Oddly enough, there have always been political parties in Russia. Of course, not in the modern interpretation, which defines a political party as a "special public organization", the guiding goal of which is the seizure of political power in the country.
Nevertheless, it is known for certain that, for example, in the same ancient Novgorod, various "Konchak" parties of Ivankovich, Mikulchich, Miroshkinichi, Mikhalkovichi, Tverdislavichi and other rich boyar clans existed for a long time and constantly fought for the key post of Novgorod mayor. A similar situation was observed in medieval Tver, where during the years of acute confrontation with Moscow there was a constant struggle between two branches of the Tver princely house - the "Prolitovskaya" party of the Mikulin princes headed by Mikhail Alexandrovich and the "pro-Moscow" party of the Kashiri princes, led by Vasily Mikhailovich, and etc.
Although, of course, in the modern sense, political parties in Russia emerged rather late. As you know, the first of these were two rather radical party structures of a socialist persuasion - the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP) and the Party of Socialist Revolutionaries (AKP), created only at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. For obvious reasons, these political parties could only be illegal and worked under conditions of the strictest secrecy, under constant pressure from the tsarist secret police, which in those years was headed by such aces of the imperial political investigation as gendarme colonels Vladimir Piramidov, Yakov Sazonov and Leonid Kremenetsky.
Only after the infamous Tsarist Manifesto of October 17, 1905, which for the first time granted political freedoms to the subjects of the Russian crown, began a stormy process of the formation of legal political parties, the number of which by the time of the collapse of the Russian Empire exceeded one hundred and fifty. True, the overwhelming majority of these political structures bore the character of “couch parties” formed exclusively to satisfy the ambitious and career interests of various political clowns, who absolutely did not play any role in the country's political process. Despite this, almost immediately after the general process of the emergence of these parties, the first attempt was made to classify them.
Thus, the leader of the Russian Bolsheviks, Vladimir Ulyanov (Lenin), in a number of his works, such as "The Experience of Classification of Russian Political Parties" (1906), "Political Parties in Russia" (1912) and others, relying on his own thesis that "The struggle of parties is a concentrated expression of the struggle of classes", proposed the following classification of Russian political parties of that period:
1) landlord-monarchist (Black Hundreds), 2) bourgeois (Octobrists, Cadets), 3) petty-bourgeois (Socialist-Revolutionaries, Mensheviks)
and 4) proletarian (Bolsheviks).
In defiance of Lenin's classification of parties, the well-known leader of the Cadets, Pavel Milyukov, in his brochure Political Parties in the Country and the Duma (1909), on the contrary, stated that political parties are created not on the basis of class interests, but solely on the basis of common ideas. Based on this basic thesis, he proposed his own classification of Russian political parties:
1) monarchical (Black Hundreds), 2) bourgeois-conservative (Octobrists), 3) liberal democratic (cadets)
and 4) socialist (Socialist-Revolutionaries, Socialist-Revolutionaries).
Later, another active participant in the political battles of that time, the leader of the Menshevik party, Yuli Tsederbaum (Martov), in his famous work "Political Parties in Russia" (1917), stated that it was necessary to classify Russian political parties in relation to their relation to the existing government, therefore he made this classification:
1) reactionary conservative (Black Hundreds), 2) moderately conservative (Octobrists), 3) liberal democratic (cadets)
and 4) revolutionary (Socialist-Revolutionaries, Social Democrats).
In modern political science, there are two main approaches to this problem. Depending on the political goals, means and methods of achieving their goals, some authors (Vladimir Fedorov) divide the Russian political parties of that period into:
1) conservative-protective (Black Hundreds, clerics), 2) liberal opposition (Octobrists, Cadets, progressives)
and 3) revolutionary-democratic (Socialist-Revolutionaries, Popular Socialists, Social-Democrats).
And their opponents (Valentin Shelokhaev) - on:
1) monarchical (Black Hundreds), 2) liberal (cadets), 3) conservative (Octobrists), 4) the left (Mensheviks, Bolsheviks, Socialist-Revolutionaries)
and 5) anarchist (anarcho-syndicalists, beznakhaltsy).
The dear reader has probably already drawn attention to the fact that among all the political parties that existed in the Russian Empire, all politicians, historians and political scientists focused their attention only on a few large party structures that concentratedly expressed the entire spectrum of political, social and class interests of the subjects of the Russian crown … Therefore, it is these political parties that will be at the center of our short story. And we will begin our story with the most "left" revolutionary parties - the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Socialist-Revolutionaries.
Abram Gotz
The Socialist Revolutionary Party (PSR), or the Socialist Revolutionaries, is the largest peasant party of the populist wing - originated in 1901. But even at the end of the 1890s, the rebirth of the revolutionary populist organizations, defeated by the tsarist government in the early 1880s, began.
The main provisions of the populist doctrine remained practically unchanged. However, its new theorists, first of all Viktor Chernov, Grigory Gershuni, Nikolai Avksentyev and Abram Gots, not recognizing the very progressive nature of capitalism, nevertheless recognized its victory in the country. Although, being absolutely convinced that Russian capitalism is a completely artificial phenomenon, forcibly implanted by the Russian police state, they still fervently believed in the theory of "peasant socialism" and considered the land-based peasant community a ready-made cell of socialist society.
Alexey Peshekhonov
At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, several large neo-nationalist organizations emerged in Russia and abroad, including the Berne Union of Russian Socialist-Revolutionaries (1894), the Moscow Northern Union of Socialist Revolutionaries (1897), and the Agrarian Socialist League (1898) and the "Southern Party of Socialist-Revolutionaries" (1900), whose representatives in the fall of 1901 agreed to create a single Central Committee, which included Viktor Chernov, Mikhail Gots, Grigory Gershuni and other neonarodniks.
In the first years of their existence, before the founding congress, which took place only in the winter of 1905-1906, the SRs did not have a generally accepted program and charter, so their views and basic program guidelines were reflected in two printed organs - the newspaper Revolutionary Russia and the journal Vestnik Russkoy revolution.
Grigory Gershuni
From the populists, the Socialist-Revolutionaries adopted not only the basic ideological principles and attitudes, but also the tactics of fighting the existing autocratic regime - terror. In the fall of 1901, Grigory Gershuni, Yevno Azef and Boris Savinkov created within the party a strictly conspiratorial and independent from the Central Committee, the "Combat Organization of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party" (BO AKP), which, according to the specified data of historians (Roman Gorodnitsky), during its heyday in 1901-1906 years, when it included more than 70 militants, it committed more than 2,000 terrorist attacks that shook the entire country.
In particular, it was then that the Minister of Public Education Nikolai Bogolepov (1901), the Ministers of the Interior Dmitry Sipyagin (1902) and Vyacheslav Pleve (1904), the Ufa Governor-General Nikolai Bogdanovich (1903), the Moscow Governor-General Grand Duke died at the hands of the Socialist-Revolutionary militants. Sergei Alexandrovich (1905), Minister of War Viktor Sakharov (1905), Moscow Mayor Pavel Shuvalov (1905), Member of the State Council Alexei Ignatiev (1906), Tver Governor Pavel Sleptsov (1906), Penza Governor Sergei Khvostov (1906), Simbirsk Governor Konstantin Starynkevich (1906), Samara Governor Ivan Blok (1906), Akmola Governor Nikolai Litvinov (1906), Commander of the Black Sea Fleet Vice Admiral Grigory Chukhnin (1906), Chief Military Prosecutor Lieutenant General Vladimir Pavlov (1906) and many other high dignitaries of the empire, generals, chiefs of police and officers. And in August 1906, the Socialist-Revolutionary militants made an attempt on the life of the Chairman of the Council of Ministers Pyotr Stolypin, who survived only thanks to the instant reaction of his adjutant, Major General Alexander Zamyatin, who, in fact, covered the prime minister with his chest, preventing the terrorists from entering his office.
