Записки социалиста-революционера. Книга 1

Oriental Research Partners

MEMOIR SERIES

General Editor: Professor Marc Raeff Columbia University

VIKTOR CHERNOV ZAPISKI SOTSIALISTA-REVOLIUTSIONERA

Berlin, 1922

NEW INTRODUCTION BY CONSTANTINE BRANCOVAN, REPUBLISHED BY ORIENTAL RESEARCH PARTNERS, 1975

Oriental Research Partners wish to thank

Yale University Library for the use of their book for reprinting purposes.

Republished 1975 by Oriental Research Partners, Box 68 Cambridge

Reprinted in Great Britain by Kingprint Limited, Richmond, Surrey

NOTE FROM ORIENTAL RESEARCH PARTNERS

The regular introduction to Chernov's memoirs should have been written by Constantine Brancovan. Unfortunately, Mr. Brancovan has been inexplicably unable to fulfill his contract and has been replaced at the eleventh hour. This late change has meant that our normal introduction is somewhat shorter than planned. We do hope, however, that this inconvenience will not detract from the reading of Chernov's fascinating memoirs.

VIKTOR MIKHAILOVICH CHERNOV (1873–1952) was a Russian politician and theoretician of the Social Revolutionary Party. During the 1890's he led the Populist groups away from a programme of anarchism, violence, and despair into a closer harmony with the new problems facing Russia at the turn of the century-urbanization, Marxism and industrialization. He played an important part from 1901 to 1906 in several congresses of the Populist groups in the formation of the Social Revolutionary Party, of whose Central Committee he became a member. He insisted that unity would have to be superimposed on the revolutionary movement so that 'we will not have social democrats and social revolutionaries, but one indivisible party'. He persuaded his fellow party members to accept the existence of an industrial proletariat in Russia and of its revolutionary role alongside the peasantry. He also succeeded in forming an agrarian policy which was summarized in the slogan 'the land belongs to no one and labour alone confers the right to use it'. He returned to Russia in April 1917, having been in exile abroad since 1899, and in May he joined Kerensky's Provisional government as minister of Agriculture. But his long sojourn out of Russia had a disastrous influence on his position as minister. As the leader of the largest socialist party, his position should have been one of commanding strength, but was in fact, one of increasing weakness, partly because his land policy, based to a certain extent on the military pressures of the time, forced him to prevent the peasants from seizing the land as their own. His declining hold over the masses was shown in July 1917 when he was saved by Trotsky from the hands of an angry crowd. He resigned from the Provisional government in September 1917. He was powerless to prevent the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks. In the meaningless elections held just after the Revolution, as leader of the majority party, he was elected chairman of the Constituent Assembly and it was characteristic of his temperament that he insisted that the demonstration against the dispersal of the assembly should be unarmed. The tactics completely failed and in 1920 he left Russia once again.

He spent several years with the large Russian emigre community in Prague.

He wrote a great deal on the revolution of which the best known is The Great Russian Revolution (1936). He died in 1952 leaving a large number of friends and sympathizers in both Europe and North America.