However, even already a half century after the publication of the “Communist Manifesto” by 1900, workers, even in Russia were not living so desperately. They simply lived steadily bad. As for the revolution’s organization, or its preparation, then the proletariat added to Lenin’s strong cohort of narodovoltzi [People’s Will members] and SRs [Socialist-Revolutionists] not more but even less than other classes. Perovskaia, Kibalchich, Grinevitsky, Alexandre Ulianov, as it is known, were not workers. Totally accidentally in Lefortovo’s castle library happened to be a very instructive research of R. A. Gorodnitsky “The Fighting Organization of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party in 1901-1911”. And there I discovered rare and amazing data about the origin of SRs fighters.
“The Combat Organization in 1903-1906 comprised 13 women and 51 men.
The estate origin of CO members looks as follows: 13 nobles, 3 honorary citizens, 5 priests children, 10 merchants children, 27 middle class people and 6 peasants. The CO administration comprised 2 individuals of noble origin, 3 merchants sons and 2 middle class persons”.
The educational level of the CO for the studied period: 6 members had a higher education, 28 an incomplete higher, 24 – a middle, 6 – a primary one… The numbers – concludes Gorodnitsky – reveal the principal environment from which CO members were recruited – the student community of higher educational institutions”.
Interesting is also the national CO composition: 43 Russians, 19 Jews and 2 Poles.
By age: “It is precisely young people 20-30 years old who composed the skeleton of the CO” ascertains Gorodnitsky.
One cannot dismiss this depressing for the proletariat statistics with the remark that well, the socialist-revolutionaries – it’s a party that put the allotment of land to the peasants as its main task and so then there was no workers. Gorodnitsky specially specifies that the Combat Organization of the SRs strikingly differed from the SRs party and in essence was a different organization – the Combat Organization of the entire Russian revolution. “For many CO members of 1903-1906 the strict ideological canons of the PSR were too narrow and their presence and work in the CO they regarded as the service to the entire Russian revolution, which after the victory, as the fighters hoped, ought to produce a radical reconstruction of society on socialistic grounds”.
That’s that. The avant-garde of the entire Russian revolution: 13 nobles, 27 petty bourgeoisie commoners, a horde of half-taught students and not a single worker. But maybe in the following years in this very Russia’s efficient revolutionary organization (the Bolsheviks in comparison were still meddling in their swaddling clothes) workers have entered and peasants dominated?
Here are the data about the CO in 1907-1909. 7 men and 3 women (the epoch of Azef’s exposure, the organization was going through hard times).
The estate origin: 6 commoners, 2 merchants children, 1 priest son, 1 peasant.
The educational leveclass="underline" 3 CO members had a higher education, 3 – an incomplete higher, 4 – a middle one.
In 1909-1911 the CO comprised 13 men and 4 women.
The estate origin of CO members: 6 nobles, 1 honorary citizen, 3 merchants children, 1 priest son, 5 commoners and 1 peasant.
The national composition: 11 Russians, 3 Jews, 1 Ukrainian, 1 Latvian and 1 Pole.
The educational leveclass="underline" 2 persons had a higher education, 8 – an incomplete higher, 5 – a middle, 2 – a primary one.
Again – not a single worker!
Undoubtedly workers marched with Gapon to the czar the 9th January, during the revolutionary uprising of 1905 even the entire workers district “The Red Presnya” distinguished itself but these are cases of “stirrings that were organized by others”.
Let’s leave the proletariats. Let’s take a closer look on a identikit of who was shaking the Russian Empire in the very beginning of this century and prepared a revolution. It is a half-taught student of a higher educational institution, Russian (One in four is Jew), from 20 to 30 years old, originally from the middle class, that is petty bourgeoisie. Lets have a look on CO leaders. The founder of the Combat Organization Gershuni Gregory Andreevich (Gersh) was born in 1870 in Kovensk province. The family was registered to the middle estate. In 1885 he was sent to study as an apothecary. In 1887-1888 he works in a pharmacy in Kronschtadt. He moves to Petersburg. He works as an apothecary until 1895. In Petersburg he befriends literary men, artists, students. He writes the short story “How to be” in which is described the murder of one of the members of a revolutionary circle suspected in provocation. In 1895 Gershuni went to Kiev and entered as a free listener the courses of the medicine faculty of the university of St Vladimir. In Mars 1896 he is arrested, he is incriminated with participation in an anti-government association “The Allied Council of Kiev’s student organizations and land affiliations”. He got off with nothing more than a light fright. Having passed the exams to become pharmacist he moved again to Petersburg. Later he came to Moscow, worked in bacteriology courses, then in the institute of experimental medicine. In Spring 1898 he goes to Minsk, begins to offer services to revolutionary groups, sets up a workshop of machines for illegal typographies, creates a passports bureau, sends illegal persons over the border etc. Finally he joins the circle “Workers party of political liberation of Russia” in 1899. In 1990 he is arrested. Accidentally freed. Shifts to an illegal position. In Summer 1901 he travels around Nijni Novgorod, Ufa, Voronej, Saratov, Samara setting up contacts everywhere. In September 1901 he began to recruit people for the Combat Organization. The first terrorist act happened the 2nd of April 1902. The assassination of the minister of intern affairs Sipyagin in Petersburg.
Boris Victorivich Savinkov (It is precisely his “Memories of a Terrorist” who brought the CO its historical fame) was born in 1879 in Kharkov in the family of the comrade of the public prosecutor of the military district court. Savinkov completed gymnasium in Warsaw in 1897. In December of the same year, 18 years old, Warsaw’s gendarmerie administration called him to account for participation in student unrests connected to the opening in Warsow of a monument to the suppresser of the Polish uprising of 1863-1864 the count M. N. Muraviev. Savinkov is handed under the open surveillance of the police. In 1897 Savinkov entered the juridical faculty of the Petersburg University. But already in 1899 he was fired from the University because of student unrests and called for preliminary investigation on the case of a group of students who had assembled in an “Organizational Committee”. In the end of 1899 Savinkov passed the border and during two years he studied at the juridical faculties of the Berlin and Heidelberg universities. In Fall 1900 Savinkov came to Varshava for the execution of his military duty but was “declared completely incapable for military service”. Savinkov draws closer with social-democrats, enters the group “Workers’ banner” and together with P. M. Rutenberg founds the group “Socialist”. In 1901, in Spring Savinkov is arrested on the case of these social-democratic organizations. In December 1901 the investigation is completed. In the beginning of 1902 Savinkov is exiled to Vologda. In Spring 1903 Savinkov joins the SR party. In June of the same year he escapes from Vologda to Archangelsk, and from there to Norway, after in Geneva where he meets a member of the Central Committee of the SRs party – Gotz. He is 24 years old, he is already a professional revolutionary.