Backward agriculture, crop failures and famine years, low profitability of small peasant farms, growing poverty of the poor part of the village (up to 50% of the rural population) increased social tension in Russian society.

The deep crisis in the social sphere, the need to overcome the growing poverty, the ignorance of the disadvantaged classes were repeatedly written in their publications by revolutionary democrats, leaders of the liberal-democratic and socialist trends, progressive-minded intelligentsia. For example, S.P. Botkin and his colleagues in the St. Petersburg Society of Russian Doctors, having studied the statistics of the average life expectancy in the country (27 years for men, 29 years for women), came in 1885 to an alarming conclusion: “Excessive mortality among the Russian population reduces its working capacity and brings the national economy to a loss. An increase in the working ability of the population, and at the same time the well-being of education in our country, is impossible without a decrease in mortality, and therefore a decrease in mortality and the closest means to this - improvement - constitutes our state need.

Reflecting on the causes of the escalating social crisis, the zemstvo doctor A.I. security and lack of land are directly dependent ... on the general conditions of Russian life "*.

The growing social explosion should have been prevented by taking urgent measures in the field of social depreciation. However, the autocracy, the power structures in the Center and locally showed complete indifference to the difficult financial situation and health protection of employees and their families, the legal lawlessness of entrepreneurs.

With all their will, charitable societies and institutions could not solve the problems of social protection of working people and the disadvantaged, the number of which in January 1899 was only 14,854, including 7349 charitable societies and 7505 charitable institutions. The forms and nature of social assistance activities depended on their type. If charitable societies assisted people who turned to them for help at the time of their visit, then charitable institutions, in addition to one-time assistance to those in need, provided shelter and food to those who lived in them on a permanent basis. In 1898, 461.4 thousand people permanently lived in them, more than 7 million people used various kinds of services. The number of one-time calls was about 20 million.

On the eve and during the years of the first Russian revolution of 1905-1907. the search for ways of social renewal of Russia, a fair solution of workers' and peasants' issues, social protection of the needy segments of the population was launched by political parties and movements. As the organizational formalization took place, the leading parties of various political orientations expressed their views on the solution of social problems in program documents adopted at the respective congresses.

So, in my opinion, the lack of knowledge of this problem, in relation to modern society, is relevant, which was the subject of choosing a topic for writing this work.

The purpose of this work is a comprehensive study and presentation of material on the socio-political problems of the programs of the Bolshevik and Social Revolutionary parties of the early twentieth century.

The objectives of the work are to consider the Bolshevik and Social Revolutionary parties belonging to this periodical, which were of great importance for that time in the socio-economic and political transformations of Russia in the early twentieth century, as well as an analytical review of their programs, and identifying the discussed problems of the latter.

The subject of the study is the programs of the parties of the early twentieth century.

The object of the study is the parties of the early twentieth century in the context of their activities in the socio-political aspect.

1. SOCIAL DOCTRINES OF RUSSIAN POLITICAL PARTIES IN THE EARLY XX CENTURY

1.1. Russian Social Democratic Labor Party

The Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (1903) was among the first to formulate a wide range of demands for granting social and economic rights to hired workers in its Program. Along with general political tasks (about the revolutionary overthrow of the autocracy and its replacement by a democratic republic, the introduction of universal, equal and direct suffrage, local self-government, freedom of conscience, speech, press, meetings, strikes and unions, etc.), 16 points outlined measures for; organization of social protection of working people.

In the interests of protecting the working class from physical and moral degeneration, the Social Democrats put forward demands to limit the working day to 8 hours a day, to prohibit overtime work, to establish weekly rest up to 42 hours, to prohibit night work in all branches of the national economy, with the exception of production with continuous cycle.

The program contained requirements providing for the protection of children from exploitation in the workplace: prohibiting entrepreneurs from using the labor of children under the age of 16, limiting the working day of adolescents (16-18 years old) to six hours. Separate points provided for the exclusion of female labor in those industries where it was harmful to the female body, the protection of motherhood and childhood. As practical measures, it was proposed to release women for four weeks and up to six weeks after childbirth with the preservation of wages in the usual amount for all this time, to arrange nurseries for infants and young children in all enterprises where women work; release women who are breastfeeding from work at least every three hours for at least half an hour.

An important element of social protection was contained in the paragraph on the need to introduce state insurance for workers in case of old age and total or partial disability "from a special fund drawn up by a special tax on capitalists."

The Social Democrats opposed the issuance of wages in goods, for the prohibition of monetary fines from the wages of hired workers, which were widely used by entrepreneurs for their own selfish purposes.

Demands were put forward to establish criminal liability for employers for violating the rules of labor protection, sanitary supervision at enterprises and in state-owned residential premises, the participation of workers in self-government bodies, and determining the procedure for hiring labor. The program of the RSDLP demanded the introduction of "free medical care for workers at the expense of entrepreneurs, with maintenance during illness."

More concisely, in order to "eliminate the remnants of serfdom," the program of the RSDLP was set out in 5 paragraphs, its agrarian part. The following were considered as urgent steps: the abolition of redemption quitrent payments, duties; laws "restricting the peasant in the disposal of his land"; the return to the peasants of the sums of money taken from them in the form of redemption and quitrent payments, the creation of a people's fund for the cultural and charitable needs of rural societies.

At the stage of the bourgeois-democratic revolution, striving for an alliance between the working class and the entire peasantry, the RSDLP included in its Program a clause on the establishment of peasant committees to return to rural communities those lands that were cut off from the peasants during the abolition of serfdom and served in the hands of the landowners as an instrument of their enslavement. At the third congress of the RSDLP (1905), in which only the left wing of the Social Democracy (Bolsheviks) took part, a more radical task was formulated: to fight for segments under the slogan of confiscation of landlords, state, church, monastery and appanage lands. This task was supposed to be solved by "the immediate organization of revolutionary committees with the aim of carrying out all revolutionary-democratic transformations in the interests of delivering the peasantry from the oppression of the police, bureaucrats and landlords." Thus, the solution of the social problems of the peasants of the RSDLP was directly connected with their participation in the revolution under the leadership of the working class.

In the interests of the country's social and cultural progress, the RSDLP put forward a demand for free general and vocational education for children of both sexes up to 16 years of age, for supplying poor children with clothing and teaching aids at the expense of the state.

1.2. Party of Socialist Revolutionaries

At the beginning of the twentieth century. in Russia, along with social democracy, another force also entered into active political activity - the socialist revolutionaries (SRs), who were the main party of peasant democracy. It was constituted in late 1901 and early 1902 as a result of the merger of several neo-populist organizations. The name of the party "Socialist-Revolutionaries" was not accidental. It came from the fact that the Socialist-Revolutionaries set themselves the task of transforming society on socialist lines. “The Party of Socialist-Revolutionaries in Russia regards itself as one of the detachments of the army of international socialism and conducts its activities in the spirit of the common interests of its struggle, in forms corresponding to the specific conditions of Russian reality,” said the Socialist-Revolutionary Program adopted in 1905.

The formation of the Socialist Revolutionary Party (AKP), just like the RSDLP, was a long and difficult process. Its formation took place on the basis of the merger of a number of Russian regional and émigré populist organizations that had formed back in the 1990s. These parties, unions, leagues were carriers of different tendencies in populism. Some of them remained true to the Narodnaya Volya traditions of terror. Others pinned their hopes on the creation of a mass party of "revolutionary socialism" and looked at terror as only an additional means of fighting the autocracy, and some were even ready to abandon it. But regardless of their tactical views, they were all united by the desire to renew the populist ideology in the new historical situation, when capitalist relations were established in Russia.

Just as Iskra acted as a collective propagandist, agitator and organizer of the social democratic forces, the newspaper Revolutionary Russia and the journal Vestnik russkoi revolyutsii were of corresponding importance for uniting the neo-populist forces and spreading their influence over the masses. It is highly significant that the first issues of Iskra and Revolutionary Russia appeared almost simultaneously, and also almost simultaneously at the end of 1905, both competing revolutionary newspapers ceased to exist. From January 1902, from the moment the publication of the notice on the creation of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party in Revolutionary Russia, the newspaper became its official organ. The newspaper was designed to promote the Socialist-Revolutionary views both among party members and among the broad masses. The theoretical organ of the AKP was the Bulletin of the Russian Revolution. The draft program of the AKP was published in the newspaper "Revolutionary Russia" in 1904 (N 46). Its leading author was V. M. Chernov (1873-1952), who came to the fore at the end of the 19th century as the most prominent theorist of neo-populism.

The party program was developed by its leaders: V.M. Chernov, A.R. Gots, G.A. Gershuni, N.D. Avksentiev. They advocated the elimination of the autocracy, the establishment of a democratic republic, the transfer of land to the peasants, and democratic reforms. The Socialist-Revolutionaries chose the same methods of struggle for the realization of their program as the Narodniks - individual terror. For this purpose, a terrorist combat organization was created within the party in 1902, headed by G.A. Gershuni. The militant organization committed a series of terrorist acts, as a result of which the Ministers of the Interior D.S. Sipyagin and V.K. Plehve, Moscow Governor-General Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich. The terror of the Socialist-Revolutionaries caused a response from the authorities, and in 1903 G.A. Gershuni was arrested. The combat organization was headed by E.F. Azef, he was also an agent of the security department of the Police Department. Already at the First Party Congress, held in late 1905 - early 1906, the party split. The left wing created a separate organization called the Union of Socialists - Revolutionaries - Maximalists. Maximalists demanded the immediate socialization not only of the land, but also of factories and plants. The means of struggle for them was to undermine the political and economic strength of the old regime through terror and private expropriations. The right wing created the Labor People's Socialist Party - the Popular Socialist Party. They announced their intention to create a legal party of an open type, believing that conspiratorial methods of work could not solve the main task - to organize the masses of the people. The bulk of the Socialist-Revolutionaries gave preference to the leaders of the center, who decided to strictly follow the program adopted at the First Congress. V.M. became the leader of the centrists. Chernov. The Social Revolutionaries boycotted the elections to the First State Duma, and received 37 seats in the Second Duma. After the dissolution of the Second Duma, the elections to the Third Duma were boycotted. There was no unity in the party in relation to Russia's participation in the First World War. After the February Revolution, the Social Revolutionaries became more active. In May 1917, the Socialist-Revolutionary Party was the most numerous and influential party in Russia: over 500 thousand members, had organizations in 63 provinces, on the fleets and fronts of the army in the field. The Socialist-Revolutionaries, together with the Mensheviks, from February to July-August, played a leading role in most of the Soviets, were part of the Provisional Government (A.F. Kerensky, V.M. Chernov, N.D. Avksentiev and others). By the summer of 1917, the split intensified in the party, maximalists and popular socialists (populists) left it, who in early December united in the party of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries. Those who remained in the party began to be called Right SRs. The Right SRs met the October Revolution with hostility. Having gone underground, they created counter-revolutionary organizations, became the initiators of rebellions against the Soviet regime (in Yaroslavl, Murom, Rybinsk and a number of other cities, in the Volga region, Siberia, the Far East), terrorist acts (the murder of V. Volodarsky on June 20, 1918, M. S. Uritsky on August 30, 1918; on August 30, 1918, the right Social Revolutionary F. E. Kaplan seriously wounded V. I. Lenin). In June 1918, the Right Socialist-Revolutionaries in Samara, with the help of foreign interventionists, created the Komuch government. On June 14, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee expelled the Right Social Revolutionaries from its membership. In September 1918, they formed the Ufa directory and throughout the civil war waged a fierce struggle against the Soviet government. The Social Revolutionaries organized a number of revolts of wealthy peasants, as well as the Kronstadt rebellion of 1921. In 1923, the Right Socialist Revolutionary Party was banned by the Soviet government. Some of its leaders emigrated, some were arrested. The Left Social Revolutionaries (leaders M.A. Spiridonova and others) in October 1917 organizationally took shape in a separate party and from January 26, 1918 began to publish the newspaper Maximalist, then under the same name a magazine. The Left SRs (maximalists) recognized Soviet power, their representatives participated in the All-Russian Congresses of Soviets (from the 2nd to the 7th), were members of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and local Soviets. But the maximalists did not recognize the dictatorship of the proletariat, denied the need to centralize the management of the country's economy and workers' control, opposed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, participated in anti-Soviet revolts, in particular, in July 1918 they organized a Left SR revolt in Moscow. At the 5th conference in April 1919, a split occurred among the Left SRs: a minority of the Left SRs openly switched to anti-Soviet positions, the other, recognizing the program of the Bolsheviks, at a conference in April 1920 decided to join the RCP (b).

