Michael Melancon
(Auburn University, USA)

«Marching Together!»:
Left Bloc Activities in the Russian Revolutionary Movement (1900-1917)

Russian socialists often used the slogan «vroz' idti, vmeste bit'», which signified that socialists should maintain separate party identities (march apart), but, if revolution approached, join together to deliver the coup de grace. Even in ordinary times, in tsarist Russia «marching apart» was a luxury revolutionaries could rarely afford. Of course, various parties and factions did not completely sacrifice their independence, but at all levels they informally coordinated activities and, at key times, resorted to official interparty arrangements. Although some histories have mentioned left bloc tactics during the 1905 Revolution and in elections to the Duma, the full extent of socialist cooperation has hitherto escaped note. In numerous cities, Socialist Revolutionaries, Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, and even anarchists «marched together» into the February Revolution in now forgotten joint committees. This study's thesis is that the socialists maintained a more or less permanent left bloc and that, consequently, the nature of Russia's socialist parties, especially with regard to their operations in the revolutionary movement, must be reconsidered ¹.

The dynamics of late nineteenth century revolutionary life contributed to friendly intersocialist relations in the early part of the twentieth century. Before their conversions, most of Russia's first Marxists had belonged to one or the other of the populist parties; consequently, the two major socialist alignments that emerged later shared a common revolutionary heritage. Programmatic similarities further contributed to a cordial atmosphere during the 1898-1902 formative period for the Marxist Social Democrats (SDs) and the neopopulist Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs), who were also a variety of Marxist. Both the SDs and the SRs had worker-oriented programs that espoused the eight-hour day, labor unions, and government insurance. Both parties helped popularize May Day in Russia. Well into the 1900s, local SDs and SRs knew each other well, had personal relationships, and moved back and forth freely from one group to the other².

The question of a unified socialist movement arose quite early. Both the Leninist Iskra and the more moderate Rabochee delo found that the official SR program of 1901, with its focus on workers' problems, was sufficiently close to that of the SDs to justify a merger. The SR leadership recommended instead an all-socialist boevoi soiuz that would function with «agreement of action» – a plausible description of future socialist practice³.

During 1901 and 1902, local SR and SD activitists quickly responded to their leaders' shared regard by creating joint committees in the Urals (Perm, Ufa, and Zlatoust), in Saratov, in Khar'kov, and in Kiev. The joint groups, which sometimes coexisted with the separate SD and SR organizations, focused most of their attention on the urban workers, for whom they issued newspapers and proclamations⁴. Even where joint committees did not exist, socialists often worked closely together; for example, in Petersburg and in southern Russia, SDs and SRs cooperated to carry out strikes. At this time, the SRs and the Leninist (Iskrist) SDs, who found common cause in their dedication to militant political propaganda, were the most ardent cooperators. Alas, these halcyon days of mutual regard were not fated to survive. Alarmed by their growing influence among workers, in mid-1902 Yulii Martov characterized the SRs as neither socialist nor revolutionary, and Lenin excoriated the «opportunism» of joint SD-SR organizations. By the end of the year, most of the joint groups had broken up in polemical squabbles⁵.

Even so, these breakups indicated only the demise of the «naive» era of socialist friendship. With newfound ambivalence, the SDs and SRs now referred to each other as drugi-vragi and vragi-soiuzniki but still sought ways to coordinate their activities⁶. Between 1903 and 1917, three main periods of left bloc policies, each with its own rationale, can be identified. The first is the period from 1903 to 1905 when, at a time of increasing revolutionary tension, socialists devised practical interparty arrangements; the second, the 1906 to 1914 reaction and then revival was a period in which socialists lay down a theoretical framework for the cooperation that characterized much of their work; and in the third, July 1914 to February 1917, socialists, under the most difficult wartime circumstances, formed blocs that edged them closer to unification than ever before.

By 1903, both the SDs and the SRs found it necessary, in the context of a growing oppositionist movement, to give official attention to the problem of interparty relations. During the summer of that year, at their second congress, the SDs rejected unification with the SRs, but affirmed the possibility of agreements with them «in individual cases… under the control of the Central Committee». A few months later, the SR newspaper Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia approved the SD position but added that «the unification of revolutionary forces… would [eventually] be achieved». By 1904 Lenin had fleshed out the SD platform on cooperation by asserting that «during the epoch of the fall of autocracy, the joint struggle of [revolutionaries]… is unavoidable and necessary»⁷.

Whereas revolutionary leaders maneuvered gingerly around this thorny question, local activists plunged right in. During 1903 the Bund (Jewish SDs), the Polish Socialist party (P.P.S.), and the SRs throughout much of Belorussia and the western Ukraine (Smolensk, Belostok, Vilno, and Kiev) formed federated strike committees, carried out strikes together, and created joint student councils. The Urals Union of SDs and SRs intensified its activities, and local activists from Saratov reported a renewal of «surprisingly good relations» and «joint ventures»⁸. Still, aided by the 1903 split between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks, SR efforts at worker recruitment thrived, thereby producing a situation that elicited new rounds of SD-SR polemics. In 1904, the SDs opposed the ultimately successful SR application for admittance to the Socialist International; and, on two occasions during late 1904 and early 1905, the SRs failed to obtain SD participation in multiparty conferences aimed at working out joint revolutionary responses to important current events, such as the Russo-Japanese War and the January 5 Bloody Sunday massacre⁹. Thus, before 1905, intersocialist relations ran the gamut from unity to warfare.

During 1905, however, socialists gave further serious consideration to the matter of cooperation. The Bolsheviks' Third Party Congress firmly endorsed the principle of cooperation with the SRs, for whom some speakers expressed praise of sorts. Anatolii Lunacharskii, for example, denied that the SRs were «completely reformist»; Mikha Tskhakhaia noted that «the SRs are our closer allies than the liberals»; and Lenin blocked an attempt to add harsh language to the congress's neutrally worded resolution advocating temporary practical agreements with the SRs¹⁰. Two factors in the new softer approach were the SRs' long experience in terrorism and their greater following in the armed forces, both of which meant that the SRs alone possessed the technical skills needed for armed uprisings. In late 1905, the SRs' First Party Congress also addressed the problem. The imprisoned terrorist Gershuni sent a letter that urged the immediate creation of a single Russian Socialist party, whereas Sobolevskii, the official speaker on the question, found this idea laudable but premature; he recommended instead a permanent bloc with certain SR-aligned groups and tactical agreements with the various SD parties, with whom, he thought, multiparty conferences should take place. Simultaneously, several leading SDs of Menshevik orientation (Grigorii Plekhanov, Lev Deutsch, Pavel Akselrod, and Yulii Martov) suggested to the PSR that the two parties coordinate activities at both central and local levels¹¹.

