We were confronted with the question whether the S. R.'s would follow us
in this path. This group was in the process of formation, but this
process, according to the standards of our party, went on too slowly and
irresolutely. At the outset of the Revolution, the S. R.'s proved the
predominating party in the whole field of political life. Peasants,
soldiers, even workingmen voted en masse for the S. R.'s. The party
itself had not expected anything of the kind, and more than once it
looked as if it were in danger of being swamped in the waves of its own
success. Excluding the purely capitalistic and landholder groups and the
professional elements among the intellectuals, one and all voted for the
revolutionary populists' party. This was natural in the initial stage of
the Revolution, when class lines had not had time to reveal themselves,
when the aspirations of the so-called united revolutionary front found
expression in the diffuse program of a party that was ready to welcome
equally the workingman who feared to break away from the peasant; the
peasant who was seeking land and liberty; the intellectual attempting to
guide both of them; the chinovnik (officeholder) endeavoring to adjust
himself to the new regime.
When Kerensky, who had been counted a laborite in the period of Czarism,
joined the S. R.'s Party after the victory of the Revolution, that
party's popularity began to grow in proportion as Kerensky mounted the
rungs of power. Out of respect, not always of a platonic nature, for the
War Minister, many colonels and generals hastened to enrol in the party
of the erstwhile terrorists. Old S. R.'s, with revolutionary traditions,
regarded with some uneasiness the ever increasing number of "March S.
R.'s" that is, such party members as had discovered within themselves a
revolutionary populist soul only in March, after the Revolution had
overthrown the old regime and placed the revolutionary populists in
authority. Thus, within the limits of its formlessness, this party
contained not only the inner contradictions of the developing
Revolution, but also the prejudices inherent in the backwardness of the
peasant masses, and the sentimentalism, instability and career-chasing
of the intellectual strata. It was perfectly clear that in that form the
party could not last long. With regard to ideas, it proved impotent from
the very start.
Politically, the guiding role belonged to the Mensheviks who had gone
through the school of Marxism and derived from it certain procedures and
habits, which aided them in finding their bearings in the political
situation to the extent of scientifically falsifying the meaning of the
current class struggle and securing the hegemony of the liberal
bourgeoisie in the highest degree possible under the given
circumstances. This is why the Mensheviks, direct pleaders for the
bourgeoisie's right to power, exhausted themselves so rapidly and, by
the time of the October Revolution, were almost completely played out.
The S. R.'s, too, were losing influence more and more--first among the
workingmen, then in the army, and finally in the villages. But toward
the time of the October upheaval, they remained still a very powerful
party, numerically. However, class contradictions were undermining them
from within. In opposition to the right wing which, in its most
chauvinistic elements, such as Avksentyef, Breshko-Breshkovskaya,
Savinkoff, etc., had finally gone over into the counter-revolutionary
camp, a left wing was forming, which strove to preserve its connection
with the toiling masses. If we merely recall the fact that the S. R.,
Avksentyef, as Minister of the Interior, arrested the Peasant Land
Committees, composed of S. R.'s, for their arbitrary solution of the
agrarian question, the amplitude of "differences" within this party will
become sufficiently clear to us.
In its center stood the party's traditional leader, Chernoff. A writer
of experience, well-read in socialist literature, an experienced hand in
factional strife, he had constantly remained at the head of the party,
when party life was being built up in emigrant circles abroad. The
Revolution which had raised the S. R. party to an enormous height with
its first indiscriminating wave, automatically raised Chernoff, too,
only to reveal his complete impotence even as compared with the other
leading political lights of the first period. The paltry resources which
had secured to Chernoff a preponderance in the populist circles abroad,
proved too light in the scales of the Revolution. He concentrated his
efforts on not taking any responsible decisions, evading in all critical
cases, waiting and abstaining. For some little time, tactics of this
kind secured for him the position as center between the ever more
diverging flanks. But there was no longer any possibility of preserving
party unity for long. The former terrorist, Savinkof, took part in
Korniloff's conspiracy, was in touching unanimity with the
counter-revolutionary circles of Cossack officers and was preparing an
onslaught on Petrograd workingmen and soldiers, among whom there were
quite a few left S. R.'s. As a sacrifice to the left wing, the Center
expelled Savinkof from the party, but hesitated to raise a hand against
Kerensky. In the Pre-Parliament, the party showed signs of extreme
disruption: three groups existed independently, though under the banner
of one and the same party, but none of the groups knew exactly what it
wanted. The formal domination of this "party" in the Constituent
Assembly would have meant only a continuation of political prostration.