Suslov A.Yu. Socialists Revolutionaries in emigration on problems of party history (1920s–1930s)

Abstract: This article considers the interpretations by the Party of Socialists Revolutionaries, given by the SRs themselves in the final, emigrant period of their existence. The discussion includes a presentation of the features specific to the SRs’ emigration after October 1917, and the key moments in its formation and development. The author highlights the analysis of the problems pertaining to the party’s history at the time of the controversy surrounding the trial in 1922 of the PSR leaders, as well as at the conference of the party’s Prague group in 1931. The main approaches of the SRs-émigrés to the party’s activity in 1917–1920s, the period of revolution and the Civil war, are studied and the reasons of the PSR’s failures in the political struggle are also outlined. The views of the Socialits Revolutionaries in emigration are examined from the point of view of intellectual history on the basis of the comparative historical method from the position of scientism and multifactualism. The premise is the realisation of the undivided link between the history of ideas and concepts, on the one hand, and of the history of conditions and forms of intellectual activity, on the other hand. For the first time the materials from the party forums of the Socialists Revolutionaries in emigration are analysed, and the author notes the numerous attempts at writing a history of the party and the attention to this given by prominent members of this party. Overall, the SRs (as well as the Mensheviks) authors, admitting their political mistakes, nonetheless considered the main reason for their defeat to be the weakness of those social forces on which Democratic Socialism should rely on in Russia. The author also notes the influence of the SRs’ views on the consequent development of foreign historiography.

Keywords: