Socialist-Revolutionaries lead the way during 1917 (No Bolshevik October Revolution)

The SRs won the large plurality of votes in the 1917 Constituent Assembly elections. They had broad appeal to many Russian peasants, workers, and the leftist intelligentsia. The Left-SRs were key to helping the Bolsheviks gaining control shortly after the October Revolution.

What would happen if the Bolsheviks were weaker prior to October, and somehow this allowed the SRs to be the greater drivers of the 1917 Revolution later in the year? and somehow managing to transition Russia towards a democratic republic, though quite left-leaning?

What would be required domestically and abroad (namely WW1)? Would the civil war be avoided if the Constituent Assembly isn't dissolved and managed to forge a left coalition that had a majority of its seats?

Who lead this Russian republic (Chernov? Kerensky? Both?)? Would it become federal with lots of granting of autonomy to the various nationalities (Ukraine, Central Asia, Idel-Ural, Caucasus, etc) and managing to have the extend of OTL USSR, and how would the economy run (the NEP, essentially state capitalism but with the SR promise of land socialization)?

Implications for beyond the 1920s? How would this impact European politics and relations?
 

werewolf

Banned
The SRs won the large plurality of votes in the 1917 Constituent Assembly elections. They had broad appeal to many Russian peasants, workers, and the leftist intelligentsia. The Left-SRs were key to helping the Bolsheviks gaining control shortly after the October Revolution.

What would happen if the Bolsheviks were weaker prior to October, and somehow this allowed the SRs to be the greater drivers of the 1917 Revolution later in the year? and somehow managing to transition Russia towards a democratic republic, though quite left-leaning?

What would be required domestically and abroad (namely WW1)? Would the civil war be avoided if the Constituent Assembly isn't dissolved and managed to forge a left coalition that had a majority of its seats?

Who lead this Russian republic (Chernov? Kerensky? Both?)? Would it become federal with lots of granting of autonomy to the various nationalities (Ukraine, Central Asia, Idel-Ural, Caucasus, etc) and managing to have the extend of OTL USSR, and how would the economy run (the NEP, essentially state capitalism but with the SR promise of land socialization)?

Implications for beyond the 1920s? How would this impact European politics and relations?


all the mensheviks need to survive and win is a strong charismatic leader (a ben gurion or a pilsudski ) and the brain power to sign brest litovsk ( knowing that it was temporary)

in the long term menshevik russia will develop into mega poland worse case and mega israel at best case

nationalist mixed economy on a global scale

without the civil war stalin and hitler core modern russia would have 200+ million citizens and the second economy on planet earth in 2018
 
Could you explain the best and worst case scenarios for Menshevik Russia? And yeah, the Mensheviks were more open to working with the other leftist parties and even the liberal parties.
 
About an SR government, the obvious problem is which SR's? The party ranged from near-Bolsheviks to near-Kadets. Even the secession of the Left SR's did not really give the party ideological coherence. The Party of Socialists-Revolutionaries (PSR) after the secession is often referred to as the "Right SR's" but this is misleading; may of its leaders like Chernov could better be described as center or even center-left SR's.

Furthermore, contrary to popular belied, the PSR did not win a majority of the vote in the Constituent Assembly election. In a post a few years ago, https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/wi-lenin-dies-circa-august-1917.342336/#post-10253193 I explain why this is a myth:

"Sviatitsky claimed about 400 deputies for the Populist camp (leaving aside the Left SRs) but of these he actually only claimed 299 for his own party, the SRs. The remainder of the 400 were *Ukrainian* Socialist Revolutionaries (81) or smaller SR national groups (19--Moslem, Chuvash, Moldavian, and Buryat).

