In view of the fact that, contrary to the wishes of the party, this may involve a collision with the Bolsheviks, the Central Committee makes the following declaration: We regard our policy as an attack on the current policy of the Council of the People’s Commissars, but definitely not as a fight against the Bolsheviks themselves. As it is possible that the Bolsheviks may take aggressive counteraction against our party, we are determined, if necessary, to defend our position with force of arms. In order to prevent the party from being exploited by counterrevolutionary elements, it is resolved that our new policy be stated clearly and openly, so that an international socialist-revolutionary policy may subsequently be inaugurated in Soviet Russia.99
As this resolution indicates, the Left SRs intended in many ways but one to emulate Bolshevik actions in October 1917: the one crucial difference being that they did not aspire to power. That was to be left in Bolshevik hands. The Left SRs wanted only to compel the Bolsheviks to abandon their “opportunistic” policies by provoking Germany to attack Soviet Russia in reaction to anti-German terrorism. The plan was entirely unrealistic: it gambled on the expectation that the Germans would impulsively give up the immense benefits they had gained at Brest, and altogether ignored the common interest linking Berlin and Moscow.
Spiridonova, the most powerful personality on the three-person Left SR committee, was possessed of a courage that in earlier centuries characterized religious martyrs, but nothing remotely resembling common sense. Foreigners who observed her during these days left very uncomplimentary accounts. For Riezler she was a “dried-up skirt.” Alfons Paquet, a German journalist, saw her as
87. Maria Spiridonova, second from left.
a tireless hysteric with a pince-nez, the caricature of Athena, who, while speaking, always seemed to be reaching out for an invisible harp, and who, when the hall would burst into applause and rage, would impatiently stamp her feet, lifting the fallen shoulder straps of her dress.100
Immediately after the decision, the Left SRs went to work. They sent agitators to the military garrisons in Moscow and its suburbs: some of these they won to their side, the rest they succeeded in neutralizing. Left SRs working in the Cheka assembled a military force to fight in the event the Bolsheviks counterattacked. Preparations were made to carry out a terrorist act against the German Ambassador: his assassination was to serve as the signal for a nationwide rising. Emulating Bolshevik tactics on the eve of October, the Left SRs did not conceal their plans. On June 29, their organ
A partial, but only partial, answer to this question is provided by the fact that several of the conspirators worked in the directing organs of the Cheka. Dzerzhinskii had chosen as his deputy a Left SR, Petr Aleksandrovich Dmitrievskii, popularly known as Aleksandrovich, in whom he had complete faith and entrusted with broad authority. Other Left SRs employed by the Cheka and involved in the conspiracy included Iakov Bliumkin, whose responsibility was counterespionage and penetration of the German Embassy, the photographer Nicholas Andreev, and D. I. Popov, the commander of a Cheka cavalry detachment. These individuals hatched a conspiracy within the headquarters of the secret police. Popov assembled several hundred armed men, mostly pro-Left SR sailors. Bliumkin and Andreev assumed responsibility for assassinating Mirbach. The two familiarized themselves with the building of the German mission and took photographs of the escape route they were to take after killing the ambassador.