In developing the agrarian program, Lenin proceeded from the fact that the agrarian question was the basis and national feature of the bourgeois revolution in Russia. The acuteness of the agrarian question in tsarist Russia was due to the fact that a huge amount of land was concentrated in large landlord latifundia, while the mass of peasant farms suffered from a lack of land. In the European part of Russia, on average, 1 landowner's latifundium accounted for 2333 acres of land, and 1 peasant household - 7-15 acres. Against this background - the backwardness of agricultural technology, downtrodden peasant masses, various forms of feudal semi-feudal exploitation. The essence of the agrarian revolution was to be the destruction of latifundia and the transfer of land into the hands of the peasants, the elimination of the remnants of serfdom as a condition for the free development of capitalism. Lenin proceeded from the fact that in Russia there were objectively the possibility of two types of capitalist agrarian evolution: the landlord (Prussian) and the peasant (American). The first path means the slow development of large landlord farms into capitalist ones, a slow and painful process of expropriation of the peasantry, accompanied by the emergence of a small minority of "grossbauers" (kulaks). The second path involves the absence of landowners or their destruction by the revolution, with small peasant farms becoming the head of development, the patriarchal peasant evolving into a capitalist farmer. The first path requires continuous, systematic violence against the peasantry and the proletariat. The second path is also connected with forcible breaking, but it is carried out in the interests of the peasantry, the development of capitalism proceeds more freely, faster, it is connected with the enormous growth of the home market. Lenin shows that both types of capitalist agrarian evolution were clearly revealed in the economic history of Russia: in the center of the country, development followed the Prussian path, in the outskirts - along the American one. The class struggle between landowners and peasants was objectively a struggle for one type or another of capitalist agrarian evolution. Lenin proves this by analyzing the programs of all political parties and classes, the struggle over the land question in the State Dumas, the first (1906) and, especially, the second (1907). All the parties of the landlords and the bourgeoisie, from the Black Hundreds to the Cadets, advocated the reformist, landlord path of development. The revolutionary, peasant path was defended by representatives of the proletariat and the peasantry. Peasant deputies from all regions of Russia voted in the Duma for the nationalization of the land. The Narodnik parties also included this demand in their program. Noting the fallacy of their pseudo-socialist views, Lenin at the same time considers that their petty-bourgeois democratism was progressive for that time, since they reflected the struggle of the peasantry against the latifundia.

Lenin examines the agrarian programs of Russian Social Democracy in their historical development: he analyzes the agrarian project of the Emancipation of Labor group, the “cut-off” program of the RSDLP in 1903, and, especially, the struggle over the agrarian question at the Fourth (Unity) Congress of the RSDLP in 1906. Defending the Bolshevik agrarian program struggle for the nationalization of the land, Lenin criticized the project of the "separators" and, most sharply, the program of municipalization of the land adopted at the congress, which was defended by the Mensheviks. He proves that the Menshevik program is reactionary, since it proposes to preserve allotment land ownership, and to transfer privately owned lands to local self-government bodies, it reinforces the fragmentation of the peasant movement. The demands of the popular masses are most fully reflected in the peasant and populist projects. Among the peasants, the demand to abolish private ownership of land was of a spontaneous nature, the populists dressed their projects in quasi-socialist forms. The Bolshevik agrarian program was scientifically substantiated (see Agrarian Program of Bolshevism). Lenin points out that the scientific concept of land nationalization is inextricably linked with the theory of capitalist land rent. Differential rent does not depend on private landed property; the nationalization of the land does not mean its destruction, but its transfer to the state. Private ownership of land generates absolute rent. It hinders the free investment of capital in agriculture. The nationalization of the land, by abolishing private landed property, abolishes absolute rent; it means the abolition of the monopoly that hinders the development of capitalism. Consequently, the nationalization of the land is not only the only way to completely eliminate the Middle Ages, but also the best conceivable method of land management under capitalism.

Considering the question of landed property historically, Lenin proves that the nationalization of land in capitalist society is most feasible in the era of bourgeois revolutions; in the future, the bourgeois can no longer take the path of radical agrarian reforms, because he is afraid of the struggle of the proletariat against all private property, and landed property has already turned from feudal into bourgeois. Lenin emphasizes that just such a favorable combination of conditions has developed in Russia when the nationalization of the land became possible as a measure of bourgeois progress: the Russian revolution at its bourgeois-democratic stage is a peasant revolution. Working out the question of the bourgeois revolution of the peasant type, of its driving forces, Lenin proved that it could only be victorious under the leadership of the proletariat. The breadth and depth of agrarian reforms depend on the breadth and depth of the political upheaval. The agrarian program of the Bolsheviks is designed for the complete completion of the bourgeois-democratic revolution under the leadership of the proletariat, for the establishment of a revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry, which will carry out the nationalization of the land. In the afterword to the book, written in September 1917, Lenin points out that in the new period, when the development of the contradictions of capitalism put the socialist revolution on the agenda, the nationalization of the land becomes not only the "last word" of the bourgeois revolution, but also a step towards socialism. Lenin notes that the most important questions of agrarian policy that arose during this period are set out in his works: "Letter on tactics" and "The tasks of the proletariat in our revolution."

Lenin's work "The Agrarian Program of Social Democracy in the First Russian Revolution of 1905-1907" is of great international importance as a major contribution to Marxist agrarian theory; it helps the communist and workers' parties of all countries, taking into account concrete historical conditions, to develop their agrarian programs and tactics in relation to the peasantry. Translated into the languages ​​of the peoples of the USSR and foreign languages.

2.2. Program of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party

Modern Russia, culturally and socially, is becoming more and more closely connected with the advanced countries of the civilized world, while retaining, however, a number of features due to the originality of its previous history, its local conditions and international position.

In all the advanced countries of the civilized world, in parallel with the growth of the population and its needs, there is an increase in the power of man over nature, an improvement in the methods of controlling its natural forces and an increase in the creative power of human labor in all areas of its application. This growth is a necessary condition for social progress and the struggle for the all-round and harmonious development of human individuality.

But this growth of man's power over nature takes place in modern society under the conditions of bourgeois competition of disparate economic units, private ownership of the means of production, their transformation into capital, the preliminary expropriation of direct producers or their indirect subordination to capital. As these foundations of modern society develop, it breaks up more and more sharply into a class of exploited workers, who receive a smaller and smaller share of the goods created by their labor, and classes of exploiters, who monopolize the possession of the natural forces of nature and the social means of production.

Inasmuch as, within the narrow framework of bourgeois-capitalist relations, forms of collective labor and production on a large social scale develop, albeit one-sidedly and incompletely, modern economic development reveals its positive creative aspects, preparing certain material elements for a higher socialist order of life and uniting them into a compact social force. industrial armies of hired workers.

To the extent that bourgeois-capitalist forms restrict, restrict and distort the development of collective forms of labor and social productive forces, to that extent modern economic development reveals its negative, destructive aspects: the anarchy of commodity production and competition; fruitless squandering of economic forces in it; crises, a tremendous national economy in its very foundations; the growth of exploitation, dependence and insecurity of the working masses; the power of money that corrupts all moral foundations; selfish struggle of all against all for the existing and privileged position.

The mutual relationship between these positive and negative aspects of modern economic development is different both for different branches of production and for different countries. Comparatively favorable in the higher branches of industry and the countries of classical capitalism, it is becoming less and less favorable in other branches of industry, especially agriculture, and in entire countries that are less favorably placed in the international economic struggle.

But, regardless of these differences, the discrepancy and contradiction between the positive and negative aspects of modern economic development is a general and growing fact, fraught with enormous historical consequences.

With the growth of the social distance between the exploiters and the exploited, with the growth of the contradiction between the productivity of labor and the negligible share of the products of the working people themselves, with the growth of the rate of their exploitation, their dissatisfaction with their position in modern society grows.

On the basis of the spontaneous process of aggravation of class relations, conscious and planned interference in the course of events by organized collective forces is developing more and more, in the name of this or that social ideal, the ultimate goal, with systematically worked out tactics. Their expediently directed struggle encompasses simultaneously all aspects of the life of society - economic, political and spiritual.

The exploiting classes strive to perpetuate the basis of their existence - exploitation by way of rent, profit on capital in all its forms, and tax burdens on the laboring masses. By means of syndicates, cartels and trusts they seek to master, in their egoistic ways, the conditions of production and marketing. They strive to adapt all the institutions of the modern state to their class interests and turn it wholly into an instrument of their domination and enslavement of the exploited. Finally, they strive to subjugate spiritually and materially literature, art, science, oratory, in order to keep the working masses not only in economic, but also in mental slavery.

Having no other resources or having exhausted them in the struggle, they resort to alliances with the reactionary forces of the obsolete past, resurrecting racial and religious enmity, poisoning the people's consciousness with chauvinism and nationalism, entering into compromises with the remnants of the monarchical, old noble and church-clerical institutions.

By outliving all its former progressive content, the bourgeois system leads to the intellectual degeneration of the class ruling in it, more and more pushing away the mental and moral color of the nation and forcing it to gravitate toward the camp of the oppressed and exploited, hostile to the bourgeoisie.

