With the approach of summer 1918, the Left SRs grew restless. Romantic revolutionaries, they craved perpetual excitement: the ecstasy of October, the intoxication of February 1918, when the nation rose to repel the German invasion, unforgettable days celebrated by their poet, Alexander Blok, in the two most famous poems of the Revolution, “The Twelve” and “Scythians.” But this was all in the past, and now they found themselves partners of a regime of calculating politicians, who made deals with the Germans and the Allies, and invited the “bourgeoisie” back to run factories and lead the armed forces. What happened to the Revolution? Nothing the Bolsheviks did after February 1918 pleased them. They despised the Brest Treaty, which in their eyes made Germany the master of Russia and Lenin a lackey of Mirbach’s: instead of consorting with the Germans, they wanted to arouse the masses against these imperialists, with bare hands if need be, and carry the Revolution into the heart of Europe. When the Bolsheviks, disregarding their protests, signed and ratified Brest, the Left SRs quit from the Sovnarkom. They opposed no less vehemently the policy adopted by the Bolsheviks in May 1918 of sending armed detachments of workers to the villages to extract grain, since it caused bad blood between peasants and workers. They objected to the reintroduction of capital punishment and saved many lives by having their members veto every death sentence passed on political prisoners by the Collegium of the Cheka. Inexorably, they came to regard the Bolsheviks as traitors to the Revolution. As their leader, Maria Spiridonova, put it: “It is painful now … to realize that the Bolsheviks, with whom until now I have worked side by side, alongside whom I have fought on the same barricade, and with whom I have hoped to fight the glorious battle to the end, … have taken over the policies of the Kerensky government.”96
In the spring of 1918, the Left SRs assumed toward the Bolsheviks the same attitude that the Bolsheviks had adopted in 1917 toward the Provisional Government and the democratic socialists. They posed as the conscience of the Revolution, the incorruptible alternative to a regime of opportunists and compromisers. As the Bolshevik influence among industrial workers waned, the Left SRs became a dangerous rival, for they appealed to the same anarchic and destructive instincts of the Russian masses which the Bolsheviks themselves had exploited on the road to power but once in power did all they could to quell. They enjoyed support among some of the rowdiest urban elements, including radical Petrograd workers and the sailors of what had been the Baltic and Black Sea fleets. Essentially, they appealed to the very groups which had helped bring the Bolsheviks to power in October and now felt betrayed.
On April 17–25, the Left SRs held a congress in Moscow. It claimed to represent over 60,000 members. Most delegates wanted a clean break with the Bolsheviks and their “
The Central Committee of the Left SR Party, having examined the present political situation of the Republic, resolves that in the interest of the Russian as well as the International Revolution, an immediate end must be put to the so-called breathing spell created by the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.
The Central Committee believes it to be both practical and possible to organize a series of terrorist acts against the leading representatives of German imperialism. In order to realize this, the forces of the party must be organized and all necessary precautions taken so that the peasantry and the working class will join this movement and actively help the party. Therefore, at the instant of the terrorist act all papers should make known our participation in the events in the Ukraine, in the agitation among the peasants, and in the blowing up of arsenals. This must be done after Moscow gives a signal. Such a signal may be an act of terrorism or it can take another form. In order to distribute the forces of the party, a committee of three (Spiridonova, Maiorov, and Golubovskii) has been appointed.
