Socialist Revolutionary Party

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Party of Socialists-Revolutionaries Партія соціалистовъ-революціонеровъ
Abbreviation	SR Esers
Founders	Andrei Argunov Mikhail Gots Grigory Gershuni Viktor Chernov
Founded	January 1902 (1902-01)[1]
Dissolved	1940 (1940) (in exile)
Merger of	Northern Union of Socialist-Revolutionaries Southern Party of Socialist-Revolutionaries
Headquarters	Moscow
Newspaper	Revolutsionnaya Rossiya
Paramilitary wing	SR Combat Organization
Membership (1917)	1,000,000
Ideology	Agrarian socialism[2] Democratic socialism[3] Narodism[4] Federalism[5]
Political position	Left-wing[6]
International affiliation	Second International (1889–1916) Labour and Socialist International (1923–1940)
Colors	Red
Slogan	Въ борьбѣ обрѣтешь ты право свое! ("Through struggle you will attain your rights!")
Anthem	«Рабо́чая Марселье́за» ("Worker's Marseillaise")
Constituent Assembly	324 / 767 (1917–1918)
1907 Duma	37 / 518
First All-Russian Congress of Soviets	285 / 1,090
Party flag
Politics of Russia Political parties Elections

The Socialist Revolutionary Party (SR; Russian: Па́ртия социали́стов-революционе́ров, romanized: Pártiya sotsialístov-revolyutsionérov,^[a], lit. 'Party of Socialists-Revolutionaries') was a major socialist political party in the late Russian Empire, during both phases of the Russian Revolution, and in early Soviet Russia. The party members were known as Esers (эсеры, esery).

The SRs were agrarian socialists and supporters of a democratic socialist Russian republic. The ideological heirs of the Narodniks, the SRs won a mass following among the Russian peasantry by endorsing the overthrow of the Tsar and the redistribution of land to the peasants. The SRs boycotted the elections to the First Duma following the Revolution of 1905 alongside the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, but chose to run in the elections to the Second Duma and received the majority of the few seats allotted to the peasantry. Following the 1907 coup, the SRs boycotted all subsequent Dumas until the fall of the Tsar in the February Revolution of March 1917. Controversially, the party leadership endorsed the Russian Provisional Government and participated in multiple coalitions with liberal and social-democratic parties, while a radical faction within the SRs rejected the Provisional Government's authority in favor of the Congress of Soviets and began to drift towards the Bolsheviks. These divisions would ultimately result in the party splitting over the course of the fall of 1917, with the emergence of a separate Party of Left Socialist Revolutionaries. Meanwhile, Alexander Kerensky, one of the leaders of the February Revolution and the second and last head of the Provisional Government (July–November 1917) was a nominal member of the SR party but in practice acted independently of its decisions.

By November 1917, the Provisional Government had been widely discredited by its failure to withdraw from World War I, implement land reform or convene a Constituent Assembly to draft a Constitution, leaving the soviet councils in de facto control of the country. The Bolsheviks thus moved to hand power to the 2nd Congress of Soviets in the October Revolution. After a few weeks of deliberation, the Left SRs ultimately formed a coalition government with the Bolsheviks – the Council of People's Commissioners – from November 1917 to March 1918 while the Right SRs boycotted the Soviets and denounced the Revolution as an illegal coup. The SRs obtained a majority in the subsequent elections to the Russian Constituent Assembly. Citing outdated voter-rolls which did not acknowledge the party split, and the Assembly's conflicts with the Congress of Soviets, the Bolshevik-Left SR government moved to dissolve the Constituent Assembly by force in January 1918.^[7]

The SRs supported the Whites during the Russian Civil War of 1917–1922, but the White movement's anti-socialist leadership increasingly marginalized and ultimately purged them. A small SR remnant continued to operate in exile from 1923 to 1940 as a member of the Labour and Socialist International.

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