In the spring of 1918, the Left SRs assumed toward the Bolsheviks the same attitude that the Bolsheviks had adopted in 1917 toward the Provisional Government and the democratic socialists. They posed as the conscience of the Revolution, the incorruptible alternative to a regime of opportunists and compromisers. As the Bolshevik influence among industrial workers waned, the Left SRs became a dangerous rival, for they appealed to the same anarchic and destructive instincts of the Russian masses which the Bolsheviks themselves had exploited on the road to power but once in power did all they could to quell. They enjoyed support among some of the rowdiest urban elements, including radical Petrograd workers and the sailors of what had been the Baltic and Black Sea fleets. Essentially, they appealed to the very groups which had helped bring the Bolsheviks to power in October and now felt betrayed.
On April 17–25, the Left SRs held a congress in Moscow. It claimed to represent over 60,000 members. Most delegates wanted a clean break with the Bolsheviks and their “komissaroderzhavie” (“rule of the commissars”).97 Two months later (June 24), at a secret meeting, the Central Committee of the Left SR Party decided to raise the banner of rebellion.98 The “breathing spell” purchased by Brest was to be brought to an end. They would introduce at the forthcoming Fifth Congress of Soviets, scheduled for July 4, a motion calling for the abrogation of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty and a declaration of war on Germany. If it failed to pass, the Left SRs would initiate terroristic provocations to bring about a breach between Russia and Germany. The resolution adopted by that meeting read as follows:
The Central Committee of the Left SR Party, having examined the present political situation of the Republic, resolves that in the interest of the Russian as well as the International Revolution, an immediate end must be put to the so-called breathing spell created by the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.
The Central Committee believes it to be both practical and possible to organize a series of terrorist acts against the leading representatives of German imperialism. In order to realize this, the forces of the party must be organized and all necessary precautions taken so that the peasantry and the working class will join this movement and actively help the party. Therefore, at the instant of the terrorist act all papers should make known our participation in the events in the Ukraine, in the agitation among the peasants, and in the blowing up of arsenals. This must be done after Moscow gives a signal. Such a signal may be an act of terrorism or it can take another form. In order to distribute the forces of the party, a committee of three (Spiridonova, Maiorov, and Golubovskii) has been appointed.
In view of the fact that, contrary to the wishes of the party, this may involve a collision with the Bolsheviks, the Central Committee makes the following declaration: We regard our policy as an attack on the current policy of the Council of the People’s Commissars, but definitely not as a fight against the Bolsheviks themselves. As it is possible that the Bolsheviks may take aggressive counteraction against our party, we are determined, if necessary, to defend our position with force of arms. In order to prevent the party from being exploited by counterrevolutionary elements, it is resolved that our new policy be stated clearly and openly, so that an international socialist-revolutionary policy may subsequently be inaugurated in Soviet Russia.99
As this resolution indicates, the Left SRs intended in many ways but one to emulate Bolshevik actions in October 1917: the one crucial difference being that they did not aspire to power. That was to be left in Bolshevik hands. The Left SRs wanted only to compel the Bolsheviks to abandon their “opportunistic” policies by provoking Germany to attack Soviet Russia in reaction to anti-German terrorism. The plan was entirely unrealistic: it gambled on the expectation that the Germans would impulsively give up the immense benefits they had gained at Brest, and altogether ignored the common interest linking Berlin and Moscow.
Spiridonova, the most powerful personality on the three-person Left SR committee, was possessed of a courage that in earlier centuries characterized religious martyrs, but nothing remotely resembling common sense. Foreigners who observed her during these days left very uncomplimentary accounts. For Riezler she was a “dried-up skirt.” Alfons Paquet, a German journalist, saw her as
87. Maria Spiridonova, second from left.
a tireless hysteric with a pince-nez, the caricature of Athena, who, while speaking, always seemed to be reaching out for an invisible harp, and who, when the hall would burst into applause and rage, would impatiently stamp her feet, lifting the fallen shoulder straps of her dress.100
Immediately after the decision, the Left SRs went to work. They sent agitators to the military garrisons in Moscow and its suburbs: some of these they won to their side, the rest they succeeded in neutralizing. Left SRs working in the Cheka assembled a military force to fight in the event the Bolsheviks counterattacked. Preparations were made to carry out a terrorist act against the German Ambassador: his assassination was to serve as the signal for a nationwide rising. Emulating Bolshevik tactics on the eve of October, the Left SRs did not conceal their plans. On June 29, their organ Znamia truda carried on its front page an appeal to all able-bodied Left SRs to report no later than July 2 to their party’s regional offices; regional committees of the party were instructed to give them military training.101 The next day, Spiridonova declared publicly that only an armed uprising could save the Revolution.102 It remains an inexplicable mystery how Dzerzhinskii and his Latvian associates in the Cheka could have ignored these warnings and let themselves be caught by surprise on July 6.
A partial, but only partial, answer to this question is provided by the fact that several of the conspirators worked in the directing organs of the Cheka. Dzerzhinskii had chosen as his deputy a Left SR, Petr Aleksandrovich Dmitrievskii, popularly known as Aleksandrovich, in whom he had complete faith and entrusted with broad authority. Other Left SRs employed by the Cheka and involved in the conspiracy included Iakov Bliumkin, whose responsibility was counterespionage and penetration of the German Embassy, the photographer Nicholas Andreev, and D. I. Popov, the commander of a Cheka cavalry detachment. These individuals hatched a conspiracy within the headquarters of the secret police. Popov assembled several hundred armed men, mostly pro-Left SR sailors. Bliumkin and Andreev assumed responsibility for assassinating Mirbach. The two familiarized themselves with the building of the German mission and took photographs of the escape route they were to take after killing the ambassador.