All in all, according to the modern American researcher Anna Geifman, the author of the first special monograph "Revolutionary Terror in Russia in 1894-1917." (1997), over 17,000 people became victims of the AKP Militant Organization in 1901-1911, that is, before its actual dissolution, including 3 ministers, 33 governors and vice-governors, 16 city governors, chiefs of police and prosecutors, 7 generals and admirals, 15 colonels, etc.
The legalization of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party took place only in the winter of 1905-1906, when its founding congress was held, at which its charter, program were adopted and the governing bodies were elected - the Central Committee and the Party Council. Moreover, a number of modern historians (Nikolai Erofeev) believe that the question of the time of the emergence of the Central Committee and its personal composition is still one of the unresolved mysteries of history.
Nikolay Annensky
Most likely, in different periods of its existence, the members of the Central Committee were the main ideologist of the party Viktor Chernov, the "grandmother of the Russian revolution" Ekaterina Breshko-Breshkovskaya, the leaders of the militants Grigory Gershuni, Yevno Azef and Boris Savinkov, as well as Nikolai Avksentyev, G. M. Gotz, Osip Minor, Nikolai Rakitnikov, Mark Natanson and a number of other persons.
The total number of the party, according to various estimates, ranged from 60 to 120 thousand members. The central press organs of the party were the newspaper "Revolutionary Russia" and the magazine "Bulletin of the Russian Revolution". The main program settings of the Socialist Revolutionary Party were as follows:
1) the liquidation of the monarchy and the establishment of a republican form of government through the convocation of the Constituent Assembly;
2) granting autonomy to all national outskirts of the Russian Empire and legislative consolidation of the right of nations to self-determination;
3) legislative consolidation of fundamental civil and political rights and freedoms and the introduction of universal suffrage;
4) the solution of the agrarian question through the gratuitous confiscation of all landowners, appanage and monastic lands and transfer them into full ownership of the peasant and urban communities without the right to purchase and sale and the distribution of land according to the equalizing labor principle (the land socialization program).
In 1906, a split occurred in the ranks of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party. Two rather influential groups emerged from it, which then created their own party structures:
1) The Labor People's Socialist Party (People's Socialists, or Popular Socialists), whose leaders were Alexey Peshekhonov, Nikolai Annensky, Venedikt Myakotin and Vasily Semevsky, and 2) The Union of Socialist Revolutionary Maximalists, headed by Mikhail Sokolov.
The first group of schismatics denied the tactics of terror and the program of socialization of the land, while the second, on the contrary, advocated the intensification of terror and proposed extending the principles of socialization not only to peasant communities, but also to industrial enterprises.
Victor Chernov
In February 1907, the Socialist-Revolutionary Party took part in the elections to the Second State Duma and managed to get 37 mandates. However, after its dissolution and changes in the electoral law, the Social Revolutionaries began to boycott the parliamentary elections, preferring exclusively illegal methods of fighting the autocratic regime.
In 1908, a serious scandal occurred, which thoroughly tarnished the reputation of the Socialist-Revolutionaries: it became known that the head of its "Combat Organization" Yevno Azef had been a paid agent of the tsarist secret police since 1892. His successor as head of the organization, Boris Savinkov, tried to revive its former power, but nothing good came of this venture, and in 1911 the party ceased to exist.
By the way, this very year many modern historians (Oleg Budnitsky, Mikhail Leonov) date the end of the very era of revolutionary terror in Russia, which began at the turn of the 1870s-1880s. Although their opponents (Anna Geifman, Sergei Lantsov) believe that the end date of this tragic "era" was 1918, marked by the murder of the royal family and an attempt on V. I. Lenin.
With the outbreak of the First World War, a split again occurred in the party into Socialist-Revolutionaries-centrists led by Viktor Chernov and Socialist-Revolutionaries-internationalists (Left Socialist-Revolutionaries) led by Maria Spiridonova, who supported the famous Leninist slogan “the defeat of the Russian government in the war and the transformation of the imperialist war into a war civil”.