"It is a great mistake to assume that these one hundred deputies would necessarily vote with the (Russian) PSR. Moslem SRs, like other Moslems, did not share the Russian Populist intellectuals' enthusiasm for the war and the Allies. (One Moslem SR from Ufa province not only supported the Soviet government's peace initiative but criticized it for not moving even faster in that direction.) And the Ukrainian SR party was not only organizationally separate from the PSR but had its own agenda, which, while it did not yet call for outright separation of Ukraine from Russia, nevertheless carried self-determination and devolution to a point much further than the PSR would be likely to accept."

Second, the Assembly which actually met was almost a rump Assembly: "The Assembly was supposed to have over 800 members, yet only 703 or 707 were elected. Part of the explanation is that in twelve electoral districts, mostly in Central Asia, the election never came off. This accounts for either 81 or 86 of the vacancies. The bulk of them would have gone to Moslem nationalists, who would hardly be likely to agree with the SRs' enthusiasm for England and France (nations which Russian Moslems saw as oppressors of Moslems in Asia and Africa) or for the Armenians--or for the strong SR antagonism toward Turkey and Turkey's German allies..."

Even among the deputies who were actually elected, many were not present:

"Another point is the large number of deputies absent on January 5. (Of course, one cannot blame some of the deputies for fearing that going to Petrograd would be a ticket to jail or worse. The Bolsheviks had already outlawed the Kadets, for example.) Radkey gives three different sources' estimates of the number of deputies present: one gives 427, another 402, still another "around 500." (In his essay "The Constituent Assembly" in Edward Acton, Vladimir Iu. Cherniaev, and William P. Rosenberg, eds, *Critical Companion to the Russian Revolution*, Nikolai N. Smirnov writes that "at least 410 deputies took their seats." p. 331) Since there were supposed to be slightly more than 800 deputies, it seems likely that almost half the membership was absent, either through failure to get there or failure to be elected. Note, for example, that Chernov was elected chairman by 244 votes in his favor to 151 against; Spiridonova's candidacy got 153 affirmative and 244 negative votes. In other words, this crucial test of strength did not involve even half the membership of the Assembly.

"Most notably the Ukrainian SRs were not at the Tauride Palace; their party's Central Committee had decided that the deputies were needed in Ukraine, where the Rada had called its own (Ukrainian) Constituent Assembly. A few Ukrainian SR deputies did go to Petrograd to announce to the All-Russian Assembly that they would not participate in it, but reserved the right to do so in the future! (As Radkey puts it, "In other words, if the assembly were a failure, they did not wish to be involved, but if it succeeded, and came to wield authority, they would take their seats." p. 389)…

Radkey's conclusion: "In dissolving the Constituent Assembly, Lenin was putting an end to a body that would likely have fallen of its own weight. But he was scarcely destroying a nest of counterrevolution, as he and his comrades have so often proclaimed. He had hastened to strike down the specter of right SR control arising out of the half assembly of January, 1918, without waiting for the full assembly to convene. In such an assembly, with all members elected and present, there would have been a majority for peace and one for recasting the conquered empire of the tsars along lines of broad national autonomy. There would have been no majority for restoring the discredited Provisional Government. The right SR's with their contraband Kadetism would not have ruled this assembly, grossly overrepresented as they were. With all of its imperfections, chief among them this Trojan horse of counterrevolution in SR trappings, the Constituent Assembly was nevertheless an authentic expression of the hopes and hatreds of the populations residing within the Russian Empire..." *The Sickle Under the Hammer: The Russian Socialist Revolutionaries in the Early Months of the Soviet Rule*, p. 463.
 

werewolf

Banned
Could you explain the best and worst case scenarios for Menshevik Russia? And yeah, the Mensheviks were more open to working with the other leftist parties and even the liberal parties.

if the new menshevik leadership is smart and self confident they would would govern in coalition with the moderate trudoviks and do israeli style nep economic development instead of bolshevik nep
(land redistribution abolishing nobility and church rights keeping private property and safeguarding the russian education sector)
after 20 years of this give or take russian society and economy with mature into real democracy material with the kadets being the center right opposition party
this is the optimistic israeli path


if menshevik leadership is too power hungry and stupid they govern alone and the reforms are too harsh or too light triggering a systemic crisis exploited by traditionalist and far right elements
triggering a counter revolution creating an army centric right wing oligarchy type government with radical expansionist tendencies
this is the pessimistic polish path
( in interwar poland external pressure from russia and germany is partly to blame for this situation)
 
Could you explain the best and worst case scenarios for Menshevik Russia? And yeah, the Mensheviks were more open to working with the other leftist parties and even the liberal parties.

