Socialist Revolutionary party and the Second International

Abstract

The path of the Socialist Revolutionary party to the Second International was a thorny one. Russian social democrats were zealous in creating obstacles, primarily their representative in the International Socialist Bureau (IBS) G.V. Plekhanov. His efforts to the Socialist Revolutionary groups in the 90-ies of the XIX century denied the right of representation in the international socialist community. European political parties were mentally closer to the RSDLP, and their socialist competitors were wary. The Socialist Revolutionary had to work hard to convince the parties of the International of their adherence to the ideas of socialism and of the presence of connections with the masses. The Socialist Revolutionary Party established close contacts with the SME in 1901, and at the Amsterdam Congress (1904, August) achieved what it wanted, it was accepted into the Second International. The reports of the party to the Amsterdam and Stuttgart congresses of the International served as evidence of the mass character, adherence to the ideas of socialism. The leaders of the Socialist Revolutionaries, their emotional and verbose representative in the SME I.A. Rubanovich, took an active part in all the events of the International; the party became an equal member of the international socialist community. During the Basel Congress of 1912, her representative on the «commission of five» most influential parties was one of the compilers of the anti-war «Manifesto» of the International, supported by the socialists of the world. During the First World War, only a part of the party defended the ideas of internationalism. The III Congress of the Social Revolutionaries in the spring of 1917 called for the continuation of the war to a victorious end and the restoration of the II International.