The practice of socialist activists during the 1905 Revolution suggests that, in urging joint work, the SR and SD leadership merely sanctioned a developing empirewide network of local left blocs. During the summer, the Petersburg SRs, Bolsheviks, and Mensheviks cooperated in calling a general strike to honor the six-month anniversary of Bloody Sunday; and in Baku, Tiflis, and Nikolaev, the three major parties formed coalitional organizations that provided ongoing left bloc leadership. Throughout much of Belorussia and the Baltic region, the Bund and the various ethnic SD parties, on the one hand, and the SRs and the P.P.S., on the other, created separate blocs that played key roles during the disturbances of the fall of 1905¹². During the late summer and fall of 1905, the socialists also created joint SR-SD boevye druzhiny, which provided protection for strike committees, mass demonstrations, and workers' Soviets, in numerous locations, including the Urals, Petersburg, Stavropol’, Ekaterinoslav, Saratov, Briansk (Orel province), Baku, and Moscow; in several places, most notably in Moscow, the druzhiny engaged in fighting¹³.

During the spring and summer of 1905, two patterns of activity emerged. In places such as Petersburg, Saratov, and Moscow, the SDs, SRs, and other groups, who already had a tradition of left bloc cooperation, worked together relatively smoothly during 1905. In such other places as Tiflis, Stavropol’, Baku, and at the huge Briansk Munitions Plant of Orel province, tension between the groups prevailed initially; but, when news of the national general strike arrived, socialists put aside partisanship to mount the attack on the old regime¹⁴.

When, during August 1905, the government proposed elections to the Bulygin Duma, the SRs and the Bolsheviks carried out a boycott, the planning for which, according to the Russian historian Levanov, resulted in «the formation of a united front of all revolutionary and left oppositionist [liberal] forces against tsarism»¹⁵. The prime manifestation of the efficacy of this socialist-liberal bloc was the successful October 1905 national general strike proclaimed by the Moscow-based all-Russian Executive Committee of the Railroad Union; this committee consisted, like the leadership of many other labor unions at the time, of SRs, SDs, anarchists, and liberals¹⁶.

The soviets of workers' deputies that arose in more than fifty cities also provided wide scope for coordinated actions. The executive committees of the Soviets contained combinations of SDs, SRs, and members of other parties. The Soviets reached their major decisions and issued their important proclamations – like the Moscow Soviet's call for an armed rising and the Petersburg Soviet's famous request for all citizens to refuse to pay taxes – in conjunction with the Menshevik, Bolshevik, and SR committees. The authors of one Soviet study have defined the 1905 Soviets as «the embodiment of a fighting union of revolutionary social democracy, revolutionary petit-bourgeois democracy [SRs], and revolutionary nonparty workers»; all jargon aside, this accurately describes what occurred¹⁷.

The contemporary writings of socialist leaders and activists also reflect the phenomenon of cooperation. During the fall of 1905, Lenin noted that «the organization of revolutionary forces for the destruction of the government... is the practical common goal, for which all revolutionaries can and must unite»; the SR Viktor Chernov advocated «coordinated activities» and later recollected that the October 1905 events had posed more clearly than before the need for a «unified socialist party». The Saratov activist Aleksandr Studentsov perhaps best summed up the reality when he wrote that in 1905 «the SDs and SRs helped one another¹⁸. The experience of 1905 indicates that socialist cooperation deepened in direct proportion to the ripening of the political crisis: Revolutionaries were striking together.

Although by early 1906 the government had dispersed the workers' Soviets and defeated armed uprisings in several cities, all did not seem lost for the socialists. The October Manifesto promised new freedoms and a state duma; for the first time, party leaders could function at the heads of the semilegal mass organizations; labor unions, cooperatives, and other worker organizations sprang up everywhere. Furthermore, peasant uprisings continued and garrisons mutinied one after another. All of these events raised the socialists' hopes that the revolution had not ended.

By 1908 instead of revolution socialists faced relentless oppression that sent the socialist parties back into the underground, major leaders back to Western Europe and hundreds of activists to prison and Siberian exile. Furthermore, according to the SRs at least, interparty relations had again worsened, as a result of which, they thought, «a single [Russian] socialist party is unrealizable at the present time»¹⁹. Although strict unification was not imminent, the SRs' gloomy view of post-1907 interparty relations does not fit the evidence from the 1906-1914 era. Hopes for revived revolution during 1906-1907 and the exigencies of the post-1907 reaction guaranteed that the parties would not wander too far apart.

By 1906 theoretical (rather than merely practical) considerations also began to play a role in socialists' thinking about blocs. One of the keys was the Bolsheviks' adoption of the concept of the revolutionary role of the peasantry; as Lenin said, «the provisional revolutionary government… can be based only on the revolutionary… proletariat and peasantry». Thus the SDs, representing the proletariat, required an alliance with the SRs, who alone had influence among the peasants. At their party congress, the SRs reaffirmed an old populist formula when they asserted that «the whole weight of the struggle with tsarism falls on the proletariat, the laboring peasantry, and the revolutionary intelligentsia». Since they both viewed Russia's bourgeoisie as weak and reactionary, the SRs and the Bolsheviks took a dim view of the viability of liberal capitalism in Russia and forecast a rapid move toward socialism²⁰. Meanwhile, the Mensheviks and, indeed, all the non-Leninist SDs, including Lev Trotskii, agreed that there was no short cut to socialism through the auspices of the backward peasantry; as a result, the Mensheviks recommended the liberal bourgeoisie as the workers' only suitable ally²¹. Thus, by 1905, the SRs and the Bolsheviks, on the one hand, and the Mensheviks, on the other, had reached dissimilar theoretical and programmatic formulations about Russia's revolutionary classes.

Between 1906 and 1912, much of the formal discussion of interparty relations centered on the problem of elections for and tactics in the dumas. Ultimately, the three major parties settled these questions in accordance with their previously enunciated theories and programs: the Mensheviks allied with the liberal Constitutional Democrats and the Bolsheviks and SRs allied together. In defense of the Bolshevik position, Lenin spoke more favorably about the SRs than he ever had before; at one point, he advised voters to choose parties that defended the interests of workers and laborers, that is, to elect the SDs and the SRs. Furthermore, Lenin roundly criticized the Mensheviks for their «contemptuous attitude» toward the peasantry and for their tilt toward the liberals. In 1912, he characterized the Menshevik position on these matters as «not Marxist, not proletarian, not even democratic, but liberal», and in 1913 claimed that «life had confirmed» the line the Bolsheviks had taken²². In reply, the Mensheviks Martov, Fedor Dan, and N. Cherevanin characterized the Bolshevik-SR concept of a worker-peasant revolution as «utopian», «a fairy tale», and «empty phrases» and bitterly accused the Bolsheviks of «populist» and «SR» attitudes and of forcing the SD party «to lower its banners to populism, against which we have struggled for twenty years»²³. For their part, the SRs encouraged «coordinated activities of all socialist parties and extreme left factions» in the dumas and gave general support to the idea of «the unification of all representatives of exploited labor» into one party²⁴.

