[POLITICAL LITERACY FOR POST-REVOLUTIONARY RUSSIA] Programma partii: v obshchedostupnom izlozhenii [The party program: an exposition for a wider audience]

Partiia sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov [Socialist-Revolutionary Party, or SR]

About this Item

Petrograd: Izdanie Petrogradskogo komiteta partii sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov, 1917. Octavo (20 × 14 cm). Original staple-stitched printed self-wrappers; 32 pp. Wrapper lightly chipped else about very good. Scarce brochure that seeks to educate a literate, but not highly educated, audience about the program of the Socialist Revolutionary Party (SR), breaking down basic principles of capitalist and socialist systems and proposing a program of action. The party won the Constituent Assembly election of 1917 (November 25, 1917) generally considered to be the first free Russian election, taking about 40% of the popular vote. SR was the primary competitor of Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP) the party of Lenin until its name was changed to the (All-)Russian Communist Party following the October Revolution of 1917. While the Bolshevik RSDLP won the majority of the vote in urban centers and from soldiers on the western front, they lost the overall election to the SRs, whose candidate list had been printed prior to the split between the left and right wings of the SRs, with the left wing forming a coalition with the Bolsheviks. The Bolsheviks had hoped that this election would provide them the popular mandate to govern. Lenin criticized the Constituent Assembly, saying that it failed to represent the Russian people, because the ballot had not indicated the split between the SRs right wing and the pro-Bolshevik left. SRs held power for two weeks before the Bolsheviks disbanded the Assembly and gained the upper hand. As ideologically hostile literature, as well as documentation of an alternative path of development after the February Revolution, the publications of the Socialist-Revolutionaries were subject to destruction in the years after the October coup. KVK and OCLC only show copies at LOC, Stanford, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin and Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, and State Library of NSW (Sydney).

Seller Inventory # P5946

Bibliographic Details

• Title: [POLITICAL LITERACY FOR POST-REVOLUTIONARY RUSSIA] Programma partii: v obshchedostupnom izlozhenii [The party program: an exposition for a wider audience]
• Binding: Soft cover
• Seller catalogs:
  • History
  • Revolution
  • Russia