The classes of the exploited naturally strive to defend themselves against the oppression weighing upon them and, as their consciousness grows, unite this struggle more and more and direct it against the very foundations of bourgeois exploitation. International in its essence, this movement is more and more defined as the movement of the vast majority in the interests of the vast majority, and this is the guarantee of its victory.

The conscious expression, scientific illumination and communication of this movement is international revolutionary socialism. Setting as its task the intellectual, political and economic emancipation of the working class, it acts primarily as an enterprising revolutionary minority, as the militant vanguard of the working masses, at the same time constantly striving to merge with these masses and embrace them entirely in its ranks. Its main practical task is to ensure that all sections of the working and exploited population recognize themselves as a single working class, see in their class unity the guarantee of their emancipation, and through a systematic organized struggle, carry out a social-revolutionary revolution, the program of which is: the liberation of all public institutions from under the rule of the exploiting classes: the destruction, along with private ownership of the natural forces of nature and social means of production, the very division of society into classes; the planned organization of general labor for the general benefit.

Only the implementation of this program will enable the continuous, free and unhindered development of all the spiritual and material forces of mankind; only it will transform the growth of social wealth from a source of dependence and oppression of the working class into a source of its well-being and the all-round, harmonious development of the individual; only it can stop the degeneration of mankind, on the one hand, from idleness and satiety, on the other, from excessive labor and a half-starved existence; only by realizing a free socialist coexistence will humanity develop unhindered physically, mentally and morally, fully embodying truth, justice and solidarity in the forms of its social life. And in this sense the cause of revolutionary socialism is the cause of the liberation of all mankind. It leads to the elimination of all forms of internecine struggle between people, all forms of violence and exploitation of man by man, to freedom, equality and brotherhood for all without distinction of sex, race, religion or nationality.

The Party of Socialist-Revolutionaries in Russia considers its cause as an organic component of the worldwide struggle of labor against exploitation, the human person against social forms that are restrictive for her developed social forms, and conducts it in the spirit of the common interests of this struggle, in forms corresponding to the specific conditions of Russian reality.

"The whole burden of the struggle against the autocracy, despite the presence of the liberal-democratic opposition, which embraces mainly the elements of the "educated society" that are intermediate in terms of class, falls on the proletariat, the working peasantry and the revolutionary socialist intelligentsia. The necessary task of the socialist party, to which the leading role in this struggle, is consequently the expansion and deepening at the revolutionary moment of those social, property changes with which the overthrow of the autocracy must be associated.

Implementation of its program in full, ie. the expropriation of capitalist property and the reorganization of production and the entire social system on socialist lines presupposes the complete victory of the working class, organized into a social revolutionary party, and, if necessary, the establishment of its temporary revolutionary dictatorship.

As long as, as a revolutionary minority, the organized working class can exert only a partial influence on changing the social system and the course of legislation, the Socialist-Revolutionary Party will strive to ensure that the policy of partial conquests does not obscure from the working class its ultimate, fundamental goals; so that by his revolutionary struggle, even during this period, he achieves only such changes that will develop and strengthen his unity and ability to fight for liberation, helping to raise the level of his intellectual development and cultural needs, strengthening his fighting positions and removing the obstacles that stand in the way of his organizations.

Since the process of transformation of Russia will proceed under the leadership of non-socialist forces, the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, based on the considerations developed above, will defend, support or wrest the following reforms with its revolutionary struggle:

In the political and legal field:

Establishment of a democratic republic, with broad autonomy for regions and communities, both urban and rural; perhaps a wider application of the federal principle to relations between individual nationalities; recognition of their unconditional right to self-determination; direct, secret, equal, universal right to vote for every citizen not younger than 20 years old - without distinction of sex, religion, nationality; proportional representation; direct popular legislation (referendum and initiative); election, turnover at any time and jurisdiction of all officials; complete freedom of conscience, speech, press, meetings, workers' strikes and unions; full and universal civil equality; inviolability of person and home; the complete separation of church and state and the declaration of religion as a private matter for everyone; the establishment of a compulsory, equal general secular education for all at the expense of the state; equality of languages; free trial; the destruction of the standing army and its replacement by the people's militia.

In the national economic area:

1. In questions of labor legislation, the Party of Socialist-Revolutionaries sets as its goal the protection of the spiritual and physical strength of the working class and the increase of its capacity for further liberation struggle, to the general interests of which all the narrowly practical, immediate, local and professional interests of individual working strata must be subordinated. In these aspects the Party will defend: the greatest possible reduction of working time within the limits of surplus labour; the establishment of a legislative maximum of working hours in accordance with the norms indicated by scientific hygiene (in the near future, an eight-hour norm for most industries, and accordingly less in more dangerous and harmful to health); establishment of minimum wages by agreement between self-government bodies and trade unions of workers; state insurance in all its forms (against accidents, against unemployment, in case of illness, old age, etc.) at the expense of the state and owners and on the basis of self-government of the insured, legislative labor protection in all branches of production and trade, in accordance with the requirements of scientific hygiene , under the supervision of a factory inspectorate elected by the workers (normal working conditions, hygienic arrangement of premises, prohibition of the work of minors under 16 years of age, restriction of the work of minors, prohibition of female and child labor in certain branches of production and at certain periods, sufficient uninterrupted weekly rest, etc. .); the professional organization of workers and their progressively expanding participation in the establishment of internal regulations in industrial establishments.

3. In matters of financial policy, the party will campaign for the introduction of a progressive tax on income and inheritance, with complete exemption from the petty income tax below a certain rate; for the abolition of indirect taxes (excluding the imposition of luxury goods), protective duties and all taxes in general that fall on labor.

4. In matters of municipal and zemstvo economy, the party will stand for the development of all kinds of public services (free medical care, zemstvo agronomic organization, communalization of water supply, lighting, means of communication, etc.); for granting urban and rural communities the broadest rights to tax immovable property and to expropriate it forcibly, especially in the interests of meeting the housing needs of the working population; for communal, zemstvo, as well as state policy, favoring the development of cooperation on strictly democratic principles.

5. As for the various measures aimed at nationalizing certain branches of the national economy even within the boundaries of the bourgeois state, the Party of Socialist-Revolutionaries will be able to meet them halfway only if and only insofar as the democratization of the political system and the correlation of social forces, equally and the very nature of the corresponding measures will give sufficient guarantees against increasing the dependence of the working class on the ruling bureaucracy in this way. In general, the Party of Socialist-Revolutionaries warns the working class against that "state socialism" which is partly a system of half-measures to lull the working class, and partly a kind of state capitalism, concentrating various branches of production and trade in the hands of the ruling bureaucracy, for the sake of its fiscal and political goals. .

The Party of Socialist-Revolutionaries, starting a direct revolutionary struggle against the autocracy, agitates for the convocation of the Zemsky Sobor (Constituent Assembly), freely elected by all the people without distinction of sex, estate, nationality and religion, for the elimination of the autocratic regime and the reorganization of all modern orders. It will both uphold its program of this reorganization in the Constituent Assembly and strive to carry it out directly in the revolutionary period.

2.3. Common in the programs of the parties of the Bolsheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries

At the turn of the 19th and early 20th centuries, the Social Revolutionaries could not deny, as their populist predecessors did, the very fact of the victory of capitalism in Russia. But the spread of capitalism in the country was explained by them in many respects by its artificial planting by the government. At the beginning of the 20th century, the Socialist-Revolutionaries still had a glimmer of hope for the stability of small-scale peasant farming, which, they believed, would not be drawn into the orbit of capitalist relations and could become the basis for evolution towards socialism. Unwilling to recognize the growing process of property stratification of the peasantry, the Socialist-Revolutionaries explained this more by the influence of tsarist policy than by the result of the natural evolution of the capitalizing countryside. Most of the peasants who run their own economy and do not use hired labor, they enrolled in the category of the so-called "working peasantry." Since the source of income for this category was their own labor, and not the exploitation of hired power, the Socialist-Revolutionaries did not rank them among the petty-bourgeois strata. In essence, there was no difference between the working peasantry and the factory worker in the opinion of the Socialist-Revolutionaries, since their own labor was the source of their livelihood.

The Socialist-Revolutionaries considered the impending revolution in Russia not bourgeois and not socialist, but "labor", since it is carried out by the working masses and is aimed at implementing fundamental social changes. Its main task was “the socialization of labor, property and economy; the destruction, together with private property, of the very division of society into classes. The program of the Socialist-Revolutionaries formulated the tasks of both the socialist and democratic stages of the revolution. The former included the main demand for the expropriation of capitalist property and the organization of production and the entire social life of the country on socialist lines. And this presupposes "the complete victory of the working class, organized in a social revolutionary party, and, if necessary, the establishment of its temporary revolutionary dictatorship."

In order to protect the spiritual and physical strength of the working class and create favorable conditions for its struggle for socialism, the Socialist Revolutionary Party, like the RSDLP, put forward the demand for an 8-hour working day, the introduction of state insurance, and the establishment of a minimum wage.

In accordance with their views on the tasks of the revolution in the countryside, the Social Revolutionaries advocated the socialization of the land, i.e. withdrawing it from private property and from the sphere of purchase and sale, and transferring it to the public domain, primarily to the bundles of rural communities, as well as local self-government bodies. The equalizing labor right to use the land was established. No one could demand more land than he was able to cultivate it himself or by the labor of his family members.

In organizational terms, the Social Revolutionaries took into account the experience of the party of the Second International, where they were included along with the RSDLP. Anyone who recognized its program, obeyed its decisions and participated in the work of one of its party organizations was considered a member of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party. In contrast to the territorial-production principle of building the RSDLP, the Socialist-Revolutionaries proclaimed only a territorial one. The Social Revolutionaries had two governing bodies - the Central Committee and the Party Council. The Central Committee carried out the ideological and practical activities of the party. The Party Council included five members of the Central Committee and representatives of all regional organizations, as well as Moscow and St. Petersburg organizations. The party council was convened by the Central Committee, its decisions were binding on the party, they could only be canceled by the congress.

The Fighting Organization of the Socialist Revolutionaries, created at the end of 1901 by one of the leaders of the party, G. A. Gershuni, had a special position in the party. She was strictly conspiratorial. Members of the Battle Organization did not take part in the regional committees of the party, nor did the latter participate in the activities of the Battle Group. Her relations with the Central Committee of the party were built through a special representative and were distinguished by great independence. Since 1903, the Combat Organization was headed by Yevno Azef, who was an informer of the tsarist secret police.

On the eve of the first Russian revolution, the Socialist-Revolutionaries did not yet have an approved general party program, there was no consistent tactical line, there was a difficult search for organizational forms of party organization. At the same time, on the eve of the revolution, she did not experience sharp internal splits on these issues.