During each of the duma elections between 1906 and 1912, the left bloc of Bolsheviks, SRs, and Trudoviks (SR-oriented peasant deputies) operated in Petersburg and in eighty-seven other cities. The involved parties held numerous joint conferences. In some areas, the Mensheviks also joined the bloc, which, when local conditions required it to defeat the reactionary Black Hundreds candidates, even broadened to include the liberal Constitutional Democratic party²⁵.

The left bloc in the dumas opened the way for a wide array of cooperative endeavors, a mode of behavior hallowed by tradition and sanctioned by the dictates of present need. When the government dissolved the First Duma during the summer of 1906, the SR and SD central committees, the SD and Trudovik duma factions, and the All-Russian Peasant Union (an SR-oriented organization) issued a series of joint proclamations calling for revolution and arranged a mass meeting outside the capital in hopes of reviving the Petersburg Soviet. A month later, representatives from the Mensheviks, the Bolsheviks, the SRs, and the Trudoviks met in Terioki, Finland, and voted to renew the call for a revival of the Soviets. The Soviet historian K. Argun notes that at this time «the cooperation among the leftist parties took place in strike committees, labor unions, [and other groups]… They called jointly for a general strike, an armed uprising, the nonpayment of taxes, and expropriations»²⁶.

During 1905-1907, revolutionaries helped create an empirewide network of labor unions, cooperatives, cultural-educational societies, and, a little later, sickness funds; these institutions not only carried out their ostensible goals, but constituted a vast forum for joint socialist efforts. The secret police reported that, with the onset of repression during 1907-1908, the Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, SRs, P.P.S., and Bundists adopted a new policy that advocated a softening of direct revolutionary agitation, combined with quiet entry into all manner of social organizations «in order to work from within». The police also noted that «constant discussions» were taking place in the cultural societies «between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, Liquidators [i.e., reformists] and party people, and among SRs, SDs, and [Anarcho-]Syndicalists… These societies developed certain types of propagandists and agitators, such as worker-discussants, worker-lecturers, and worker-moderators»²⁷.

During 1907, both SD factions recognized the need for close work with the SRs. A Petersburg SD conference presided over by the Bolsheviks Grigorii Zinoviev, Mikhail Tomskii, and Vladimir Voitinskii resolved «to reach an agreement with the SRs to act together». At the September 1907 SD (Fifth) Congress, the Menshevik Yurii Larin called for an all-Russian workers' congress, which, he thought, might serve as a unifying agent among SDs and SRs²⁸. Whereas previously SDs had discussed the merits of working with the SRs in terms of the peasantry, they now accepted the SRs as a force among the workers as well.

The sweep of joint operations across the empire after 1905 was enormous. During 1906-1908, in the capital and in roughly thirty other cities, SDs and SRs cooperated to construct a network of «soviets of the unemployed» to aid locked-out workers; and various combinations of the SRs, Bolsheviks, and anarchists created partisan detachments in the Urals, along the Volga, and in Georgia, Poland, and Latvia²⁹. In such cities as Vladivostok, Kharbin, Khabarovsk, and Kronshtadt, SRs and SDs formed joint military organizations, one of which led the Kronshtadt rebellion in 1906. During 1906 and 1907, SRs and SDs held joint conferences, arranged mass meetings, and led strikes in Kiev, Petersburg, Kazan’, Smolensk, Petrozavodsk, Khar'kov, and at the Urals Izhevsk Munitions Plant; in Tashkent they founded a joint SR-SD committee³⁰.

Across the empire, the socialists and anarcho-syndicalists continued to operate and cooperate in the labor organizations and in the city and national labor committees, including the Moscow Central Bureau of Unions, the National Insurance Council, and the Petersburg Inter-Club Commission. From within the labor organizations, the socialists launched various public welfare movements, such as the 1909 anti-alcoholism campaign, which many SDs and SRs used to criticize the government. By 1909 an alliance of SRs and Bolshevik recallists (a leftist faction that wished to withdraw the SDs from the duma) became very influential in the Petersburg unions of metalworkers, textile workers, commercial clerks, and vehicular frame makers³¹.

Contemporary reports from various locations testify to the cordial atmosphere within the revolutionary movement. In the northern industrial city of Petrozavodsk, the SRs and SDs had «no substantial disagreements» and even got along well with the local Kadets (Constitutional Democrats), who considered themselves left Kadets. Activists from the Urals, Kazan', and Smolensk reported that SRs and SDs «united for the interests of the working class» and worked together bok-o-bok. In some areas, the Bolsheviks claimed that they got along better with the SRs than with their brother Mensheviks³². During the era of reaction, socialists had to adjust to new and harsh conditions; political survival rather than immediate revolution was the goal. They responded by pooling scarce human and technical resources.

With the 1910 economic upswing, socialists began to restructure their organizations inside Russia and, for the first time in years, contemplated open demonstrations. The deaths of Lev Tolstoi and Egor Sazonov (the SR terrorist) occasioned mass student-worker demonstrations organized by the Petersburg SRs, SDs, and liberals. Signs of worker unrest cropped up elsewhere, to which the government sometimes responded with violence, as it did in Vologda and Zerentuisk. At a December 1910 joint socialist conference in Paris, the Bolshevik Lev Kamenev, the Menshevik Dan, and the SR Ilia Rubanovich resolved to use the issue of the government's brutality to provoke further unrest. Eighteen months later, the government perpetrated a massacre in the Siberian Lena goldfields that rivaled the Bloody Sunday massacre in its effect on Russian society. The strike that led to the massacre had taken place under a local strike committee of SDs, SRs, and anarchists, and the national response to it was similarly pluralistic, with all the revolutionaries joining in to organize protests. In Paris the SDs and the SRs held a protest meeting that issued a widely circulated proclamation decrying the regime's inhumanity³³.

In the two years between 1910 and 1912 not only did the revolutionary mass movement revive, but left bloc activities intensified. In Zhitomir, the remnants of the Bund, the SRs, and the SDs «unified on the grounds of common interests», and in Chernigov an SR-SD student organization initiated renewed activities among the local workers that spurred the rebirth of the SD and SR organizations. Joint SR-SD student councils, which had existed in a few places before 1905, now arose in many cities, including Petersburg, Moscow, Odessa, and Novo-Nikolaevsk; in the capital, the student council initiated the 1912 May Day Committees of SD and SR youth that attempted to organize mass demonstrations for the worker holiday. The police noted that during 1912 the SDs, the Bund, the SRs, and the P.P.S. were sending groups of secret emissaries to such worker centers as Ivanovo-Voznesensk, Lodz, Tomashev, Belostok, and Yuzovka to promote a nationwide general strike that was to be initiated, as in 1905, by the railroad and postal-telegraph unions³⁴.

With the scope of practical activities increasing, socialist spokesmen again raised the old issue of unification. In 1912, an SR activist from Petersburg wrote to the party newspaper Znamia truda that, along with the rise in revolutionary sentiment, he noted increased mass pressure for a merger of the socialist parties. Thereafter, Znamia truda published a whole series of articles on this subject; one party spokesman asserted that «the unification of socialism… is absolutely necessary». During this period, the Bolsheviks continued to defend their left bloc policy with the SRs and the Left Menshevik Nikolai Sukhanov recommended that the SRs and SDs work out their programmatic differences³⁵.

The last eighteen months before the outbreak of World War I witnessed a revival of mass urban unrest and organized revolutionary activities vast enough to justify the Soviet designation of the period as «revolutionary». Historians usually portray this era in terms of exclusive Bolshevik advances in workers' organizations. Since the often successful Bolshevik tickets in union and other elections almost always consisted of carefully crafted combinations of Bolsheviks, Left Mensheviks, and nonfactional Left SDs (in Petersburg the Mezhraionka), the traditional interpretation requires qualification. Furthermore, the Bolsheviks not only defended their left bloc policy with the SRs in the duma, but often allied with them in other activities. In fact, as the old regime's powers of resistance began to flag by 1913, all the revolutionaries engaged in intense cooperative actions.

The Petersburg Bolshevik activist V. Kaiurov claimed that during this period Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, and SRs carried out «all concrete measures in the factories together»; once the party activists had reached their agreements, these were considered «binding on all workers». If an agreement could not be reached, the issue in question was brought before a workers' massovki, at which party spokespeople outlined their positions before a vote was taken. During 1913-1914, interparty conferences at the factory, district, or city wide level occurred in, among other places, Petersburg, Kiev, Samara, and Ufa and at the Motovilov Plant near Perm³⁶. During early 1913, SR and SD leaders of various Caspian, Volga, and Black Sea merchant marine locals formed a giant union, which issued its own newspaper, Moriak, and which organized several important strikes. The secret police noted that in the south of Russia, the workers' movement revived after the wide distribution of collections of SR, Bolshevik, and Menshevik workers' papers from Petersburg³⁷. The city wide strike committees that lea the near uprisings in Petersburg, Ekaterinoslav, and Baku during the late spring and early summer of 1914 consisted of representatives of all three major parties. Sometimes – but not always – the Mensheviks showed somewhat less militance than did the Bolsheviks and SRs, who, since 1905, had worked closely together. Perhaps the most prominent example of this special alliance emerged when the SR and Bolshevik Petersburg committees issued joint proclamations during the tumultuous spring of 1914 – including one for May Day, the symbol of proletarian revolution³⁸. The interparty strike committees and other spheres of cooperation suggest the continued – indeed growing – vitality of the left bloc during the months before the outbreak of the war.

For the whole nation, as well as for the socialist movement, Russia's entry into World War I during July 1914 was a great watershed; on the home front, the government launched its heaviest attack in years against socialist organizations. My research on the revolutionary movement during the war suggests that, in order to overcome the resulting extraordinary difficulties and, during late 1916 and early 1917, to strike at the faltering tsarist regime, socialists sought allies or, as the Soviet historian Argun stated, «the general front of all leftist revolutionary forces intensified»³⁹.

In Western Europe such socialist leaders as Lenin, Trotskii, Martov, Chernov, and Mark Natanson immediately turned against the war, began publishing antiwar newspapers, and attempted in every possible way to encourage the revolutionary movement at home. Chernov, Trotskii, Martov, and Lunacharskii often appeared together at meetings and defended the same internationalist position. Within a few months, a new movement toward unification arose (the police named Trotskii as the chief sponsor), which aimed at both the reunification of Bolsheviks and Mensheviks and the merging of the SRs and SDs. A unification conference of the various SR and SD antiwar factions took place during mid-1915, with no concrete results. Nonetheless, these same groups participated in the famous Zimmerwald and Kienthal International Socialist Conferences, which issued joint revolutionary proclamations. The extreme antiwar leaders, such as Lenin and the SR Natanson maintained contact and informed one another of their plans. Meanwhile, prowar emigre Mensheviks and SRs united in the so-called Prizyv group, which published a prowar newspaper⁴⁰.

Inside Russia, where activists faced the actual problems of surviving and attempting to make a revolution, interparty cooperation reached the highest level yet. During early 1916, with mass unrest clearly on the upswing, the Petersburg SRs issued a lengthy proclamation recommending that revolutionaries form fighting unions all over the empire to attack the regime. Later in 1916, the Bolshevik Petersburg Committee listed the antiwar SRs, the Left Mensheviks, and the Mezhraionka as groups with which it carried out joint demonstrations. Indeed, this exact alliance had formed the city wide strike committee in the capital during September 1915. At roughly the same time, the SRs, Bolsheviks, and Mezhraiontsy formed a bloc to oppose the election of workers' groups to the war industries committees (industrial and financial groups that helped the war effort); the SR-Bolshevik bloc against such workers' groups existed in Moscow, Samara, Khar'kov, and many other industrial centers. Prowar Mensheviks, SRs, Bundists, and Popular Socialists formed a counteralliance to promote the war effort⁴¹.

Most striking was the extent and scope of the movement to form interparty organizations. In a process that began in 1914 and intensified with each year, antiwar Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, SRs, and anarchists formed joint committees that coordinated strikes, issued proclamations, called conspiratorial and mass meetings, conducted agitation, and made plans for armed uprisings. The joint organizations in Chernigov, Minsk, and Smolensk had the specific goal of carrying on propaganda at the fronts⁴². These now forgotten groups that arose in towns and cities across the empire edged the socialists closer than ever to the state of unification about which many had spoken since 1900. Even where official joint groups did not exist, socialists and anarchists habitually formed joint strike committees, issued joint proclamations, summoned mass meetings, and organized interparty conferences.

As before the war, in most places the SRs and Bolsheviks worked together best. An activist from Smolensk recalled that «the Bolsheviks in general had much closer contact with [the SRs] than with their brother [Menshevik] SDs». A Tula Bolshevik wrote that «we got along… better with the SRs and Anarchists than with the Mensheviks». In Nizhnii Novgorod, a Bolshevik memoirist recalled that «we carried out [strikes] together with the SRs». A Moscow Bolshevik claimed that among the SRs «were people close to us. ... It was important to us that the SRs approve our line of agitation». In Ekaterinoslav, the Bolsheviks held a conference during 1916 that elected as chairman a certain Zakharev who, according to one participant, «vacillated between the Bolsheviks and SRs». The SRs and Bolsheviks in Petrograd held two joint conferences, and in Moscow, Khar'kov, and Odessa issued joint proclamations, including several greeting the February Revolution⁴³.

