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The Socialist Alternat ive to BolshevikRussia: The Socialist Revolut ionaryParty, 19211939Alexander Trapeznik

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a Universit y of Ot agoVersion of record f irst publ i shed: 14 Dec 2011.

To cite this art icle: Alexander Trapeznik (2011): The Socialist Alternative to Bolshevik Russia: TheSocial ist Revolu t ionar y Part y, 19211939, Revolutionary Russia, 24:2, 223-224

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BOOK REVIEW

Elizabeth White, The Socialist Alternative to Bolshevik Russia: The SocialistRevolutionary Party, 1921 1939, London: Routledge, 2011. Pp. IX 1 180;notes; bibliography; index. 80.00 (hardback). ISBN 9-780-415435-840

From the early 1900s to 1917, it was by no means a foregone conclusion that Lenin andthe Bolshevik Party would emerge as the major figures in the Russian revolutionarymovement, let alone as the rulers of Russia. Viktor Chernovs Socialist Revolutionary(SR) party, Iulii Martov and Leon Trotsky could equally have been heirs apparent tothe throne. Indeed, there were occasions when it appeared that the SRs wouldsucceed in dominating the Russian revolutionary movement, and for much of 1917

they exercised far more influence over the working class and in the country at largethan did the Bolsheviks or Mensheviks. In fact, it can be argued that SR policies andblunders in 1917 contributed as much to the Bolshevik triumph as did the actions ofthe Leninists themselves.

In the end, they were powerless to prevent the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks.The SR party once again was chiefly concerned with, and distracted by, factional infight-ing and the elections to the Constituent Assembly. The Assembly duly convened inPetrograd on 5 January 1918. It met for only one day during which it electedChernov as Chairman. Civil wars broke out in the course of 1918. Many leading SRsmade their way to Samara on the Volga where, together with a few Mensheviks, they

attempted to set up a new Provisional Government made up of members of thedispersed Constituent Assembly. The end of the SR party came in 1922, when itsremaining leaders in Russia were tried for treason and condemned to death. Or soone thought. Elizabeth Whites book attempts to retrieve the SR party from thedustbin of history and examine its leaders in political exile in Czechoslovakia in the1920s and 1930s, where they continued to agitate for a socialist future as they saw itand provided perceptive critiques of the events unfolding in Soviet Russia.

Whites book complements and supplements existing major scholarship on the SRparty, which has focused primarily on the history of the party and its splits, and its ter-rorist and agrarian policies in the turbulent period between 1905 and 1917. It also con-

tributes to the burgeoning study of the Russian emigre community. Her work, which isbased on a comprehensive examination of party archival material, contains some veryperceptive insights and useful commentary. It dismisses the populist myth, which hashaunted the party since its inception of peasant socialism. The book is based on herPhD thesis and focuses on Russian emigre political thought and action among the SRsand their reaction to Bolshevik Russias attempts to build socialism.

White argues that the first wave of emigration after the October Revolution of 1917and the subsequent civil war made an important contribution to the history of twenti-eth-century Russian political thought as well as adding to our understanding of StalinsRevolution from Above. Furthermore, these individual heirs to the populist intellectualtradition of Alexander Herzen and Nikolai Cherenyshevskii were not preoccupied with

ISSN 0954-6545 print/ISSN 1743-7873 online/11/020223-2http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09546545.2011.618302

Revolutionary Russia, Vol. 24, No. 2, December 2011, pp. 223224

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feelings of frustration, recriminations or guilt. Instead, they were fully integrated intothe social and intellectual life of Czechoslovakia. She also argues that the Prague SRswere closely allied with the European socialist movements and made a positive contri-bution to socialist ideas. The focus of the study is on their contribution to the intellectual

tradition in the post-October environment rather than the internecine and long-standingfactionalism within the party.Furthermore, a study of emigre groups such as the Prague SRs widens our under-

standing of the events in the Soviet Union within the confines of Russian narodnichestvoand European socialism. As White points out, these individuals from the centre left ofthe party settled in Czechoslovakia with the support of President Masaryk. Theyremained committed to the ideals of socialism and the traditional populist belief inthe revolutionary potential of the peasantry. They were staunchly opposed to the fledg-ling Soviet regime and were critical of the SR partys actions and policies in the headydays of 1917. It is also important to note that prior to, and indeed after 1917, the SR

party was always an amalgam of many groups and tendencies with divergent viewpointsand political ideals; for example, the partys leader and chief theoretician, ViktorChernov, and a small group split from the Prague SRs in 1928; the other majorgroup which opposed them were the Paris SRs.

Whites book is organised into eight succinct chapters. The first covers the earlyhistory of the populist movement, the SR partys political programme and thereasons for its demise in 1917. Chapter 2 deals with the historical, political and intel-lectual environment in which the Prague SRs operated. Chapter 3 examines their analy-sis of the NEP period with a special emphasis on the peasants response to theBolsheviks fiscal retreat and the Soviet governments handling of the situation, and

posits the SRs alternative view for Russias economic development. Chapter 4 presentsthe Prague SRs analysis of the Soviet government and its social support base, whichWhite argues reveals their failure to adequately understand power relations in theSoviet Union. Chapter 5 presents a utopian view from the SR viewpoint of a post-Soviet Russia after the fall of Bolshevism. Chapter 6 complements the earlier chapteron the NEP period by examining the SRs analysis of the failure of NEP and the sub-sequent advent of the Stalin period. Chapter 7 provides the SRs response to forced col-lectivisation of agriculture and how this policy related to their own agrarian programme.The final chapter presents an overview of the Prague SRs during the 1930s and theirassessment of the rise of fascism and the looming war threat.

In the end, despite their endeavours and intellectual analysis of the Russian revolu-tion, all was in vain: the Bolsheviks maintained their power in Russia. White is to becommended for her efforts in producing a book that makes an important contributionto the study of emigre politics, and highlights the significant contribution that the PragueSRs made to the intellectual and political history of inter-war Europe and the SovietUnion.

Alexander TrapeznikUniversity of Otago

alextrapeznik@otago.ac.nz

# 2011, Alexander Trapeznik

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