In search of the party unity: the Second Congress of Foreign Organizations of the Socialist Revolutionary Party (Paris, 1928)

This article focuses on the organizational problems of the formation and the activity of the socialist-revolutionary emigration in the 1920s. The lack of a complete scientific history of the Socialist Revolutionary Party (SRP) in emigration is emphasized. The peculiarities of the socialist-revolutionary emigration, the establishment of various fractions, the conflicts and the contradictions are analyzed. Fundamentally, the materials of the party congresses and conferences of the socialists-revolutionaries abroad remain unknown to the basic mass of researchers. Several centers of the socialist-revolutionary emigration are formed. A relatively numerous group of the SRP functioned in Prague and Paris, smaller ones in Belgrade, London, New York and Harbin. In 1923, the first Congress of the foreign organizations of the SRP took place in Prague. As a result of the acute personal and ideological conflicts in 1926, the foreign delegation of the SRP split. V.M. Chernov and his group took control of the central organ of the party, the Revolutionary Russia journal. In this situation, the convocation of the Congress of foreign socialists-revolutionaries was an attempt to restore the unity of the party. In the end, the II Congress of the SRP foreign organizations was held in Paris on 29 April - 6 May 1928. 22 delegates representing 119 members of the local groups attended. The report of the Regional Committee, the message of the Foreign Delegation, a report on party work of the foreign organizations were delivered. Foreign socialists-revolutionaries failed to reach real agreements in Paris. In fact, the Congress got stuck in the organizational issues. In practice, the delegates extended the powers of the Regional Committee, condemned the activity of V.M. Chernov, and also denied the journal Revolutionary Russia the right to be called the central organ of the party. The Congress resolution was a compromise, which is actually unsatisfactory and could not be the basis for further work. V.M. Chernov reacted negatively to the decision of the Congress. The Paris Congress was the last forum in the SRP history, where different currents of the party were represented, though not completely. Further attempts to collect foreign socialists-revolutionaries and to establish the all-party work were not successful. The schisms in the post-revolutionary environment of the socialist-revolutionary emigration had Russian roots. It was about the nature of the SRP that denied a rigid organizational structure and about the different views on ways and methods of building socialism in Russia among the various revolutionary fractions. So, the problem of the SRP as a political party was the fact that this split happened so late. During the revolution and the civil war, the need for the underground work and the close relationship of the party activists with the people smoothed the centrifugal tendencies in some ways. In the conditions of emigration and loss of connections with the last groups of socialists-revolutionaries in Soviet Russia, when the main activity of foreign socialists-revolutionaries, beyond the basic survival, was literary-critical, the old contradictions manifested themselves in full.

Keywords

Authors

References