This new party was formed mainly by the active peasantry, and their intellectual leaders strove to pull the masses of the peasantry away from the influence of the Social-Revolutionary Party of the Right. Besides, it wished to pull those elements into the revolutionary process who were strange to Marxism and which had mainly developed in the Russian school of the "Narodnitschestvo" : federalism, the ethical viewpoint and activism. Up to the peace of Brest-Litovsk the party of the left social-revolutionaries worked in solidarity with the bolsheviks in all Soviets and in the government. Of the seven People's Commissariats it took over Agriculture, which is of such great importance in Russia, In order to carry into effect the law of socialization of the land.
As the party, in connection with the peace of Brest-Litovsk, could not agree with German Imperialism, it stepped out of the government. From the time the party ceased to be a government party, the politics of the Soviet Government were dictated solely by the bolsheviks. Now began the system of terror, the system of forcible requisition of bread from the peasants, the supremacy of the police organs and the re-introduction of capital punishment. All these measures the Social-Revolutionary Party of the Left disapproved of, the same as other socialist parties. In July, 1918, at the time of the V. Soviet Congress, the party already had 40 per cent of the mandates. At that time, however, the party wished to turn with all their might against bolshevik co-operation with German imperialism. This took expression in the act of murdering Count Mirbach, the German ambassador in Moscow.
This act gave the bolsheviks cause and pretense for a settlement with the competing party, and they started a system of persecution, which extends to the present, that is, over two years. All party papers were suppressed, many members were shot and hundreds and thousands of soviet delegates who belonged to that party were excluded from the Soviets. The result of this was that the party became illegal, and their most active members came in prison, whereby the party lost the possibility of influencing the masses, especially the work-village. The active peasantry, which in the soviet representatives no longer saw representatives of their class, was driven to a course of desperate insurrections. But the peasant rebellions were suppressed with force and led still closer to the abyss which separates the bolshevik power from the village.
I have given this description of the development of this party after the account of one of its leaders, who in the first period after the overthrow of the Kerensky government was a member of the Council of People's Commissars, Isaak Steinberg, who had the People's Commissariat of Agriculture in charge. Also in the presentation of their program I shall follow his account.
The sot-called period of transition does not appear to this party as an epoch which in principle differs from the socialist epoch. The period of transition ought not, in its initial forms, to realize any other principles than those which are intended for socialist society. If one speaks of "the dying out of the state," one must not allow state ideology and state compulsion to be realized in the highest degree. One must not depend on the provisional character of these periods of transition, for world history has already often enough proven that the provisional has perpetuated itself.
The Social-Revolutionary Party of the Left does not believe in accomplishing the social revolution by means of a daring minority, perchance a communist party. It takes the standpoint that, insofar as the social revolution means not only the transfer of the means of production from the hands of one owner into the hands of another owner, but also a radical overturning of all social and intellectual habits of men, as well as the remodeling of the process of production and distribution, the result of the revolution can be made safe only by means of the free and active participation of the masses themselves. But this does not mean that the party is parliamentarian. It is, on the contrary, antiparliamentarian and also opposed to the Constituent Assembly.