In Petrograd during the weeks before the February Revolution, the SDs of all factions, the Bund, the SRs, the Trudoviks, and the Popular Socialists created an All-Socialist Informational Bureau, which, according to the Bolshevik Shliapnikov, had the goal of coordinating the actions of the parties in the developing revolutionary situation. Since the all-socialist bureau included both prowar and antiwar groups, the Bolsheviks, the Left SRs, the Left Mensheviks, and the Mezhraionka also formed a separate leftist informational bureau, which agreed on militant slogans to be used each day of the crisis and which issued most of the proclamations of the February Revolution. One of these leaflets widely distributed on the morning of 27 February, the day tsarism fell, stated that «we, Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, and Socialist Revolutionaries, summon the proletariat of Petersburg and all Russia to organization and feverish mobilization of our forces»⁴⁴. In essence, this summarizes the attitudes and activities of the left bloc of socialists during the war years and during the February crisis.

Between 1900 and February 1917, socialist leaders were ambivalent about the problem of intersocialist relations. SRs and, at times, SDs viewed ultimate socialist unification as a laudable future goal, but for the present, they all sanctioned only practical, temporary agreements. Thus, by their own lights, they were striking, but not marching, together; in aggregate, however, their actions appear differently. However they camouflaged matters with separatist rhetoric, year in and year out socialists operated in a left bloc that often broadened to include anarchists and, on occasion, even liberals and at other times contracted to exclude some socialists. The excluded socialists responded by forming their own alliances. Eventually, two separate socialist blocs emerged – right and left – which sometimes allied together, sometimes did not. At all levels, however, revolutionary leaders and activists of all outlooks regularly met together to work out joint approaches to important problems; this process found concrete expression in the innumerable joint declarations and proclamations they issued and in the strike committees, social organizations, Soviets (1905), armed detachments, and, after the start of the war, unified organizations in which the socialists pooled their efforts.

Whatever the Menshevik and Bolshevik leaders did, most SD organizations remained unified through much of 1917. Local SDs routinely ignored the top-level animadversions and pyrotechnics that have so mesmerized commentators ever since and serenely cooperated (rather than split) not only with each other, but also with the SRs and anarchists, who themselves promoted a united front. Because of their shared dedication to political agitation and because of the similarity of their views on the role of the workers and peasants in the revolution, the Bolsheviks and the SRs remained, between 1900 and early 1917, the closest allies, a phenomenon recapitulated by the 1917- 1918 Left SR-Bolshevik alliance.

Between 1900 and 1917, two general categories of bloc activities existed. When revolution seemed imminent, all socialists banded together and even built bridges to the liberal opposition in order to strike together. In less propitious times, outlooks on post-revolutionary Russia (whether Russia would move quickly toward socialism or experience lengthy capitalist development) determined with whom this or that socialist group would march. The Right Mensheviks, Right SRs, Bundists, and Popular Socialists, all of whom expected a prolonged capitalist phase, banded together; the Bolsheviks, Left SRs, Mezhraiontsy, and (with some reluctance) the Left Mensheviks, all of whom expected a rapid transition to socialism, made common cause. Thus two competing socialist blocs – left and right – gradually emerged and during the war achieved their highest definition over the issue of whether to support or oppose the war.

Evidence from numerous sources suggests that pressure from below – from workers, students, soldiers, peasants, and from the rank and file cadres, all of whom disliked factional strife – was a significant factor in the left bloc phenomenon. Even party leaders honored separatism more in the breach than in the practice. The plasticity of the boundary lines between the various groups suggests that Russian political parties had not yet achieved a high degree of definition; they were movements, operating in daunting circumstances, rather than parties.

By focusing exclusively on single groups, historians have overlooked the pervasive pattern of the left bloc and have, therefore, missed something very important: The whole was greater than the sum of its parts. When they acted in concert, and especially when the entire socialist spectrum joined with the liberals as in October 1905 and February 1917, the revolutionary groups became quite formidable. Several weeks before the overthrow of tsarism, Minister of the Interior A.A. Protopopov, whom contemporaries held to be in an advanced stage of lunacy, wrote that «Russia is in a preparatory stage for an uprising of unified revolutionary organizations» (a fool's inspired wisdom?)⁴⁵. Recent studies, such as those of Tsuyoshi Hasegawa and Donald Raleigh, suggest that revolutionary activists played a substantial role in the February Revolution, an idea strengthened by this study's concept of a united revolutionary front ⁴⁶. Historians should take cognizance of the way socialists confronted their tasks: In good times and in bad, in normal times and in revolution, they marched together.

Примечания

¹ This study refers to both official intersocialist agreements and informal arrangements as «left bloc activities». Among numerous Soviet studies of the left bloc (the topic is a minor cottage industry in Soviet historiography) are Khazaret Argun, Bor'ba Bol'shevistskoi partii za soiuz rabochego klassa i krest'ianstva v period mezhdu dvumia burzh.-dem. revoliutsiami v Rossii (1907 – fevral’ 1917) (Sukhumi: Aloshara, 1974); N.P. Badaeva, Leninskaia taktika «levogo bloka» v revoliutsii 1905-1907 gg. (Leningrad, 1977); and D.A. Kolesnichenko, «Parlamentskaia taktika bol'shevikov i narodnicheskii blok v izbiratel'noi kampanii vo II Gosudarstvennuiu dumu», Istoricheskie Zapiski [henceforth I.Z.] 104 (1979): 91-122.

² Richard Pipes, Social-Democracy and the St. Petersburg Labor Movement, 1885-1897 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963), 40-51; Michael Melancon, «The Socialist Revolutionaries from 1902 to 1907: Peasant and Workers' Party», Russian History 12 (Spring 1985): 4-5; idem, «Athens or Babylon?: The Birth of the Socialist Revolutionary and Social Democratic Parties in Saratov, 1890-1905» in Politics and Society in Provincial Russia: Saratov, 1590-1917, ed. Rex Wade and Scott Seregny (Columbus: Ohio-State University Press, 1989).

³ Iskra and Rabochee delo found, respectively, that the SR program «to a significant degree represented SD principles», and that it «is not distinguished in anything substantive from the [SD] program». Iskra, no. 5 (June 1901); Rabochee delo, no. 9 (May 1901); B.V. Levanov, Iz istorii bor' by bol'shevistskoi partii protiv eserov v gody pervoi russkoi revoliutsii (Leningrad: Len. un-ta, 1974), 40.

⁴ G.A. Kuklin, Za 40 let; itogi revoliutsionnogo dvizheniia v Rossii (1862-1902 gg.). Sbornik pro-gramm… (Geneva, 1903), 47-48; Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia [henceforth R.R.], nos. 5, 18, 21, 22, 24, 31 (1902-1903); A.I. Spiridovich, Partiia Sotsialistov-Revoliutsionerov i eia predshestvenniki. 1886-1916 (Petrograd, 1918), 142 n.

