The Left SR uprising, or Left SR revolt, was a rebellion against the Bolsheviks by the Left Socialist Revolutionary Party in Moscow, Soviet Russia, on 6–7 July 1918. It was one of a number of left-wing uprisings against the Bolsheviks that took place during the Russian Civil War.
The Left SRs had entered the Bolshevik government of Soviet Russia after the October Revolution of 1917, but resigned from the Council of People's Commissars in March 1918 in protest of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Left SRs continued to work in other organizations (notably the Cheka) while denouncing the treaty and the policy of requisitioning grain from the peasants.
After winning only a minority of seats in the 5th All-Russian Congress of Soviets, on 6 July the Left SRs assassinated Wilhelm von Mirbach, the German ambassador in Moscow, in the hope of recommencing the war against "German Imperialism" and of igniting a popular uprising. The rebels occupied the Cheka headquarters and took its leader Felix Dzerzhinsky hostage, seized the telephone exchange and telegraph office, and issued manifestos. Mikhail Muravyov, a Left SR and Red Army commander in the East, seized Simbirsk.
After the uprising was suppressed with help from the Latvian Riflemen, the Bolsheviks arrested most of the party's leaders, and expelled all of its members from the soviets.
Background
The revolt was led by the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries in Moscow.
Previously, the Socialist Revolutionary Party had supported the continuation of the war by the Provisional Government after the February Revolution of 1917. The Bolshevik Party came to power in November 1917 through the simultaneous election in the soviets and an organized uprising supported by military mutiny. Several of the main reasons the population supported the Bolsheviks were to end the war and have a social revolution, exemplified by the slogan "Peace, Land, Bread". The Bolsheviks invited left SRs and Martov's Menshevik Internationalists to join the government. Left SRs split from the main SR party and joined the Bolshevik coalition government, supporting the immediate enactment of the Socialist Revolutionary Party's land redistribution program. The Left SRs were given four Commissar positions and high posts within the Cheka, and their leader Maria Spiridonova was appointed head of the Peasant Section of the Central Executive Committee of the All-Russian Soviet of Workers', Peasants', and Soldiers' Deputies (VTsIK), making her nominally a chief official over peasant affairs. The Left SRs still diverged with the Bolsheviks on the issue of the war and were dismayed that the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk gave up large amounts of territory in Eastern Europe to the Central Powers. With the treaty, the Left SRs considered that the opportunity to spread the revolution throughout Europe had been lost. They left the Council of People's Commissars in protest in March 1918 and at the 4th Congress of Soviets they voted against the treaty. Although they continued to work in the Cheka, which played a decisive role in rebellion. Left Social Revolutionaries remained on the boards of the People's Commissars, the military department, various committees, commissions, and councils.
In Finland, where the soviet government had pledged by the treaty not to intervene, the landing of German troops significantly helped the "white" (counter-revolutionary) forces to crush the Finnish Revolution. In Ukraine, a puppet government, the Hetmanate, had been established with German backing. The forces of the Central Powers advanced through Ukraine towards Rostov-on-Don while Ottoman units made it into the Caucasus. In March, Allied troops landed in Murmansk and reached the Russian Far East the next month. In late May, clashes between the Russians and the Czechoslovak Legion began, and in June rival anti-Bolshevik governments were formed in Samara (the Komuch) and Omsk (the Provisional Siberian Government). The Left SRs strongly objected to the invasion and opposed Trotsky's insistence that nobody was allowed to attack German troops in Ukraine. Sergey Mstislavsky coined the slogan "It's not a war, it's an uprising!", calling on the "masses" to "rebel" against the German-Austrian occupation forces, accusing the Bolsheviks of creating a "state that obstructs the working class", moving away from the position of revolutionary socialism onto the path of opportunistic service to the state."
A new surge of tension was associated with an increase in the activity of the Bolsheviks in rural villages, when the Bolshevik-controlled government announced, by decree, the enforcement of a state bread monopoly and the organization of "food detachments" for the compulsory collection of bread. On 14 June 1918, representatives of the right and centre Socialist-Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks were expelled from the All-Russian Central Executive Committee by a Bolshevik decree. By this same decree, all Soviets of workers, soldiers, peasants, and Cossack deputies were also invited to remove representatives of these parties from their midst. Vladimir Karelin, a member of the Central Committee of the Left SRs, called this decree illegal, since only the All-Russian Congress of Soviets could change the composition of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. In early July, the Third Congress of the Left Socialist Revolutionary Party was held, in its resolution to the present moment sharply condemned the policy of the Bolsheviks:
Increased centralization, crowning the system of bureaucratic bodies with a dictatorship, the use of requisition units operating outside the control and leadership of local Soviets, the cultivation of poor committees – all these measures create a campaign on the Soviets of peasant deputies, disorganize workers' Soviets, and confuse class relations in the countryside, creating a disastrous front between the cities and villages.