The Socialist-Revolutionaries assessed the beginning of the revolution from a special point of view. In their opinion, the Russian revolution combined not only the tendencies of previous revolutions in world history, but also new social tendencies that had not been observed before in world history. These tendencies were associated with the special historical mission of the peasantry and the revolutionary intelligentsia in Russia.

The revolution, according to V. M. Chernov, came prematurely, when there were no actually available forces prepared to defeat the autocracy. The Russo-Japanese War accelerated its offensive, military defeats caused the government to be confused. Thanks to this, the revolutionary movement "leaped far above the real correlation of forces", the explosion of indignation created a "false appearance" of the dominant position in the country of the "Lefts". The revolution did not have power, but believed in it and made the government believe in this power.

Being the driving force of the revolution, the proletariat, according to the Socialist-Revolutionaries, was ready to destroy, but, like the peasantry, was not prepared for constructive work.

In October 1906, an independent formation, the Union of Socialist-Revolutionary Maximalists, emerged from the Socialist-Revolutionary Party. The ideologists and theorists of this direction were A. Troitsky, M. Engelgart, S. Svetlov, G. Nestroev and others. The Maximalist Social Revolutionaries represented the revolution as a process of disorganization of power and all aspects of state life through the seizure and expropriation of land, enterprises, and instruments of production. In their opinion, any party, since it is based on centralism, suppresses the initiative of its members and thereby fetters revolutionary energy.

Another part of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party (A.V. Peshekhonov, V.A. Myakotin, N.F. Annensky, S.Ya. Elpatyevsky) founded the Party of Popular Socialists (popular peoples). The Enes had a negative attitude towards the destruction of the landowners' estates and the "capturing" actions of the peasants. The proletariat, in their opinion, overestimated its strength, which was facilitated by the socialist intelligentsia. Right-wing populist view of the revolution of 1905-1907. was based on the fact that the socialist parties are making the mistake of alienating the Cadets because their program contains many neo-bourgeois traits. It was precisely as a result of the erroneous tactics of the revolutionary parties that after October 1905 the proletariat, without the active support of "the bourgeoisie, liberals and non-class intelligentsia, was crushed by the government."

Propaganda and agitation work among the masses was considered the most important activity of the AKP. The Socialist-Revolutionaries called on the peasants to organize strikes, boycott the landowners, and create peasant "brotherhoods" (secret circles of primary organizations in the countryside). The "brotherhoods" were tasked with spreading the populist ideology among the peasants, familiarizing them with the programs and tactical guidelines of the Social Revolutionaries, strengthening their influence on the solution of "worldly affairs" in accordance with these guidelines, uniting the peasants to conduct educational events, in the struggle for their rights and organization " revolutionary actions. Moreover, in "revolutionary" actions, preference was given to peaceful democratic actions (strikes, demonstrations, petitions).

Engaged in the "political education" of the peasants, the Socialist-Revolutionaries did not lose sight of the urban proletariat. Moreover, after the defeat of the first Russian revolution, their propaganda and agitation efforts were directed more to work among the urban population than the rural population.

Deep ideological and organizational confusion after the defeat of the revolution overtook the neo-populist parties and groups. The Esser Party suffered serious losses due to police repression. Numerous arrests weakened its organization, the ranks of the Socialist-Revolutionaries were swept by a wave of decadence. Among the Socialist-Revolutionaries, as well as among the Social Democrats, two trends appeared: an extremely terrorist one and supporters of exclusively legal forms of activity among the masses.

Socialist-Revolutionary ultra-terrorists 1908-1909 their tactical views in many ways resembled the maximalists of the period of the first Russian revolution. In turn, the position of supporters of predominantly legal activity was somewhat akin to the populists.

In the post-revolutionary period, the collapse of the peasant community as a result of the Stolypin agrarian reform forced the Socialist-Revolutionaries to correct their views in support of the wealthy sections of the peasantry. Now, in their opinion, it has become an integral part of the "working peasantry", although before the revolution, the Socialist-Revolutionary theorists, as you know, held opposite views. This was a step towards meeting the Popular Socialists on the agrarian question.

One of the indicators of sharp disagreements in the party was the question of the attitude towards the elections to the Fourth State Duma. After lengthy discussions, the party's organ, the Banner of Labor, recommended boycott tactics. However, the boycott of the Duma was not connected with the new revolutionary upsurge that was beginning in the country. And although local organizations issued a call to fight, this, in general, did not change the general situation. Appeals were not supported by practical actions. In one of the proclamations of the Moscow group of Socialist-Revolutionaries, the situation in the party was characterized as follows: “Internal distrust broke it, the onslaught of reaction and the weakening of the masses deprived it of that connection and support that had previously given its leaders strength and firmness in the most cruel trials: the organization collapsed.”

The new revolutionary upsurge of 1912 through the summer of 1914 was gaining strength all the time. On the eve of the First World War, the country was engulfed in political and economic strikes. But this new upsurge of the revolutionary movement was interrupted by the outbreak of war. The attitude towards it in connection with this or that understanding of the revolutionary perspective determined the regrouping in the ranks of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and in the direction of their activity.

THE ORIGIN OF THE BOLSHEVIST - LEVOESER COALITION

The Bolshevik-Left SR alliance was considered by both parties to be a brilliant tactical move. Formally, the "unia" was concluded only after the Second Congress of Soviets, but the leaders of the Bolsheviks and the Left SRs came to the idea of ​​the need to form a coalition even before the October coup. The tactics of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries were simple: strike "to the right", cooperate "to the left". "To the left" were the Bolsheviks. And the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries could cooperate primarily with them. The Bolsheviks, according to the Soviet historian, went to a bloc with the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries "not for the sake of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries as such, but because of the influence that the Socialist-Revolutionary agrarian program had on the peasants." However, it was not a matter of “influence”, but of the program itself, and before that, of the Left SR party workers, who, unlike the Bolsheviks, had at least some access to the village. Sverdlov admitted in March 1918 that before the revolution, the Bolsheviks "didn't work at all among the peasantry." Soviet historiography pointed out as early as the 1920s that the Bolsheviks "failed by the time of the October Revolution to create their own peasant organization in the countryside, which could take the place of the Socialist-Revolutionaries." And the left wing of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, which defended the "principles of Soviet power and internationalism", came in handy in this sense. Here is what Lenin wrote on September 27, 1917 to I. T. Smilga, chairman of the Regional Committee of the Army, Navy and Workers of Finland:

“Your position is exceptionally good, because you can immediately begin to carry out that bloc with the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, which alone can give us lasting power in Russia and a majority in the Constituent Assembly. find out what you can do technically for this and for their transportation to Russia), and then it is necessary that in each agitator group for the village there should be at least two people: one from the Bolsheviks, one from the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries. reigns, and we must take advantage of your good fortune (you have Left Socialist-Revolutionaries) in order to carry out a bloc of Bolsheviks with Left Socialist-Revolutionaries in the countryside in the name of this firm ... "

The Bolsheviks, moreover, needed some kind of agrarian program. The paradox was that the RSDLP (b), a party that considered itself purely proletarian, did not have its own agrarian program at all.

For the first time after 1906, the Bolsheviks put the agrarian question on the agenda only at the All-Russian Party Conference in April 1917. The resolution adopted on the agrarian question became the Bolshevik agrarian program.

The resolution called for the immediate confiscation of all landed estates and the transfer of all land to peasant soviets and committees. The third point of the conference's agrarian resolution demanded the "nationalization of all lands in the state".

In the peasant question, the Bolshevik Party did not want to take on any clear commitments. In this sense, Lenin in 1905 was no different from Lenin in 1917: “We stand for confiscation, we have already declared it,” Lenin wrote at the turn of 1905-1906. - But to whom will we advise to give the confiscated lands? Here we did not tie our hands and never will ... we do not promise an equalizing division, "socialization", etc., but we say: we will still fight there ... " In October 1917, Lenin was also categorically opposed to to introduce into the agrarian program "excessive detail", which "may even hurt, tying our hands in particulars". But the Bolsheviks could not ignore the peasant question and the Russian village. For the victory of the "proletarian revolution" in the city and throughout the country, the Bolsheviks needed a civilian war in the countryside. And Lenin was very afraid that "the peasants would take away the land [from the landlords], and the struggle between the rural proletariat and the prosperous peasantry would not break out. " Lenin, thus, caught not only the similarity of the situations of 1905 and 1917, but also the difference between them : "Now to repeat what we said in 1905, and not to talk about the class struggle in the countryside - this is a betrayal of the proletarian cause ... We must combine the demand to take the land immediately with propaganda for the creation of Soviets of laborers' deputies."

From April to October 1917, the tactics of the Bolsheviks in relation to the peasantry and the Socialist-Revolutionary agrarian program changed several times. Thus, the agrarian resolution of the Bolshevik conference contained a proposal to seek the formation of "a sufficiently large farm from each landowner's estate." A month later, speaking at the First All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Peasants' Deputies, Lenin, on behalf of the Bolshevik Party, recommended that "from each large farm, from each, for example, the largest landlord economy, of which there are 30,000 in Russia, exemplary farms should be formed as soon as possible for their general processing together with agricultural workers and scientific agronomists, using landlord cattle, tools, etc. for this business.

Meanwhile, the First Congress of Peasant Soviets was not so radical. Of the 1,115 delegates of the Social Revolutionaries, there were 537, Social Democrats - 103, People's Socialists - 4, Trudoviks - 6. Not a single Bolshevik was elected to the congress, despite the fact that 136 delegates declared themselves non-party, and 329 belonged to non-socialist parties, i.e. e. "to the right" of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Popular Socialists. As much as Lenin wanted the opposite, the peasants were in favor of an egalitarian division of the landlords' lands, but not for an egalitarian division of land in general. The order of the peasant congress of the First Army said:

“... The use of land should be equalizing labor, i.e. each owner receives as much land as he can personally cultivate with his family, but not below the consumer norm ... "

These peasant sentiments were also confirmed by the publication in August 1917 of a consolidated peasant order, composed of 242 peasant orders brought to the congress in May by the Socialist-Revolutionary peasant delegates. These orders were, of course, "more to the left" of the orders of non-party peasants or delegates of non-socialist parties, but even according to the consolidated Socialist-Revolutionary order, the peasants agreed to leave undivided only a few highly cultured former landlord farms, but nothing more. And soon after the congress and publication, Lenin retired and immediately changed tactics. He decided to accept the program of the Socialist-Revolutionaries completely and completely, to lure the peasants to his side, at least to split them up, to deprive the AKP of support in the countryside and then, having strengthened the bloc with the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries through the adoption of the Socialist-Revolutionary Agrarian Program, to deprive the Socialist-Revolutionary Party of its Left Socialist-Revolutionary functionaries - practitioners in the village. The strengthening of Bolshevik propaganda among the peasants was to serve the same purpose. Lenin now demanded that "all agitation among the people ... be reorganized in such a way as to reveal the complete hopelessness of obtaining land by the peasants until the government is overthrown, until the parties of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks are exposed and deprived of the people's confidence." At the end of August, Lenin assures the peasants that only the Bolshevik Party "can actually carry out the program of the peasant poor, which is set out in 242 orders."