⁵ Obzor vazhneishikh doznanii proizvodivshikhsia v zhandarmskikh upravleniiakh za 1902 god (Rostov-on-Don, 1906), 2; «K vospominaniiam starogo obukhovtsa», Krasnaia letopis' [henceforth K.L.], no. 19 (1926): 58-60; R.R., no. 36 (1903); Melancon, «SRs from 1902», 15; P. Lebedev, «K istorii Saratovskoi organizatsii RSDRP (1901-1903 gg.), «Proletarskaia Revoliutsiia [henceforth P.R.], no. 3 (1923): 244; Melancon, «Athens or Babylon»; V. I. Lenin, «Pochemu Sotsial-Demokraty dolzhny ob"iavit' reshitel'nuiu i besposhchadnuiu voinu na Sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov», Iskra, no. 21 (June 1902).

⁶ A. Argunov, «Iz proshlogo partii sots. -rev.», Byloe, no. 10 (1907): 108; V.B. Ostrovskii, ed., Lenin i Saratovskii krai: sbornik dok. i mat. Saratov: Povolzhskoe knizhnoe izdatel’stvo, 1975), 250.

⁷ The rejection of unification is in Vtoroi ocherednoi s"ezd Ross. Sots-Dem. Rabochei partii (Geneva, 1903), 358-364; Vtoroi s"ezd RSDRP, iiul'-avgust 1903 goda. Protokoly (Moscow, 1959), 401-407; 456-457, 500-501; 512-513; A.I. Spiridovich, Istoriia Bol'shevizma v Rossii (Paris: Franko-russkaia pechat, 1922), 71; M. Balabanov, Ocherk istorii revoliutsionnogo dvizheniia v Rossii (Leningrad: Priboi 1929), 188; R.R., no. 37 (1 December 1903): 3-5; Levanov, Iz istorii, 40.

⁸ Vtoroi s"ezd RSDRP, 159; R.R., nos. 4, 5, 26, 31, 36, 39 (1902-1904); Lebedev, «K istorii saratovskоi organizatsii RSDRP», 44; I. Iurenev, «Rabota RSDRP v severo-zapadnom krae (Vil'no) (1903-1913 gg.)»; P.R., nos. 31-32 (1924): 169.

⁹ R.R., no. 56 (5 December 1904): 1-2, 7-9; Krasnoe znamia (n.p., 1905), 74-79; Melancon, «SRs from 1902», 14; Henry J. Tobias, The Jewish Bund in Russia from Its Origins to 1905 (Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 1972), 279-280. Lenin abandoned the April 1905 multiparty conference in Geneva because it lacked an SD majority. Tretii s"ezd RSDRP, aprel'-mai 1905 goda. Protokoly (Moscow: Gozizdat, 1959), 378-382; Lenin i saratovskii krai, 29; Spiridovich, Partiia Sots.-Rev., 195-196.

¹⁰ About the offensive phrases, Lenin stated, «No eto uzh chistye rugatel'stva!» Tretii s"ezd, 61, 67-68, 173-176, 372-390.

¹¹ M. Perrie, ed., Protokoly Pervogo S"ezda Partii Sotsialistov-Revoliutsionerov (1906; reprint, New York: Kraus, 1983), 338-342, 350; Obzor revoliutsionnykh partii. Obzor partii sots.-rev. (n.p., 1909), 20. Nicolaevsky Archive, Hoover Institution, Stanford University, box 194, files 4-8. The Menshevik offer to the SRs included a suggestion that the PSR call a party conference to adopt the SD proposal; the SR M. Natanson, who received the communication, evidently resented SD interference in his party's internal affairs and refused, unless certain conditions were met, to forward the request to party organs. The correspondence quickly degenerated into a series of missives in which each side proclaimed its desire to reach an agreement but only upon the condition that the other side be reasonable.

¹² Ia.A. Shuster, Peterburgskie rabochie v 1905-1907 gg. (Leningrad: Nauka, 1976), 133; Otdel'nyi ottisk iz no. 77, Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia, no. 3 (December 1905): 16; A. L'vov, «1905 god v Baku», Novyi listok, nos. 13-14 (1926): 152; V.S. Kirillov, Bol'sheviki vo glave massovykh pol. stachek v period pod" ema rev., 1905-1907 gg. (Moscow, 1961), 114; Argun, Bor'ba Bol'shevistskoi partii, 200; Spiridovich, Partiia Sots. -Rev., .167-170; Iurenev, «Rabota RSDRP», 170-182.

¹³ «Boevaia druzhina v 1905 za Nevskoi zastavoi. Vospominaniia», K.L., no. 20 (1926): 101-108; S. Chernomordik, ed., Put' k Oktiabriu (Moscow, 1922), 203; Spiridovich, Partiia Sots.-Rev., 212-213; N. Leshchenskii, «Rabota sotsial-demokratov v Stavropol’e-gubernskom (1904-1907 gg.)», P.R., no. 27 (1924): 125, Znamia truda [henceforth Z.T.], no. 7 (16 September 1907):16; Otdel'nyi ottisk, 16; Melancon, «Athens or Babylon?». In Moscow the Coalitional Council of Armed Detachments led the revolutionary forces during the December 1905 uprising.

¹⁴ Leshchenskii, «Rabota sotsial-demokratov», 125; Melancon, «Athens or Babylon?»; I. Merinkov et al., «Brianskii zavod v 1905 godu», Letopis' revoliutsii [henceforth L.R.], nos. 3-4 (1926): 169-173.

¹⁵ Levanov, Iz istorii bor' by bol' shevistskoi partii, 121.

¹⁶ I.M. Pushkareva, Zheleznodorozhniki Rossii v burzhuazno-demokraticheskikh revoliutsiiakh (Moscow: Nauka, 1975), 150, 194, 202n; Henry Reichman, Railwaymen and Revolution 1905 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 198-201; Melancon, «SRs from 1902», 27; idem, «Stormy Petrels», 12-13.

¹⁷ Z.S. Petrov, «Partiia i Soviet rab. dep.», 1905 god v Saratovskoi gubernii (Po materialam zhan-darmskogo upravleniia) (Saratov, 1925), 57-70; Melancon, «SRs from 1902», 20-25; «Athens or Babylon?»; G.M. Derenkovskii and S.V. Tiutiukin, «Rabochii klass v revoliutsii 1905-1907 gg.», I.Z., no. 95 (1978): 64.

