Party on through revolution? Politics in 1917 beyond Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, and SRs

Political parties are usually given a prominent role in narratives of the Russian Revolution. The textbook I started planning my A-Level lessons from talks of Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, and Socialist-Revolutionaries, presenting a rather straightforward narrative of political contest in which the Bolsheviks ran out eventual winners.

This is, certainly, part of the story of politics in 1917 - but it is only a part. In this post, I’ll present three models for approaching party politics in 1917. Each one takes us a little bit further past the basic textbook model.

Even if we don’t teach each one explicitly, I’d like to suggest that these three models could be used at least in part to build a more rounded, complex, and lively picture of party politics in 1917 for our students.

 

Model 1: Realignment

After the February Revolution of 1917, party politics shifted suddenly from its pre-war state. With Tsar Nicholas II gone and Russia now effectively a revolutionary republic, party politics underwent what historian Rex Wade terms a “realignment”.

Politics in general shifted rapidly to the left, as the old conservative and pro-autocracy forces appeared to disappear (their astonishing disappearing act ended abruptly in the summer of 1917, when right-wing reactionary groups surged back onto the political scene). This meant, paradoxically, that most political parties were repositioned rightwards on the new left-wing political spectrum (even though, in practice, many of them shifted their own political positions leftwards following Tsar Nicholas II’s abdication). 

This, broadly, is how political parties looked by April 1917, following the establishment of the Provisional Government, Petrograd Soviet, and the return of prominent socialists, including Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin, from emigration.

The old centrist parties, most notably the Kadets, became the new right. Old “moderate” left parties, including the bulk of the Menshevik and Socialist-Revolutionary (SR) parties, occupied the new centre – in fact, the most “moderate” of the socialists was probably Alexander Kerensky, the only socialist to join the Provisional Government in March 1917 who was also closely aligned with some left-of-centre liberals. Finally, the radical left, particularly the Bolsheviks, took up a more established position on the left.

Left	Centre	Right
Bolsheviks	Mensheviks Socialist-Revolutionaries (SRs)	Kadets

It's worth noting here that the picture was complicated by the fact that many Bolsheviks and Mensheviks - although differing in approaches to the questions of war and government - still simply referred to themselves as "Social Democrats", something that reflected the fact that both began (and in many places) remained simply as factions of the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party.

Model 2: Growing Factionalism

The picture becomes rather more complex when we look a bit closer. Growing factionalism split political parties, continuing trends that had already been well underway before 1917.

Socialist parties split over the question of whether to continue Russia’s participation in the Great War – Bolsheviks were joined by Menshevik-Internationalists and Left-SRs in calling for an immediate peace. Soon, all these groups would be collaborating in an informal “left bloc” to fight elections together. A number of socialists on the radical left, including Leon Trotsky, would join the Bolsheviks during 1917 as Lenin’s party gained in support. Others, including the Menshevik-Internationalists led especially by veteran Menshevik Julius Martov, would remain separate from the Bolsheviks.

Others, to the very far left, took an even more radical stance calling for immediate and total social revolution. As well as some more radical Bolshevik activists, these included anarchists of various stripes and the tiny faction of SR “Maximalists”. (The most radical fringe of the Socialist-Revolutionaries, the Maximalists were derided by American journalist John Reed in his memoir, Ten Days that Shook the World, as “an insignificant group of peasant anarchists.”)

The left-centre was dominated by “revolutionary defencist” groups of socialists who argued Russia had to continue fighting the war to protect the revolution. These socialists included the original leadership of the Petrograd Soviet, which had agreed to support the Provisional Government, “insofar as” it supported the people’s demands.

Confusingly, however, the centre itself was split. Some liberals swung closer to the moderate left-centre parties, while others – including the Kadet Paul Milyukov, who nearly brought the Provisional Government down in flames in April 1917 by claiming Russia was sticking to its original pre-revolutionary war aims – hewed to the right, adopting a staunch Russian nationalism. This split would be replicated in other, more marginal groups like the broadly liberal Siberian Regionalists, who advocated autonomy and self-government for Siberia.

What we might consider "real" right – including avowedly antisemitic, anti-socialist, and counter-revolutionary groups – re-emerged in the summer, especially around General Lavr Kornilov (of the Kornilov Revolt fame).

Extreme Left	Left	Left-Centre	Right-Centre	Right (summer onwards)
Bolsheviks* Anarchists SR-Maximalists	Bolsheviks* Menshevik-Internationalists Left-SRs	Defencist Mensheviks Defencist SRs Left-wing Kadets Siberian Regionalists	Right-wing Kadets Siberian Regionalists	Supporters of General Kornilov “Black Hundreds”

* the Bolsheviks were split in a number of locations between larger left-wing groups, and smaller more radical ultra-left groups

Model 3: Parties and Popular Politics

For many Russians we might call "ordinary people" (more on that idea in the next post), party politics was as – if not even more – confusing than it seems for us today. Lots of historians now concur with Sarah Badcock, who wrote in 2007 that “political parties often played a very low-key role in grass-roots politics and in people’s daily life.”

Badcock’s work looked in particular at the Russian provinces of Nizhegorod and Kazan. Other studies of politics in Russian provinces and local areas have shown that many people were neither committed to, nor fully aware of, any particular party-political programme.

And not just in the provinces. The historian Diane Koenker, in her landmark study of Moscow in 1917, relates a story of a worker chiding her Bolshevik-supporting colleague, having evidently mistaken the party's name (meaning  “Majoritarian”, but also sounding similar to "big") as meaning of the “well-to-do”: “Aren’t you ashamed to join such a party of rich men?”

People across Russia generally had a rather ambivalent attitude towards parties. Most opposed partisanship and strong party loyalties – one reason why Alexander Kerensky, who was formally an SR but appeared to float free of major parties, gained such popularity in the first months of the revolution (more on Kerensky in a later post).

Instead, people supported parties when they appeared to promise what they wanted. In practice, this meant that people often flitted between parties, some joining one only to quickly leave and join another, some joining more than one at once, most joining none at all. In many cities, people set up avowedly “non-party” groups which proudly touted their refusal to adhere to particular party programmes.

 

Considerations for Teaching

Where does this leave us in the classroom? The complexity of party politics in 1917 might seem overwhelming; but it shouldn't be. Whatever approach we take, I think there are a few key points to bear in mind.

• Political parties in 1917 cannot really be reduced to the “big 3” of Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, and SRs (however much this simplified model might appeal to our need for neat, clean narratives);
• Realignment as a result of the February Revolution was a key element to party politics in 1917 - this was marked by a general shift to the left in March 1917, before a polarisation in the summer which radicalised the left and re-introduced the right (more on this polarisation in a later post);
• A wide and diverse range of parties and factions took part in revolution, and often worked with one another for particular goals;
• Many Russians were not particularly motivated by party politics, even if they used parties as ways of pursuing their own goals in politics - parties were obviously important to 1917, but they certainly weren't everything to everyone.

Further Reading

Rex Wade, The Russian Revolution 1917, Cambridge (2017).

Lutz Haefner and Hannu Immonen, "Russian Political Parties in the Russian Revolution of 1917-18", in Daniel T. Orlovsky (ed.), A Companion to the Russian Revolution, Wiley Blackwell (2020), 95-104.