Here, however, a new moment emerged. Lenin imperceptibly replaced the "peasants" with the "peasant poor", i.e. "rural proletariat". Reinforcing Lenin's demagogic statement with a late date, the Soviet historian Gusev writes: "Thus, we can assume that about 80% of the peasant farms were proletarians or semi-proletarians." But this statement by Gusev is completely unfounded, and the figure of 80% is frankly falsified. The absolute majority of Russian peasant farms were classified as "kulak" and "middle peasants", with the latter predominating.

In preparing the bridges for the future retreat of the Bolshevik Party from its earlier obligations, Lenin began to read into the Socialist-Revolutionary peasant mandate something that had never been there. Thus, Lenin pointed to the alleged desire of the "peasant poor" in the order to abolish private ownership "of all kinds of land, including peasant land" free of charge. Lenin's statement, of course, contradicted both the resolutions of the First All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Peasants' Deputies and the order itself. But Lenin was not embarrassed. By "equal land use" he also began to understand something different from what the peasants and even the Socialist-Revolutionaries understood by this. In April 1917, at the All-Russian Party Conference of the Bolsheviks, Lenin said that the peasants “understand egalitarian land use as the taking of land from the landowners, but not as the equalization of individual owners.” However, in August, Lenin described the consolidated Socialist-Revolutionary peasant mandate as a “program of the peasant poor,” who wished to “keep small farms, normalize them equalizingly, periodically equalize them again ... Let it be,” Lenin continued. “Because of this, not a single sensible socialist will part ways with the peasant poor.” But Lenin, of course, was ready to part ways with the “peasant poor”. He stubbornly and methodically prepared the basis for a future civil war in the countryside, or rather, a theoretical justification for the need for such a war. In no way was he going to seriously deviate from the position he had formulated back in 1905:

"Together with the peasant proprietors against the landlords and the landowner state, together with the urban proletarian against the entire bourgeoisie, against all peasant proprietors. That is the slogan of the class-conscious rural proletariat."

Unlike the Socialist-Revolutionaries, who saw only two opposing camps in the countryside - the landowners and the peasants, the Bolsheviks singled out another group from the peasants: the rural poor. But, as always, when tactical considerations required it, the Bolsheviks cooperated with the “left” wing to destroy the “right”. In this case, it was necessary to support the peasants in the struggle against the landowners, so that after the landowner's property was destroyed, to deal with the peasants, supporting the demands of the "village poor". To this end, the Bolsheviks temporarily abandoned the slogan of turning every landowner's estate into a state economy. At the same time, Lenin tried not to mention egalitarian land tenure anymore. Thus, in the appeal “To the Workers, Peasants and Soldiers” written at the beginning of October, but not published at that time, it was said only that “if the Soviets have power, then immediately the landowners’ lands will be declared the possession and property of the whole people.” The wording, of course, was purely Socialist-Revolutionary. In his work “Toward a Revision of the Party Program,” Lenin also did not touch upon the question of equalizing the division of land, as well as the question of transforming landlord estates into public-state farms. However, the point on the nationalization of the land was included in the work by Lenin, although not a word was said about what to do with the nationalized land. This strange suppression of a question so important to the Bolsheviks attracted the attention of many. Already after the coup, V. Meshcheryakov, in an article published in several issues of Pravda, “Marxism and the socialization of the land,” noted this significant feature of the agrarian program of the Bolsheviks:

“What should be done with the nationalized, socialized state land? The nationalization program of the Bolsheviks did not give an answer to this question at all, postponing it for a time after the seizure of lands, after the victory of the revolution, after the nationalization of the land ... Neither in the nationalization project proposed by the Bolsheviks to the Stockholm Congress of the Workers' Party (1906), nor in the program nationalization, adopted at the party conference in April 1917, nor in the extensive literature on this issue - not once any of the supporters of nationalization among the Marxists touched on this issue, did not offer any solutions.

The closer to the revolution, the stronger and stronger Lenin modified the initial peasant demands. Thus, in an article written five days before the October uprising and published on October 24, Lenin “retelled” the demands of the peasants as follows:

“Peasants demand the abolition of the right of private ownership of land; the conversion of all privately owned, etc., land into the property of the whole people free of charge; the transformation of land plots with highly cultivated farms (gardens, plantations, etc.) into "demonstration plots"; transferring them to the "exclusive use of the state and communities"; confiscation of "all household equipment, living and dead", etc. This is how the demands of the peasants are expressed, precisely and clearly, on the basis of 242 local orders, given by the peasants themselves.

But, firstly, it was about the orders of the "SR" peasants, and not about the peasants in general. Secondly, even in the Socialist-Revolutionary orders there were no demands set forth by Lenin. In essence, Lenin very subtly and veiledly started talking about nationalization. But the soldiers and peasants were dominated by the "idea of ​​'equal landownership' according to the consumer-labor norm of distribution, and not the predatory Leninist idea of ​​'nationalisation'".

However, Lenin was too pragmatic to influence the peasants with newspaper articles alone. He faced the dual task of penetrating into the countryside in order to win positions there and weaken the Socialist-Revolutionary Party as a political force that enjoys significant influence in the countryside.

But in order to penetrate the village, it was necessary to win over to their side some of the active leaders of the peasant Soviets, and among them were the Socialist-Revolutionaries. This is where the left wing of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party helped the Bolsheviks. A bloc with the left wing of the AKP was at that moment a natural and only possible step for Lenin. There was also a real foundation for the union. After months of permanent struggle with the majority of their party, the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries proved their adherence to dogmatic radical socialism.

The adoption by the Bolsheviks of the Socialist-Revolutionary agrarian program, without which the Bolshevik government could not function, and the consent of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, if the Bolsheviks accepted the Socialist-Revolutionary agrarian program, to follow the program of the Bolsheviks in all matters, were, as it then seemed to everyone, the key to a successful union. The Left SR party cadres in the rural Soviets and the Bolshevik party leaders in the city Soviets naturally complemented each other.

In May 1917, during the elections to the regional Dumas of Petrograd, the Bolshevik-Left SR alliance gave its first practical results: in the Nevsky district, the Bolsheviks entered into a bloc with the Left SR-internationalists. It was from May 1917 that the open withdrawal of the left wing from the main core of the AKP began. This month, shortly before the Third Congress of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, one of the future leaders of the PLSR, V. Trutovsky, declared that among the members of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, many, “calling themselves both socialists and revolutionaries,” are in fact neither one nor the other. This statement of Trutovsky, published in the press, became a challenge to the entire AKP, which rightly considered itself a socialist and revolutionary party. An immediate party split began.

At the Third Congress of the AKP, which was held in late May - early June 1917, the left wing of the party, numbering 42 people, formed its own faction and came up with a resolution that was eventually rejected by the congress. From about that moment on, the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, formally remaining members of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, began to take a position on a number of issues that differed from the directives and directives of their Central Committee, and pursue their own political line. In response to this, the leadership of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party forbade the left-wing Socialist Revolutionaries to speak on behalf of the AKP and criticize the decisions of the Third Party Congress. But this decision had no real consequences. On the other hand, the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries decided somewhat later, "without breaking their organizational ties with the party, to definitely and firmly distinguish themselves from the policy adopted by the leading majority." The leftists accused the Central Committee of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party of deviating from the program and "traditional tactics" and of shifting "the center of the party's support to sections of the population who, due to their class character or level of consciousness, cannot be a real support for the policy of true revolutionary socialism." The statement also stated that the left wing reserves the right to "complete freedom of speech in the spirit of the above provisions." The statement was signed by the organizational bureau of the left wing of the Socialist-Revolutionaries, elected by the faction of the Left Socialist Revolutionaries at the Third Congress, as well as by the factions of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries in the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the Soviets of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies.

In August, the Left SR faction in the AKP achieved what was considered legal. And already on September 10, at the Seventh Petrograd Provincial Conference of the AKP, the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries sharply criticized the work of the Central Committee of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, and during the re-election of the provincial committee, due to the growing radicalism of the Petrograd Socialist-Revolutionaries, they received a majority of votes. The Left now began to dominate in a number of organizations: Petrograd, Voronezh and Helsingfors, and in the Petrograd organization of the Socialist-Revolutionaries, out of 45,000 people, approximately 40,000 followed the Lefts.

There were almost no defeats for the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries in those days, except for the fact that they were forced to leave the editorial office of the Socialist-Revolutionary newspaper Land and Freedom. But here, too, they took revenge, achieving in September the re-election of the editors of the Znamya Truda newspaper, which has since become their organ. Intensifying their criticism of the AKP, at the All-Union Democratic Conference of Socialist Parties, Councils of Trade Unions, Zemstvos, commercial and industrial circles and military units, held in the citadel of the Left SRs - Petrograd - from September 14 to 22, 1917, the left opposed the coalition with the Cadets thus causing a split in the ranks of the socialists.

And in the Socialist-Revolutionary faction of the Pre-Parliament - the Provisional Council of the Republic, created by the Democratic Conference - the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries declared the policy of the AKP treacherous and left the meeting. Criticism was conducted mainly on three issues: about the attitude towards the war, about agrarian policy and about power.

Even at the Third Congress of the AKP, the Left SRs demanded "immediately breaking the civil peace with the entire bourgeoisie." They also spoke out against the preparation of an offensive at the front and for the publication of secret treaties concluded by the tsarist government with the countries of the Entente. But, despite this, the Central Committee of the AKP, being not interested in a party split, continued to consider the Left SRs as members of a single SR party.

The Left SRs, however, were getting closer and closer to the Bolsheviks. They agreed in principle with the idea of ​​dispersing the Provisional Government and, on the eve of the October Revolution, entered the Bureau of the Military Revolutionary Committee, where, according to Trotsky, they worked "excellently." Meanwhile, this fact was by no means of minor significance. The Military Revolutionary Committee was created in Petrograd for the practical activities of organizing a coup, although it was openly stated that the Military Revolutionary Committee was formed to organize the defense of Petrograd against the Germans. It was in this organizational center of the coup that the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries entered, and the Left Socialist-Revolutionary P.E. Lasimir became the first chairman of the VRC.

Together with the Bolsheviks, the Left SRs also spoke at the Northern Regional Congress of Soviets, which opened in Smolny in October 1917. The congress was attended by 150 delegates from Finland and the Northern Region, and Krylenko was elected chairman. Essentially openly, the talk was about the seizure of power, and Trotsky, in agreement with the Left SRs, read a resolution "on the current moment" demanding "the immediate transfer of all power into the hands of the Soviets." Trotsky demanded that the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries and Bolsheviks unanimously adopt this resolution, which, in his opinion, would mean "a transition from words to deeds." And the Left SRs supported the resolution. It was also supported by the Mensheviks present at the congress "without Martov's supervision", who were afraid to stand out from the general friendly choir of congress delegates. And already before they sang the "Internationale" together, the socialists of Latvia presented the Northern Congress with a gift. To the stormy applause of the Bolsheviks, Left Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, “the representative of “Red Latvia” ... offered 40,000 Latvian riflemen to the future rebels ... It was a real force ... "

Just before the opening of the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets, the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries dealt another blow to their party. They split the party faction of the congress, at a meeting of the faction where they had a majority: by 92 votes to 60 they rejected the resolution of the Central Committee of the AKP on the attitude towards the congress, proposed on behalf of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party by Gendelman.

The convocation of the Second All-Russian Congress was not an ordinary event. As early as September 28, 1917, the Bureau of the Executive Committee of the Soviet of Peasants' Deputies decided not to convene a congress. And on October 4, the plenum of the peasant Central Executive Committee recognized the convocation of the congress on October 20, as it had once been planned, "untimely and dangerous" and suggested that the peasant Soviets refrain from sending delegates to it. On October 12, the Executive Committee of the All-Russian Council of Peasants' Deputies recognized the decision on the transfer of power to the Soviets before the convocation of the Constituent Assembly "not only a harmful, but also a criminal undertaking, disastrous for the motherland and the revolution." And just before the opening of the congress, on October 24, the Executive Committee sent telegrams to all the peasant Soviets, in which they confirmed “its decision on the untimeliness of the congress” and called on the peasant Soviets “not to take part” in it. The congress was considered untimely, in particular, because it was convened during the preparation of the elections to the Constituent Assembly and, as if in opposition to it, had to decide the question of power in the country.

Faced with the active unwillingness of the Peasants' Executive Committee and the passive unwillingness of the first convocation of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee to hold a Congress of Soviets, the Bolsheviks decided to act arbitrarily. On October 16, on behalf of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers' Deputies and the Petrograd Soviet of Peasants' Deputies, the Moscow Soviet of Workers' Deputies and the Regional Committees of Peasants', Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies of the Northern Region, it was decided to send a circular telegram to all provincial and district Soviets and invite them to send congress delegates to Petrograd by October 20 . The Northern Oblast, Moscow, and Petrograd Soviets were thus ready to convene the congress in person.38 This is where the first convocation of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee faced a real alternative: to participate in the congress and try to find a common language with the Bolsheviks, or to boycott the congress. The CEC preferred the first. On October 17, he agreed to convene a congress for October 25,39 thus giving the Bolsheviks an extra five days to organize a coup. The congress was supposed to work "no more than 3 days."

On October 25 at 10.45 pm the congress opened. Initially, the Bolsheviks had 250 mandates out of 518, the Socialist-Revolutionaries - 159, the Mensheviks - 60. But according to the reports, it seems that the Bolsheviks were in the minority, so numerous and harsh was the criticism against them, so shocked were all the socialist parties by the coup, preparations for which, however, it was quite openly carried out by the Bolsheviks in front of the very same socialist parties. After a sharp exchange of views and the issuance of appropriate declarations, the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries left the congress. But the Left Social Revolutionaries, despite the decision of the Central Committee of the AKP, remained at the congress. They condemned the departure of the Socialist-Revolutionary faction and thus finally split the Socialist-Revolutionary party.

At the same time, the Left Socialist-Revolutionary wing of the party has now grown stronger, since many of the members of the Socialist-Revolutionary faction who remained at the congress began to consider themselves Leftists. In addition, the newly arrived Left SR delegates were added to the Left SRs, as well as those of the delegates of the peasant Central Executive Committee who refused to leave the congress. But even after that, the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries did not rise up in opposition to the Bolsheviks at the congress, did not unite around themselves the socialist parties standing to the right of the Bolsheviks, but preferred cooperation with the Bolsheviks. The latter, for their part, could not but reckon with such a numerous faction and most of all feared the creation of a single anti-Bolshevik socialist bloc.

Most members of the Central Committee of the RSDLP (b) were also afraid to form a one-party government, and therefore on October 26, a few hours before the formation of a purely Bolshevik government at the Second Congress of Soviets, the Bolsheviks invited the three Left SR leaders - Karelin, Kamkov and Spiro - to join the Council of People's Commissars. But they refused. Karelin motivated this refusal as follows: “If we had gone for such a combination, then we would have aggravated the differences existing in the ranks of the revolutionary democracy. But our task is to reconcile all parts of democracy.”

Taking into account the refusal of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries to enter the government they were forming, the Bolsheviks reached an agreement with the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries on the proclamation by Lenin on October 26 of the Socialist-Revolutionary Law on Land "in its entirety", along with equalizing land use, in accordance with the Socialist-Revolutionary Peasant Order of the 242nd. On October 26, Lenin actually proclaimed this mandate at the congress, which became the famous "Decree on Land", without hiding that the decree was written off from the Socialist-Revolutionaries. Lenin was inclined to attribute the establishment of Soviet power in Russia to this tactical move later: “We won because we adopted not our agrarian program, but the Socialist Revolutionary ... Our victory consisted in that ... That is why this victory was so easy ... "

There is, of course, nothing surprising that the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries approved this project in its entirety. But the Socialist-Revolutionaries of Lenin's "robbery" did not forgive the Bolsheviks. On their initiative, the Central Executive Committee of the first convocation sent a telegram to all Soviets and army committees about the non-recognition of the Second Congress. And Chernov, in addition, wrote a “Letter to the Peasants”, rightly assuring them that no egalitarian land use could be expected from the Bolsheviks, that the Bolsheviks defended the interests of the rural proletariat, and considered the peasants their opponents and regarded them as the petty bourgeoisie. All peripheral Socialist-Revolutionary organizations were asked to immediately “reprint” this letter in the local Socialist-Revolutionary Party. press, and also, where possible, to publish a separate leaflet.

The Executive Committee of the All-Russian Council of Peasants' Deputies also issued an appeal explaining to the peasants that the Bolsheviks were only deceiving them and that the peasants would "lose their land and freedom" if they followed the Bolsheviks. And on October 28, the Executive Committee declared that it “does not recognize Bolshevik power as state power” and called on the peasants and the army not to obey the government formed at the Second Congress of Soviets. The next day, the Central Committee of the AKP expelled from the party all those who remained at the Second Congress of Soviets after October 25, and on October 30 dissolved the Petrograd, Voronezh and Helsingfors organizations of the AKP, which were dominated by the Left Social Revolutionaries. The latter urgently convened the Ninth Petrograd Conference of the AKP, inviting their supporters there, and, refusing to recognize the decision of their Central Committee as legitimate, expressed no confidence in it, accusing the leaders of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party of an organizational split. Following this, the Left SRs created the so-called Provisional Bureau and appointed their own party congress for November 17th.

The union of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries and the Bolsheviks, meanwhile, was getting better. Both parties were interested in the defeat of the Socialist-Revolutionaries. And for this it was necessary first of all to recapture from the Socialist-Revolutionaries the positions they had taken at the First Peasants' Congress. To this end, on October 27, by agreement between the Bolsheviks and the Left SRs, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee at its first meeting decided to convene the Second Peasant Congress on an urgent basis and proposed "to elect a commission for preparatory work on convocation." Five people were elected to the commission: Spiro, Kolegaev (Kalegaev), Vasilyuk, Grinevich and Muranov. The Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, acting bypassing the majority of the members of the peasant Central Executive Committee of the first convocation, proposed to this commission "to come to an agreement with the left part of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee", i.e. with the Left SRs themselves.

CONCLUSION

The stormy upsurge of the revolution in 1905 hastened the determination of their political positions and ways of solving acute social problems by the bourgeois parties. They were represented by a wide spectrum: from liberal (Constitutional Democrats, Democratic Reform Party, Peaceful Renewal Party, Progressive Party) to conservative (Octobrists, Law Enforcement Party, Commercial and Industrial Party, etc.). Their political positions and programs, although they had their own shades, in the main (Russia's transition to the bourgeois-democratic path of development) were similar, differing in the form of presentation.

It should be noted the broad program of democratic reforms put forward by the Socialist-Revolutionaries. Its main provisions were very close to the requirements of the RSDLP. These included freedom of conscience, speech, press, assembly and association, freedom of movement, inviolability of the person and home. On the basis of universal and equal suffrage for all citizens, the formation of elected bodies of a democratic republic with the autonomy of regions and communities, the widespread use of federal relations between nationalities, the introduction of the native language in all local, public and state institutions were supposed.

In conclusion, for this work, we can say that the first Russian revolution sharply exacerbated antagonistic contradictions, became an accelerator for the formation of numerous political parties and movements that took positions that reflected the interests of various classes and social groups. Political parties expressed their attitude to the existing system, the prospects for the development of Russia, the modernization of its political system, economy, and culture in their program documents.

Liberal constitutional ideas again began to be openly proclaimed in our country in the late 80s and early 90s of the past century. To one degree or another, they were voiced in the programs of the European Liberal Democratic Party, the Russian Social Liberal Party, the Republican Party and a number of others. In 1989, the beginning of the revival of the Cadet Party was laid.

The study of the history of the liberal tradition and the attitude of the liberal intelligentsia to the issues of social and economic development of Russia seems to be very relevant in the modern period. All these problems are closely related to the process of formation and evolution of civil society and the rule of law in modern Russia.

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Faction within the RSDLP in 1903-1917 The name "Bolsheviks" (originally - "majority") reflected the results of the elections of the governing bodies of the RSDLP at its II Congress (17.07.-10.08.1903, Brussels - London). IN AND. Lenin dated the emergence of Bolshevism “as a current of political thought and as a political party” in 1903. In reality, initially the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks went into the same party with a common program and charter, but Lenin’s works, which left the ideological basis of Bolshevism (first of all, “What is to be done?”, 1902 ) were written even before the split at the Second Congress. The specific difference between Lenin's ideas and the general views of the Russian Social Democrats was revealed in the course of the polemic with the Mensheviks, especially since the publication of his work One Step Forward, Two Steps Back (1904). At the end of 1904, the Bolsheviks began publishing their first factional newspaper, Vperyod, which opposed the new (Menshevik) Iskra newspaper and formed a factional center - the Bureau of the Majority. The extreme radicalism of the Bolsheviks, who considered themselves consistent Marxists, stemmed from their ideas about the preference of revolution over reforms and the conviction that in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century, due to the irreconcilability of the contradictions between capitalism and the remnants of serfdom, as well as the political weakness and counter-revolutionary nature of the bourgeoisie, there was no other possibilities for a deep democratic transformation of society that meets the interests of the proletariat. Bolshevism was a continuation of the radical line in the Russian liberation movement and absorbed elements of the ideology and practice of the revolutionaries of the second half of the 19th century. (N.G. Chernyshevsky, P.N. Tkachev, S.G. Nechaev, “Russian Jacobins”); at the same time, he absolutized (following not so much the ideas of K. Marx as K. Kautsky and G.V. Plekhanov) the experience of the French Revolution, primarily the period of the Jacobin dictatorship (according to Lenin, “a Jacobin associated with the proletarian masses, this is the Social Democrat”; he contrasted the “Jacobins” Bolsheviks with the “Girondins” Mensheviks). The minimum program of the RSDLP, the first part of the Program of the RSDLP, adopted at the 2nd Party Congress (1903), which set the immediate task of overthrowing the autocracy and establishing a democratic republic that would ensure the introduction of an 8-hour working day, the equality of all nations and their right to self-determination, the destruction of the remnants of serfdom in the countryside, etc. The Maximum Program of the RSDLP, the second part of the Program of the RSDLP, adopted at the 2nd Party Congress (1903), which defined the main task - the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat to build a socialist society

Party of Socialist Revolutionaries (AKP, party s.-r., Socialist-Revolutionaries listen)) is a radical political party of the Russian Empire, later the Russian Republic and the RSFSR. Member of the Second International. The Socialist Revolutionary Party occupied one of the leading places in the system of Russian political parties. It was the largest and most influential non-Marxist socialist party. Its fate was more dramatic than the fate of other parties. The year 1917 became a triumph and tragedy for the Socialist-Revolutionaries. In a short time after the February Revolution, the party turned into the largest political force, reached the million mark in its numbers, acquired a dominant position in local self-government bodies and most public organizations, won the elections to the Constituent Assembly. Its representatives held a number of key positions in the government. Attractive were her ideas of democratic socialism and a peaceful transition to it. However, despite all this, the Socialist-Revolutionaries could not hold on to power. The Socialist-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 in a non-capitalist way. But the Social Revolutionaries were supporters of democratic socialism, that is, economic and political democracy, which was to be expressed through the representation of organized producers (trade unions), organized consumers (cooperative unions) and organized citizens (democratic state represented by parliament and self-government bodies). The originality of Socialist-Revolutionary socialism lay in the theory of the socialization of agriculture. This theory constituted a national feature of Socialist-Revolutionary democratic socialism and was a contribution to the treasury of world socialist thought. The initial idea of ​​this theory was that socialism in Russia should begin to grow first of all in the countryside. The soil for it, its preliminary stage, was to be the socialization of the land. The socialization of land meant, firstly, the abolition of private ownership of land, at the same time not its transformation into state property, not its nationalization, but its transformation into a public property without the right to buy and sell. Secondly, the transfer of all land to the control of central and local organs of people's self-government, from democratically organized rural and urban communities to regional and central institutions. Thirdly, the use of land was to be egalitarian labor, that is, to provide a consumer norm on the basis of the application of one's own labor, either individually or in partnership. The Socialist-Revolutionaries considered political freedom and democracy to be the most important prerequisite for socialism and its organic form. Political democracy and the socialization of the land were the basic requirements of the Socialist-Revolutionary program - a minimum. They were supposed to ensure a peaceful, evolutionary, without a special, socialist, revolution, Russia's transition to socialism. The program, in particular, spoke about the establishment of a democratic republic with the inalienable rights of man and citizen: freedom of conscience, speech, press, assembly, unions, strikes, inviolability of the person and home, universal and equal suffrage for every citizen from 20 years old, without distinction gender, religion and nationality, subject to a direct system of elections and closed voting. It also required broad autonomy for regions and communities, both urban and rural, and possibly a wider application of federal relations between individual national regions, while recognizing their unconditional right to self-determination. The Socialist-Revolutionaries, earlier than the Social Democrats, put forward the demand for a federal structure of the Russian state. They were also bolder and more democratic in setting such demands as proportional representation in elected bodies and direct people's legislation (referendum and initiative). Editions (for 1913): "Revolutionary Russia" (in 1902-1905 illegally), "People's Messenger", "Thought", "Conscious Russia".

The Socialist-Revolutionary Party finally took shape in 1903 on the basis of various groups that historically and traditionally considered themselves followers of populism. Its program, adopted at the First Congress in 1906, proclaimed the "socialization of the land": the confiscation of all private ownership of land and its transfer through the volost and district local peasant congresses to all working peasants according to the established local norm, based on the number of eaters in the family. The basis for the land program of the Socialist-Revolutionaries remained the peasant community with its redistributed allotments. The Socialist-Revolutionary program, if we leave aside their municipal projects, transferred virtually all private land to the community, providing, in the same way as it was practiced in it, the regular redistribution of allotments.

Socialist-Revolutionary Party poster

In the conditions of rapidly developing industry everywhere in the 20th century, in the face of the prospect of the inevitable growth of not only the rural, but especially the urban population, it is impossible not to see in the program of the Socialist-Revolutionaries both utopianism and demagogic calculation for a spontaneous explosion in the countryside, one cannot but see the desire to close one's eyes on the food problem in Russia over the next 20-30 years.

This program deprived the peasantry of the opportunity to develop, on a small allotment that was always being redistributed, a cultural intensive economy capable of providing the city with the necessary food. The program of the Social Revolutionaries, in the long run, deprived Russia of the opportunity to continue industrialization and could not but aggravate the general backwardness of the country.

It is interesting to note that the time of adoption of this program, which looked backward, almost coincided with the truly progressive Stolypin reform, which destroyed the commune and staked on separate, private peasant farms. But it was precisely in the spirit of the Socialist-Revolutionary program of "socialization" that Lenin's "Decree on Land" was later drawn up.

In other respects, the program of the Socialist-Revolutionaries differed little from the programs of other leftist parties. The Social Revolutionaries recognized the right of the peoples of Russia to state secession after the revolution, but at the same time they transferred this and other questions to the decision of the future Constituent Assembly.

The most controversial issue at the SR Congress of 1906 was the question of recognizing the need for a "revolutionary dictatorship" after the revolution. By an insignificant majority, the congress recognized the "revolutionary dictatorship" as necessary for the period of carrying out the foundations of the program, after which the transition to a normal legal regime was to take place.

This position, together with the recognition terror, as a "temporary" means to achieve goals, caused significant differences in the Socialist-Revolutionary Party itself, which were fully revealed in 1917.

If the Right SRs Avksentiev, Gotz, Savinkov, Zenzinov more and more inclined towards legal statehood, as the starting point for carrying out their program on the basis of a democratically elected parliamentary majority, then the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries - Nathanson, Spiridonova, Kamkov, Karelin and others, strove for a "revolutionary dictatorship". On this issue, the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries approached the Bolsheviks. The roots of this rapprochement lie in the nature of both Leninism and the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, who grew up on the traditions of that extreme populist wing, which was most clearly represented by

Representatives of the intelligentsia have become that social base, on the basis of which in the late XIX - early XX centuries . radical political parties formed: Social Democrats and Socialist-Revolutionaries. They took shape earlier than the liberal opposition parties, since they recognized the possibility of using illegal methods of struggle, and the liberals sought to act within the existing political system.

The first social democratic parties began to emerge in the 1880s and 1990s. in the national regions of Russia: Finland, Poland, Armenia. In the mid-1990s, "Unions of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class" were formed in St. Petersburg, Moscow and other cities. They made contact with the striking workers, but their activities were interrupted by the police. An attempt to create a Russian Social Democratic Labor Party at the congress of 1898 was not successful. Neither the program nor the charter was adopted. Congress delegates were arrested.

A new attempt to unite in a political organization was made by G.V. Plekhanov, Yu.O. Zederbaum (L. Martov), ​​V.I. Ulyanov (Lenin), and others. Since 1900, they began to publish an illegal political newspaper Iskra abroad. It united disparate circles and organizations. In 1903, at a congress in London, a program and charter were adopted that formalized the formation of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP). The program provided for two stages of the revolution. On the first minimum program implementation of bourgeois-democratic demands: liquidation of the autocracy, the introduction of an 8-hour working day and democratic freedoms. On the second - maximum program implementation socialist revolution and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

However, ideological and organizational differences split the party into Bolsheviks (supporters of Lenin) and Mensheviks (supporters of L. Martov). Bolsheviks sought turn the party into a narrow organization of professional revolutionaries. The introduction of the idea of ​​the dictatorship of the proletariat into the program set them apart from other socio-democratic currents. In the understanding of the Bolsheviks, the dictatorship of the proletariat meant the establishment of the political power of the workers in order to build socialism and, in the future, a classless society. Mensheviks they did not consider Russia ready for a socialist revolution, opposed the dictatorship of the proletariat and assumed the possibility of cooperation with all opposition forces. Despite the split, the RSDLP set a course for inciting the workers' and peasants' movement and preparing for the revolution.

Program: They were self-determination of nations. Russia - democratic republic. Dictatorship of the proletariat. Working issue: 8-hour working day, cancellation of fines and overtime. Agrarian issue: return of cuts, cancellation of redemption payments, nationalization (Lenin) / municipalization (Martov). Support for students. Revolutionary methods, a penchant for terror, "steal the loot."

Party of Socialist Revolutionaries(Socialist-Revolutionaries) formed in 1902 based on associations of neo-populist circles. The mouthpiece of the party was the illegal newspaper "Revolutionary Russia". His Socialist-Revolutionaries considered the peasants to be the social support, but compound party was predominantly intellectual. The leader and ideologist of the Social Revolutionaries was V.M. Chernov. Their program provided for the expropriation of capitalist property and the reorganization of society on a collective, socialist basis, the introduction of an 8-hour working day and democratic freedoms. The main idea of ​​the Socialist-Revolutionaries was " land socialization", i.e. the destruction of private ownership of land, its transfer to the peasants and the division between them according to the labor norm. The Socialist-Revolutionaries chose terror as their tactics of struggle. Through the terror of the Socialist-Revolutionaries tried to start a revolution and intimidate the government.

The program of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party put forward a broad list of democratic reforms: freedom of conscience, speech, press, assembly and associations, freedom of movement, inviolability of person and home; compulsory and equal for all general and secular education at public expense; the complete separation of church and state and the declaration of religion as a private matter for everyone; the destruction of the army and its replacement by the people's militia.

Separate provisions of the program concerned the future political structure of Russia. It was envisaged to establish democratic republic with wide autonomy of the regions and communities; recognition of the right of nations to self-determination; direct popular legislation; election, turnover and jurisdiction of all officials; universal and equal suffrage for every citizen not younger than 20 years old by secret ballot.