¹⁸ Vpered, no. 7 (1905); P.I. Soboleva, «Bor'ba bol'shevikov s eserami po takticheskim voprosam v period pervoi russkoi revoliutsii», Vestnik Moskovskogo Universiteta, no.1 (1956): 90-91; V.I. Lenin, Sochineniia, 30 vols. (Moscow, 1936), 8: 137; Letopis' revoliutsii (Berlin, Petersburg, Moscow, 1923), 1: 86-87; A. Studentsov, Saratovskoe krest'ianskoe vosstanie 1905 goda. Iz vospominanii raz"ezdnogo agitatora (Penza: Penzpechat', 1926), 1. During the 1905 revolutionary crisis, the sphere of joint work was enormous. The SR worker Aleksei Buzinov recalls that the SD and SR district committees in the Moskovskii district of St. Petersburg met and arranged for the election in the factories of a joint-party workers committee for the purpose of «coordinating activities of both parties and to lead the workers' movement». Aleksei Buzinov, Za Nevskoi zastavoi. Zapiski rabochego (Moscow and Leningrad, 1930), 63-64.

¹⁹ Z.T., nos. 23-24 (December 1909).

²⁰ Tretii s"ezd, 187, 372-390; Protokoly Pervogo S"ezda P.S.-R., 338-342, 350, 355-366; Obzor partii sots.-rev., 20. In this connection, the SRs called the Russian bourgeoisie «the most reactionary in Europe». Soviet historiography is only now edging closer to admitting Lenin's debt to populism; see Soviet Studies in History 27 (Winter 1988-1989): 37-38.

²¹ Argun, Bor'ba Bol'shevistskoi partii, 202-207, 247; V (Londonskii) s"ezd RSDRP. Protokoly (Moscow, 1960), 401; Nasha zaria, no. 3 (1912): 3-12.

²² Soboleva, Bor'ba bol'shevikov, 96-99; Argun, Bor'ba Bol'shevistskoi partii, 193-202, 206-212; V.I. Lenin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 5th ed., 55 vols. (Moscow; Gospolitizdat, 1958-1965) 9: 276; 14: 135; 21: 90-91, 157-158, 362-364; 22: 337; Ocherki istorii leningradskoi organizatsii KPSS. Chast' 1 (1883-Oktiabr' 1917 gg.) (Leningrad, 1962, 223-224; «Protokoly i dokumenty PKb, 1907», K.L., no. 41 (1931): 71-72.

²³ Argun, Bor'ba Bol'shevistskoi partii, 202-207, 247; V (Londonskii) s"ezd RSDRP, 401; Nasha zaria, no. 3 (1912): 3-12.

²⁴ Revoliutsionnaia mysl', no. 3 (1908): 5-7; A. Savin, «Kak otnosiatsia s.-r. k vyboram v 4-iu G. Dumu», Nasha zaria, no. 6 (1912): 73-79; Z.T., no. 47 (1913): 9; Kolesnichenko, «Parlamentskaia tak-tika», 109-110.

²⁵ Rapport du Parti Socialiste-Revolutionnaire de Russie au Congres Social. Int. de Stuttgart (Aout 1907) (Gand, 1907), 91, 98; Levanov, Iz istorii bоr’by bol’shevistskoi partii, 124; A.N. Stepanov, «Kritika V.I. Leninym programmy i taktiki eserov v period novogo revoliutsionnogo pod"ema (1910-1914 gg.)», in Bol’sheviki v bor’be protiv melko-burzhuaznykh partii Rossii (Moscow: Mysl’, 1969), 23; D.A. Kolesnichenko, «Iz istorii bor’by rabochego klassa za krest’ianskie massy v 1906 g.», I.Z., no. 95 (1975): 279; Kolesnichenko, «Parlamentskaia taktika», 116; G. Kotov, «Bol’shevistskaia rabota v Ekaterinburge v 1906-1907 gg. v period vyborov vo II Cos. Dumu», P.R., no. 87 (1929): 120.

²⁶ In association with the First Duma, the United Committee of the Social Democratic Factions and the Trudovik Group arose; the SDs and SRs convened mass meetings to introduce the Trudoviks to the workers. Argun, Bor'ba Bol'shevistskoi partii, 200; Kolesnichenko, «Iz istorii bor’by», 279-280; A. Leont'ev, «Iz proshlogo, 1905-1910», K.L., no. 11 (1924): 119; B. Peres, «Arest Peka na Udel'noi», P.R., nos. 18-19 (1923): 166-167.

²⁷ I.I. Menitskii, Revoliutsionnoe dvizhenie voennykh godov (Moscow, 1925), 395; Z.T., no. 53 (April 1914): 11 (material from «M.V.D., Dep. Politsii, 4 Oktiabr 1907, no. 1363»); Melancon, «Stormy Petrels», passim. During this era, many SD, SR, anarchist, and workers with no party affiliation who had been fired for involvement in revolutionary activities set up small cooperative ventures, which not only gave the workers a livelihood, but also were centers of revolutionary activity and friendly debates among workers with various orientations. A. Taimi, Stranitsy perezhitogo (Petrozavodsk, 1949), 78-79.

²⁸ P. Arskii, «Epokha reaktsii v Petrograde (1907-1910 gg.)», K.L. no. 9 (1924): 80; Z.T., no. 6 (30 September 1907).

²⁹ Leont'ev, «Iz proshlogo»,120; F. Petrov, «Iz zhizni Peterburgskoi organizatsii bol'shevikov, 1905-1907 gg.», K.L., no. 9 (1924): 109; N. Sapozhnikov, «Is istorii Izhevskoi sots.-dem. gruppy (1902-1910 gg.)», P.R., no. 24 (1924): 87; V. Novikov, Vospominaniia podpol'shchika (Moscow, 1929), 24-27; 1905 god, 112; Derenkovskii, Tiutiukin. «Rabochii klass v revoliutsii», 94-95; S. Malyshev, «Iz istorii dvizheniia bezrabotnykh v 1906-1907 gg.», P.R., nos. 111-112 (1931): 139; Trud, no. 4 (October 1906): 11-12; Z.T., no. 7 (1907): ,1.6.

³⁰ Izvlecheniia iz doklada Tsent. Kom. P.S.R. o Vladivostokskom vosstanii v oktiabre 1907 goda (n.p., 1908), 2; M. Morshchanskaia, «Pervaia konferentsiia voennykh i boevykh organizatsii RSDRP(b) (v Tammerforse v noiabre 1906 goda)», P.R., no. 27 (1924): 90-92; Revoliutsiia 1905 goda i samoderzhavie. Dok. i mat. (Moscow, 1925), 112-123; L. Ol'shanskii, «Kronshtadtskoe vosstanie 1906 goda», K.L., no. 5 (1923): 188-190.