According to Richard Pipes,
[...] the Left Socialist Revolutionaries suddenly discovered that they were cooperating with a regime of prudent politicians who make deals with Germany and the countries of the Fourth Accord and again called on the "bourgeoisie" to manage factories and command the army. What happened to the revolution? Everything that the Bolsheviks did after February 1918 did not suit the Left Socialist Revolutionaries... In the spring of 1918, the Left SRs began to treat the Bolsheviks in the same way that the Bolsheviks themselves treated the Provisional Government and democratic socialists in 1917. They declared themselves the conscience of the revolution, an incorruptible alternative to the regime of opportunists and supporters of compromise. As the influence of the Bolsheviks among industrial workers diminished, the Left Socialist Revolutionaries became more and more dangerous rivals for them, for they appealed to the very anarchist and destructive instincts of the Russian masses, on which the Bolsheviks relied while they came to power, but, having gained power, tried to suppress in every way ... In fact, the Left Socialist Revolutionaries appealed to those groups that helped the Bolsheviks seize power in October and now felt that they had been betrayed.
Fifth Congress of Soviets
In this situation of internal tension, on 4 July, the 5th All-Russian Congress of Soviets began to decide the country's policy. The confrontation between the SRs and Bolsheviks was harsh. Left SR speakers fiercely attacked the policy of the Bolsheviks, from the requisitioning of grain and suppression of opposition parties, to the institution of the death penalty. They argued especially against the Bolshevik peace with imperialist Germany and the lack of defense of the revolution in Ukraine and Finland. Boris Kamkov promised to "sweep food detachments from the villages." Maria Spiridonova characterized the Bolsheviks as "traitors to the revolution" and "successors to the policy of the Kerensky government." The Left SRs also called for proportional representation in the elections of the Soviets, due to the sharp vote disparity between rural and city-dwelling workers. However, the Bolsheviks had sent a large number of delegates who were suspected of not being legitimately elected, simply to achieve a large majority in Congress. The Left Socialist-Revolutionaries had 352 delegates compared to 745 Bolsheviks out of 1132 total. The vast Bolshevik majority thwarted the socialist-revolutionary plans to change government policy in Congress, which was now firmly in the hands of Lenin's party.
As soon as the Congress of Soviets opened at the Bolshoi, the Bolsheviks and Left Socialist Revolutionaries immediately grabbed each other's throats. Speakers from the Left Socialist Revolutionaries accused the Bolsheviks of betraying the cause of the revolution and of fomenting war between town and country, while the Bolsheviks, in turn, reproached them for trying to provoke a war between Russia and Germany. Left Socialist-Revolutionaries proposed to express no confidence in the Bolshevik government, denounce the Brest-Litovsk Treaty and declare war on Germany. When this proposal was rejected by the Bolshevik majority, the Left Socialist Revolutionaries left the congress.
This disillusionment felt by the Left SRs, the sense of danger in the face of the Bolshevik threats – embodied in Trotsky's resolution that allowed the execution of those who opposed the German occupation of Ukraine – and the conviction that a terrorist action could force the start of new hostilities with Germany led the socialist-revolutionary leadership to plot the murder of the German ambassador in Moscow. The SR's objective was not to challenge the Bolsheviks, but to force the Sovnarkom to confront the Germans; the left SRs preferred to achieve this through motions of congress, but, once this route was exhausted, the SRs resumed the decision to carry out the Assassinations. Knowledge of the plans was confined to only a few members of the central committee: neither the delegates of the Soviet congress, nor those of the party congress, nor the Cheka's lieutenant himself, Vyacheslav Aleksandrovich, received any communication about the resolution of the central committee.
Assassination of Mirbach
In their meeting on 24 June, the Central Committee of the Left SR internationalists, having discussed the present political situation of the Republic, found that in the interests of the Russian and international revolution it was necessary to put an end to the so-called "respite", which was created due to the ratification of the Brest-Litovsk treaty by the Bolshevik government. To this end, the Party Central Committee considered it both possible and appropriate to organize a series of terrorist acts against prominent representatives of German imperialism. At the same time, the Central Committee of the Party decided to organize a mobilization of reliable military forces for its decision and to make every effort to ensure that both the working peasantry and the working class joined the uprising and actively supported the party. To this end, to coincide with terrorist acts, an announcement was published in the newspapers of the Left SR's participation in recent Ukrainian events, such as agitation and the destruction of weapons arsenals.
On 25 June 1918, Count Mirbach informed his boss, State Secretary of the German Foreign Ministry Richard von Kühlmann about the deep political crisis of the Bolshevik government: "Today, after more than 2 months of careful observation, I don't think I can make a more favorable diagnosis of Bolshevism: we, no doubt, are at the bedside of a seriously ill patient; and although moments of apparent improvement are possible, ultimately it is doomed." In May, he sent a telegraph to Berlin saying "the Entente allegedly spends huge sums to bring the right wing of the Socialist Revolutionary Party to power and resume the war... Sailors on ships... are probably bribed, like the former Preobrazhensky regiment. Weapons stocks... from weapons factories in the hands of the Socialist Revolutionaries." German diplomat Carl von Botmer also testified that the German embassy, beginning in mid-June 1918, repeatedly received threats that the Bolshevik security service had investigated, but to no avail.
Yakov Blumkin, a Left SR in charge of the Cheka counter-espionage section dedicated to monitoring the activity of the Germans, and Nikolai Andreyev, a photographer the same section, received an order from Maria Spiridonova on 4 July, to carry out the assassination of the German ambassador in two days time. The day of the uprising was chosen, among other reasons, because it was the Latvian national holiday Ivanov Day (Jāņi), which was supposed to neutralize the Latvian units most loyal to the Bolsheviks. The Leadership of the Left SRs believed this assassination would lead to a widespread popular uprising in support of their aims. They claimed to be leading a revolt against the peace with Germany and not necessarily against the Bolsheviks and soviet power.