AT the economic part of the program of the Social Revolutionaries, it was planned to solve the working issue: protection of the spiritual and physical forces of the working class, the introduction of an 8-hour working day, the establishment of a minimum wage, the creation of a factory inspectorate at each enterprise, elected by the workers and monitoring working conditions and the implementation of legislation, freedom of trade unions, etc.

Assessing Russia as an agrarian country dominated by a peasant population, the Social Revolutionaries recognized that the main issue of the coming revolution would be agrarian question. They saw his solution not in nationalization of the whole land after the revolution, and in its socialization, that is, in withdrawing it from commodity circulation and turning it from the private property of individuals or groups into the public domain. However the leveling principle of land use was in direct conflict with reality, since, based on the consumer norm, it was impossible to determine the actual needs for land in different parts of the country, since the needs of peasant farms were different. In reality, there was no equality in the technical equipment of peasant farms.

The Social Revolutionaries were sure that their socialization was built on the psychology of the peasantry, on its long traditions., and it was a guarantee of the development of the peasant movement along the socialist path. With all the utopian costs and deviations towards reformism, the program of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party was of a revolutionary-democratic, anti-landlord, anti-autocratic character, and the "socialization of the land" was an undoubted discovery of the Socialist-Revolutionaries, primarily V.M. Chernov, in the field of revolutionary democratic agrarian reforms. Their implementation would open the way to the development of a farming peasant economy.

The tactics of the Socialist-Revolutionary parties reflected the mood of the petty-bourgeois strata; instability, hesitation, inconsistency. They are actively supported terror which differentiated them from other parties.

At the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, revolutionary sentiments were gaining strength in the Russian Empire. Like mushrooms after rain, political parties are growing that see the future development and prosperity of Russia in the overthrow of the monarchy and the transition to a democratic form of collective government. One of the largest and most organized parties on the left wing were the Social Revolutionaries, or Social Revolutionaries for short (according to their abbreviation SR).

In contact with

This party had enormous influence both before and after 1917, but was unable to keep power in its hands.

A bit of history

From the middle of the nineteenth century, all political circles could be divided into:

• Conservative, right. Their motto was "Orthodoxy, autocracy and nationality." They saw no need for any changes.
• Liberal. For the most part, they did not seek to overthrow the monarchy, but they did not consider autocracy to be the best form of state power. In their understanding, Russia had to come to a constitutional monarchy through liberal reforms. Disagreements arose only in the proportions of the division of power between the monarch and the elected body of government.
• Radical Left. They did not see a future in autocratic Russia and believed that the transition from a monarchy to the rule of an elected council could only be carried out through a revolution.

Late nineteenth century The Russian Empire is experiencing a colossal economic recovery thanks to Witte's reforms. The reverse side of these reforms was the nationalization of production and the increase in excises. Most of the tax burden falls on the poorest segments of the population. The hard life and sacrifices in the name of economic development are causing more and more discontent, including among the educated segments of the population. This leads to a serious strengthening of left-wing sentiments in political circles.

At the same time, the liberal-minded intelligentsia is gradually leaving the political arena. Among liberals, the so-called “small deeds” theory is gaining momentum. Instead of fighting to advance desired reforms that will improve the lives of the poor, liberals decide to do something themselves for the good of the common people. Most of them go to work as doctors or teachers to help peasants and workers to receive education and medical care now, without waiting for reforms. This leads to a clash of the remaining circles of the extreme left and right. In the nineties, a party of social revolutionaries was formed - the future ideologists of the left movement.

Formation of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party

In 1894 in Saratov, a circle of socialist-revolutionaries was formed. They maintained contact with some groups of the Narodnaya Volya terrorist organization. When the Narodnaya Volya were dispersed, the Saratov social revolutionary circle began to act independently, having developed its own program. Their press organ published this program in 1896. A year later, this circle ended up in Moscow.

At the same time, in other cities of the Russian Empire, there were Narodnaya Volya, socialist circles, which gradually united with each other. In the early 1900s, a single Social Revolutionary Party was formed.

Pre-revolutionary activities of the Socialist-Revolutionaries

As part of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, there was also a militant organization that carried out terrorist attacks against high-ranking officials. In 1902, they made an attempt on the Minister of the Interior. However, four years later organization was dissolved and replaced by flying squads - small terrorist groups that did not have a centralized control.

In parallel, preparations were made for the revolution. The Socialist-Revolutionaries saw the peasants as well as the proletariat as the driving force behind the revolution. The social revolutionaries considered the peasant question to be the main bone of contention between the state and the people. It was with the peasants that the Socialist-Revolutionaries conducted propaganda work and formed political associations. They managed to incite the peasants to revolt in several provinces, but a mass uprising throughout Russia did not work out.

Party membership at the beginning of the twentieth century increased and changed its composition. During the first revolutions of 1905-1907, its extreme right and extreme left wing separated from the party. They formed the People's Socialist Party and the Union of Revolutionary Maximalist Socialists.

By the beginning of the First World War, the Socialist-Revolutionary Party was again divided into centrists and internationalists. The internationalists soon received the name "Left Socialist-Revolutionaries". The Radical Left Socialist-Revolutionaries were close to the Bolshevik Party, which the Internationalist Socialist-Revolutionaries would soon join. But so far, at the beginning of 1917, the Social Revolutionary Party was the most numerous and most influential revolutionary party.

February Revolution

World War I further shook the faith of the people in the Russian autocracy. Here and there riots of peasants and workers broke out, skillfully fueled by the propaganda activities of the Socialist-Revolutionaries. The February general strike in Petrograd turned into an armed uprising when the striking workers were supported by soldiers. The result of this uprising was the overthrow of the monarchy and the formation of a provisional government as the main body of power in post-revolutionary Russia.

Socialist-Revolutionaries in the Provisional Government

Since the SR party was the main inspiring force of the February Revolution, they got many positions in the interim government, although the cadet Lvov became the chairman of the government. Here are the most famous Socialist-Revolutionary ministers of that time:

• Kerensky,
• Chernov,
• Avksentiev,
• Maslov.

The provisional government could not cope with the famine and devastation that engulfed the state. The Bolsheviks took advantage of this, trying to get power. The failure of the provisional government forced Lvov to resign. In August, the post of chairman of the provisional government went to the Socialist-Revolutionary Kerensky. At the same time, a counter-revolutionary uprising took place, for the suppression of which Kerensky assumed the role of commander-in-chief. The uprising was successfully put down.

However, dissatisfaction with the interim government grew, as socio-economic reforms dragged on, the peasant question was never resolved. And in October of the same year, as a result of an armed revolt, the entire provisional government, with the exception of Kerensky, was arrested. The chairman managed to escape.

October Revolution and the fall of the Social Revolutionary Party

It was with the arrest of the provisional government that the October Revolution began.. The peasants and workers became disillusioned with the provisional government and went over to the banner of the Bolsheviks. After the revolution, the Executive Committee was created - an executive body - and the Council of People's Commissars - a legislative body. The first two decrees of the Council of People's Commissars were two decrees: the Decree on Peace and the Decree on Land. The first called for an end to the world war. The second decree protected the interests of the peasants and was completely taken from the program of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, since the Bolsheviks were parties of workers and did not deal with the peasant issue.

Meanwhile, the Socialist-Revolutionaries continued to be an influential party and were members of the All-Russian Constituent Assembly. But when the Left SRs joined the Bolsheviks, the Right saw their goal as the overthrow of the Bolshevik dictatorship and a return to true democracy. However, the Right SR party was still legalized, as the Bolsheviks planned to use it in the fight against the white movement. However, the Social Revolutionaries continued to criticize the policies of the Bolsheviks in their publications, which led to mass arrests.

By 1919 the leadership of the SR party was already in exile. It considered justified foreign intervention with the aim of overthrowing the Bolsheviks. However, the right SRs who remained in the country saw in the intervention only the selfish interests of the imperialists. They abandoned the armed struggle against the Bolsheviks, since the country was already exhausted by the war without it. At the same time, they continued to conduct anti-Bolshevik agitation in their printed publications.

The Socialist-Revolutionaries, indeed, contributed to the struggle against the Whites. It was at the Zemsky Congress organized by the Socialist-Revolutionaries that it was decided to overthrow Kolchak's rule. However, in the early twenties, the Social Revolutionaries were accused of counter-revolutionary activities and the party was dissolved.

SR party program

The program of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party was based on the works Chernyshevsky, Mikhailovsky and Lavrov. This program was generously published in the print publications of the social revolutionaries: the newspapers Revolutionary Russia, Conscious Russia, Narodny Vestnik, Mysl.

General provisions

The general idea of ​​the SR program was Russia's transition to socialism, bypassing capitalism. They called their non-capitalist path democratic socialism, which was to be expressed through the rule of the following organized parties:

• The trade union is the party of manufacturers,
• The Cooperative Union is a party of consumers,
• Parliamentary self-government bodies consisting of organized citizens.

The peasant question and the socialization of agriculture occupied a central place in the program of the Socialist-Revolutionaries.

A look at the peasant question

The Socialist-Revolutionaries' View of the Peasant Question was very original for the time. Socialism, according to the Socialist-Revolutionaries, was to begin in the countryside and from there to grow throughout the country. And it had to begin with the socialization of the land. What did it mean?

This meant, first of all, the abolition of private ownership of land. But at the same time, land could not be state property either. It was supposed to become public peasant property without the right to sell or buy it. Elected bodies of collective people's self-government were to dispose of this land.

The provision of land for use by the peasants, according to the Socialist-Revolutionaries, should have been egalitarian labor. Namely, a peasant-individual or a partnership of peasants could receive for use such an allotment of land that they could independently cultivate, and which would be enough for them to live on.

It was these ideas that subsequently migrated to the "Decree on Land" of the Council of People's Commissars.

Democratic ideas

The political ideas of the social revolutionaries gravitated toward democracy. During the transition to socialism, the Socialist-Revolutionaries saw a democratic republic as the only acceptable form of government. With this form of power The following rights and freedoms of citizens were to be respected:

The last point implied that all categories of the population should be represented in the governing bodies in proportion to the number of these categories. Later, the same idea was put forward by the Social Democrats.

Legacy of the Social Revolutionary Party

What trace did the social revolutionaries leave in history with their political and social program? First, it is the idea of ​​collective land management. The Bolsheviks had already put it into practice, and in general the idea turned out to be so well-founded that other communist and socialist states adopted it.

Secondly, most of the rights and freedoms of citizens, which the Social Revolutionaries defended only a hundred years ago, now seem so obvious and inalienable that it is hard to believe that not so long ago they had to be fought for. Thirdly, the idea of ​​proportional representation of different categories of the population in government bodies is also partially used in some countries in our time. In the modern world, this idea has taken the form of quotas in the government and not only.

The Social Revolutionaries gave the modern world a lot of ideas about fair power and fair distribution of resources.