We have now briefly sketched the principles and the program of the bolshevik party, which later, after it had conquered the power, took the name of the Communist Party. According to Lenin's explanations it took the name of (<The Communist Party" because it wished to differentiate itself from the social-democrats and at the same time wanted to draw over the workers which before ivere in the anarchist and revolutionary-syndicalist movement. We shall later have the opportunity to see to what extent the party has been able to impress its program upon the social life of Russia.
The Narodniks (National or People's Socialist) The Social-Revolutionaries of the Right
While the Marxists, the bolsheviks as well as the mensheviks, are a foreign growth on Russian soil, the socialism of the narodniks is of a purely Russian origin. Narod means ' 'people." The socialism of the narodniks was the socialism of the people, a special national product. One of the first and most prominent men in this movement was Lavrov. Tschemitschevsky also belonged to them. This movement is older than the Marxian movement. Later they called themselves also the Social-Revolutionary Party. While the Marxians, in accordance with their theory, ascribe a greater importance to the city proletariat, the Social-Revolutionary Party was mainly a peasant party. It was more a peasant socialism than a socialism of the city proletariat. As Russia is ,an agrarian country it was natural that the Social-Revolutionary Party was the most popular among the population, which to more than 80 per cent consists of peasants. To this party belonged the Grandmother of the Revolution, Breschkovskaja, "Babuschka" — as she was called, who after she was freed from Siberian imprisonment through the revolution, went abroad, after the fall of the Kerensky government, and made common cause with the American capitalists.
As was the case with the Marxians, this party also developed a left and a right wing.
The right wing was in favor of the constituent assembly, i. e., it was parliamentarian, like the mensheviks. Its intellectual leader was Tschernov. They also had other things in common with the mensheviks, although they were not Marxians, nor are so yet. They were for a coalition government with the Constitutional Democrats (Cadets), and they formed, together with the cadets Gutschkov and Miljukov and the mensheviks, the coalition government under Kerensky. Kerensky himself belonged to the right wing of the Social-Revolutionary Party. According to the program of the social-revolutionaries of the right the National (Constituent) Assembly should have the power to decide over the constitution of the country as well as over socialization and all important questions. It was and is the program of a bourgeois democracy.
The Social-Revolutionaries of the Left
Different was the Left Wing of the social-revolutionaries. These revolutionaries were the old Terrorists against the czarist system. They are still terrorists to-day but differ from the bolsheviks in this that they recognize only the personal terror but reject the systematic, organized terror. They are in favor of murdering a despot (the czar) but against the use of deterrent measures through a special institution formed for that purpose, as the Ochrana was during the czar and The Extra-ordinary Commission (Tscheka) during bolshevik rule.
The revolutionary process accelerated the split in the large Social-Revolutionary Party. Even after the revolution, up to November, 1917, the left wing, the party opposition, took a stand against the coalition government; it represented, principally, the international standpoint, and, finally, in November, 1917, it constituted itself The Social Revolutionary Party of the Left.