, made possible by the capitalist development of technology, abundance and productivity of labour etc could “absorb”, [my expression] into it the so called primitive communists of the Mir system.

Kautsky outlined the history of the idea as below;


Twenty-four years [1881] ago no one could assert with certainty that the Russian village communities might not become the starting point of a modern form of communism. Society as a whole can not leap over any stage of evolution, but single backward portions thereof can easily do this. They can make a leap in order to correspond with other and more advanced portions. So it was possible that Russian society might leap over the capitalist stage in order to immediately develop the new communism out of the old. But a condition of this was that socialism in the rest of Europe should become victorious during the time that the village communities still had a vital strength in Russia. This at the begin- fling of the eighties appeared still possible. But in a decade [Engels afterword of 1894] the impossibility of this transition was perfectly clear.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1905/xx/rsdlp.htm

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894/01/russia.htm

The SR’s anti-stageism is outlined by Lenin.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/jun/19.htm

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1905/apr/12b.htm

As I said the SR’s political theory was varied and I am sure some of them had an almost orthodox Marxist position on this.

There was a large protest of 10’s of thousands against the closure of the constituent assembly a few days later.

21 people were killed according to the Bolsheviks own records; page 59 Brovokin the Mensheviks after October.

Others credible sources put it at around 80.

Martov on the eve of the demonstration asked Lenin if he would shoot the demonstrators and have repeat anniversary of the Bloody Sunday massacre of January 1905.

The answer was a yes.

That was in Burbanks book valuable as it has a chapter on the hidden ‘dustbin’, ‘falsification’ and down the ‘memory hole’ history of the SR’s.

The white-guardist nature of the SR’s can be seen from their own manifesto of 1905 if nothing else.

The SR ‘white collaborators’ plan was to take out the Bolsheviks first and deal with the whites, as a less formidable problem, later.

I don’t dispute that it was an Anarcho-Bolshevik revolution; it wasn’t until 1921 or whatever that the Bolsheviks turned on the last of their erstwhile friends.


I can’t preview posts and the little box on my 6 inch screen is barely readable even on size 3 font!