The socialist revolutionaries (SR)

• Anarchism

  A political doctrine built around a suspicion of and hostility towards, all forms of centralised government and state authority. It prizes individual freedom and voluntary co-operation between individuals at the local level
• Foundation of the SRs

  • were the heirs of an ill-fated populist movement of the 1860s
  • The populists were middle-class idealists who aimed to form a political alliance with the peasantry in order to overthrow Tsarism and build a new democratic order in Russia on the basis of the village commune or mir.
  • aimed to win peasant support but they were never an exclusively peasant party.
  • loosely organised and undisciplined party
  • There were SRs who were comparative moderates, SRs who were old-fashioned populists and SRs who were prepared to use terrorist methods
• Founders of the SRs

  • Victor chernov - qualified lawyer
  • Mikhail Gots - son of Jewish merchant
  • Grigory Gershuni - pharmacist
  • Catherine Breshko-Breshovskaya - daughter of a wealthy land owner and was later known as ‘the little grandmother of the revolution’
• Ideas of the SRs

  Victor Chernov was the SRs leading theoretician. His ideas represented what might be called mainstream SR thinking:

  • Chernov was a socialist but his socialism was of a distinctive kind. Russia’s uniqueness as a country meant that it had to take its own special path towards socialism
  • Expected and wanted Russia to remain a largely peasant country
  • They believed in communal rather then individual ownership of land was a key feature of SR socialism
  • Wanted to see the decentralisation of political power. There was some anarchism in the mainstream SR outlook
• Methods of the SRs

  • Saw the use of violence as a legitimate political weapon
  • Leadership and rank-and-file were in principle united in their readiness to use force to overthrow Tsarism
  • Mainstream SRs recognised that there was little chance of a bloodless revolution in Russia and accepted that violence would have to be used
  • Others were prepared to see violence used prior to the revolution for the purpose of raising the SRs profile and spreading fear and alarm
• Formation of the SR combat organisation

  1. Formed in 1902

  2. Preferred tactic was the assassination of government ministers and officials
• Divisions within the SRs ranks on the combat organisation's assassination campaign

  • Became apparent in 1906
  • A number of moderates who rejected the assassination campaign split from the SRs and established the popular socialist parties
• In 1908, the SRs were rocked by scandal when the head of the combat organisation, Yevno Azef, was unmasked as an Okhrana spy