The Socialist Revolutionaries Versus the Bolsheviks

Abstract

To understand the conflict between the Socialist Revolutionaries and the Bolsheviks, it is essential to realize that they believed in the same things, only each in their own way. Both were motivated by revolution and socialism. The Bolsheviks considered themselves to be Marxists, but Gendel’man did not speak only for himself when he remarked during the trial that he had ‘always been a Marxist and a Socialist Revolutionary’.1 Both parties were opposed to ‘the counter-revolution’, ‘the bourgeoisie’, ‘the reaction’. Both spoke about ‘class struggle’ and the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’. Each of the two parties considered itself to be socialist and denied the other the right to so call itself.