³¹ Z.T., nos. 23-24 (1909): 29; D.N. Rudnik, «Lenin v bor'be s gruppoi «Vpered», K.L., no. 29 (1929): 51-53, 66-67; N. Voitinskii, «Boikotizm, otzovizm, i ul’timatizm», P.R., nos. 91-92 (1929): 64. Besides the left-wing alliance, the so-called Liquidators, consisting of Right Mensheviks and Right SRs who wished to liquidate underground organizations in favor of legal reformist work, joined together in labor organizations.

³² A. Kopiatkevich, «Iz istorii Olenetskoi organizatsii (1905-1908 gg.)», P.R., no. 6 (1922): 62-88; A. Belobrazov, «Iz istorii partizanskogo dvizheniia na Urale (1906-1909 gg.)», K.L., no. 16 (1926): 92-99; A. Arosev, «Iz proshlogo revoliutsii. Kazan' 1907-1909 gg.», P.R., no. 4 (1922): 261-267; N. Popov, «Vospominaniia о podpol'noi rabote v Khar'kove v 1907-1909 gg.», L.R., no. 3 (1923): 4-6.

³³ Melancon, «Stormy Petrels», 31-32; Arskii, «Epokha reaktsii», 106; Z.T., no. 35 (April 1911): 14-16; G. Shidlovskii, «V peterburgskikh partiinykh riadakh vesnoi-letom 1910», K.L., nos. 44-45 (1931): 187-188; Izvestiia oblastnogo zagranichnogo komiteta P.S.R. (Vestnik), no.13 (January 1911): 20-24; V. Vladimirova, ed., Lenskie sobytiia 1912 goda. (Dok. i mat.) (Moscow: Voprosy truda, 1925), 259-260.

³⁴ S. Ainzaft, «Ocherki prof. dvizheniia v Zhitomire (1902-1912 gg.)», Materialy po istorii professional'nogo dvizheniia v Rossii, no. 1 (1924): 80; Gorbovets et at., «Revoliutsionnoe dvizhenie i partrabota v Chernigove, 1911-1915», L.R., nos. 3-4(1926): 178-181; N. Iakovlev, «Aprel'sko-maiskie dni 1912», K.L., nos. 14 (1925): 229-230; Z.T., nos. 33, 35, 43, 45, 52 (1911-1913); M.K. Korbut, «Revoliutsionnoe dvizhenie v Rossii pered voinoi v otsenke Departamenta Politsii, 1911-1913 gg.», Uchenye zapiski Kazanskogo universiteta 86, no. 2 (1926): 358.

³⁵ Z.T., nos. 47, 48, 49, 51, 53 (1912-1913).

³⁶ Kaiurov quoted in V. Kaiurov, «Rabochee dvizhenie v Pitere (1914)», P.R., no. 44 (1925): 195; his Petrogradskie rabochie v gody imperialisticheskoi voiny (Moscow, 1930), 90-93; Aleksandr Fedorovich Kerenskii (Po materialam Departamenta Politsii) (Petrograd: Tsentral’nyi Komitet Trudovoi Gruppy, 1917), 9; Bodraia mysl', no. 2 (22 December 1913); Z.T., no. 51 (4 April 1913); A. Kuchkin, «V podpol'e v Ufe v 1911-1915 gg.», P.R., no. 84 (1929): 235; F.G. Popov, Letopis' revoliutsionnykh sobytii v Samarskoi gubernii, 1902-1917 (Kuibyshev, 1969), 235; Smelaia zhizn', no. 9 (6 June 1914): 3; Profsoiuzy SSSR: dok. i mat. (Moscow, 1963), 296-298; Trudovoi golos, no. 21 (16 July 1913): 2.

³⁷ Z.T., nos. 47, 49 (1913); «Rabochie organizatsii na iuge, 1914», L.R., no. 20 (1926): 153; V.G. Kikoin, «Zvezdy» i «Pravdy»: legal'naia rabochaia pechat’», K.L.. no. 35 (1930): 107-108.

³⁸ Za narod, no. 61 (1914).

³⁹ Argun, Bor’ba Bol’shevistskoi partii, 235.

⁴⁰  «Vo vremia imp. Voiny», K.L., no. 10 (1924): 122; Petrogradskii proletariat i bol'shevistskaia organizatsiia v gody imp. voiny, 1914—1917 gg. (Leningrad, 1939), 180-181; Michael Melancon, «The Socialist Revolutionaries from 1902 to February 1917: A Party of the Workers, Peasants, and Soldiers» (Ph.D. diss., Indiana University, 1984), 131-202.

⁴¹ Melancon, «SRs from 1902 to February 1917», 203-286.

⁴² Ibid., 287-359. An incomplete count shows joint organizations in Kronshtadt, Smolensk, Minsk, Chernigov, Odessa, Mariupol’, Nikolaev, Kherson, Lugansk, Kazan', Orenburg, Tomsk, Irkutsk, and Krasnoiarsk.

⁴³ V. Astrov, Bol'sheviki v Smolenske do Oktiatbria 1917 g. (Smolensk, 1924), 15-16; A. Puzakov, «Vokrug soiuza metallistov (1912-1917 gg.)», Revoliutsionnoe byloe, no. 3 (1924): 52; Materialy po istorii revoliutsionnogo dvizheniia, 4 vols. (Nizhnii Novgorod, 1921-1922) 2: 151; 4: 161-163; V. Ter, «Nakanune velikoi revoliutsii», in Nakanune revoliutsii. Sbornik statei, zametok, i vospom., ed., N. Ovsiannikov (Moscow: Gosizdat, 1922), 49-52; S. Gopner, «1916 god v Ekaterinoslave», L.R., no. 2 (1923); Melancon, «SRs from 1902 to February 1917», 406-453.

⁴⁴ M. Melancon, «Who Wrote What and When?: Proclamations of the February Revolution in Pe-trograd, 23 February-1 March 1917», Soviet Studies 40 (July 1988): 485 (quotation from Aleksandr Shliapnikov, Kanun Semnadtsatogo goda [Moscow, Leningrad, 1923], 337-338).

⁴⁵ A.A. Protopopov, «V ianvare i fevrale 1917 g. Iz donesenii sekretnykh agentov», Byloe, no.13 (1918): 95.

⁴⁶ Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, The February Revolution: Petrograd, 1917 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1981); Donald Raleigh, Revolution on the Volga: 1917 in Saratov (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1986). Soviet studies often note socialist cooperation during the February Revolution: Oktiabr'skoe vooruzhennoe vosstanie, 2 vols. (Leningrad: Akademiia Nauk, 1967) 1: 63; and D.M. Kukin, A.I. Aluf, and I.P. Leiberov, Partiia bol'shevikov v fevral'skoi revoliutsii 1917 goda (Moscow, 1971), 146 («unity of action of all revolutionary forces in the struggle [took place]»). Опубликовано: Slavic Review. 1990. No. 2. (Summer). P. 239 – 252.

socialist.memo.ru – Российские социалисты и анархисты после Октября 1917 года