Neither before nor after did the Bolsheviks show such leniency to their enemies. Indeed, this unusual behavior has led some historians to suspect that the murder of Mirbach and the Left SR uprising had been staged by the Bolsheviks, although it is difficult to find a motive for such elaborate deception or an explanation of how it could have been concealed from the participants.130 The explanation, however, does not require any resort to conspiratorial theories. In July the Bolsheviks found themselves in what seemed a hopeless situation, under attack by the Czechs, facing armed rebellion in Iaroslavl and Murom, abandoned by Russian workers and soldiers, unsure even of the loyalty of the Latvians. They were not about to antagonize the followers of the Left SR Party. But above all, they feared for their lives. Radek surely did not speak only for himself when he confided to a German friend that the Bolsheviks treated the Left SRs so leniently from fear of their revenge.131 The ranks of that party were indeed filled with fanatics who thought little of sacrificing themselves for their cause: fanatics like Spiridonova herself, who in a letter to the Bolshevik leaders from prison came close to expressing regret that she had not been executed since her death might have brought them to their “senses.”132 Mirbach’s successor, Karl Helfferich, also was of the opinion that the Bolsheviks were afraid to liquidate the Left SRs.133
In November 1918, the Revolutionary Tribunal tried the Left SR Central Committee, most of whose members had fled or gone underground. Spiridonova and Iu. V. Sablin, who did stand trial, received one-year terms. Spiridonova did not serve out her sentence; she was sprung from the Kremlin prison by the Left SRs in April 1919.* She spent the rest of her life in and out of prison. In 1937, she was condemned to twenty-five years for “counterrevolutionary activity”: in 1941, as the German armies approached Orel, where she was imprisoned, she was taken out and shot.134 Neither of Mirbach’s assassins lived to a ripe old age. Andreev died of typhus in the Ukraine the following year. Bliumkin led an underground existence until May 1919, when he turned himself in. Having repented, he was not only forgiven but admitted into the Communist Party and appointed to Trotsky’s staff. In late 1930 he had the bad judgment to carry messages to his followers in Russia. He was arrested and executed.135
In the wake of the July uprising the Left SRs split into two factions, one of which approved of it, the other of which disowned it. In time, both factions dissolved in the Communist Party, except for a minuscule group which went underground.136
Dzerzhinskii was suspended from his job. Officially, he resigned as chairman and member of the Cheka to serve as a witness in the forthcoming trial of Mirbach’s assassins,137 but since the Bolsheviks did not normally observe such legal niceties and no such trial took place, this was merely a face-saving formula. His suspension was almost certainly due to Lenin’s suspicion that he had been implicated in the Left SR conspiracy. Latsis directed the secret police until August 22, when Dzerzhinskii was reinstated.
The Left SRs failed dismally not only because they had no clear objective and rebelled without being willing to assume responsibility for the political consequences, but also because they had completely miscalculated Bolshevik and German reactions. As it turned out, the two had much too much at stake to allow themselves to be provoked by the murder of an ambassador (which was followed by the assassination of Field Marshal Hermann von Eichhorn by Left SRs in the Ukraine). The German Government virtually ignored the killing of Mirbach, and the German press, under its instructions, played it down. Indeed, in the fall of 1918, the two countries moved closer than ever. The Bolsheviks were very fortunate in their choice of opponents.
By a remarkable coincidence another anti-Bolshevik rebellion broke out on the very same day, the morning of July 6, in three northeastern cities, Iaroslavl, Murom, and Rybinsk. It was the work of Boris Savinkov, the best organized and most enterprising of the anti-Bolshevik conspirators.