I don't think there is much chance that Russia is going to be ruled by a party that got 2.6 percent of he vote in the Constituent Assembly election. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Constituent_Assembly_election,_1917 The Mensheviks by late 1917 were a spent force except in Georgia.

The Mensheviks, however, did have an influence in 1917 out of proportion to their numbers--but IMO it was a bad influence. The problem was that the Mensheviks were dogmatic Marxists--much more dogmatic than the Bolsheviks. As orthodox Marxists, they believed that the Russian revolution was still going through its "bourgeois" stage (after all, it's a backward, peasant nation, not yet ready for socialism, etc.) and that an all-socialist government (which would mean a break with the Kadets) was therefore not desirable. And alas the SR's went along with the Mensheviks on that point. To quote an old soc.history.what-if post of mine:

"As it was, the Mensheviks and SRs were handicapped by the fact that in each case the right wing of the party was dominant, and the left wing did not want to split with it (except, as I noted, some of the extreme left-wing SRs, and even they split only after October). The Right Mensheviks and Right SRs opposed an all-socialist government and insisted on supporting Kerensky (himself nominally an SR though he regarded himself as being above parties) and on maintaining a coalition with the Kadets. In the case of the Right Mensheviks, this was due to a dogmatic Marxism (the Mensheviks were always more "orthodox" about their Marxism than the Bolsheviks): Since by all orthodox Marxist standards, backward Russia was not ready for socialism, it was essential not to alienate the bourgeoisie from the revolution. As for the SRs, they were curiously willing to follow the pro-war, pro-coalition-with-the-Kadets Mensheviks. Oliver Radkey in *The Agrarian Foes of Bolshevism: Promise and Default of the Russian Socialist Revolutionaries, February to October 1917* (New York and London: Columbia UP 1958) notes that the Mensheviks' concept of revolution was "as though made to order" for the right SR's, "whose zeal for war led them above all else to desire a class truce, which could only mean the bourgeois hegemony of the revolution postulated in Menshevik theory" (p.467). But Radkey also adds (pp. 466-7):

"'Yet it was not just the right wing which held the PSR in thralldom to Menshevism. The center was also responsible for this fateful dependency of the larger party upon the smaller, even to the extent of abandoning its own concept of the revolution. Chernov says the SR's were twice late in respect to coalition, first with its formation, and then with its liquidation. But he also tells us, on an earlier occasion when the impression of the overwhelming catastrophe sustained by his party was fresh on his mind, that at the time of the July crisis the question of a socialist government had been posed and had been decided in the negative, partly because the Mensheviks refused to join. A break with Menshevism was by no means desired by many adherents of the center, leftist in inclination. Presumably he numbered himself among these members--he was always friendly to Menshevism. It was at the Tenth Petersburg Conference, however, that he spoke more frankly than on other occasions. He admitted that SR tactics had been framed with reference to Menshevik tactics--sometimes excessively so. He admitted that for the Mensheviks, with their concept of a bourgeois revolution, coalition had been a goal, whereas for the SR's it was only a means. When Tsereteli at the Democratic Conference termed 1905 a failure but this revolution a success, because of the achievement of coalition, Chernov had realized that their paths were fatefully diverging. Need he have waited so long? And why, after the truth finally dawned upon him, should he have thought of Tsereteli as minister of foreign affairs in a government headed by himself?'"

It really seems that although "Populist" parties got more votes than "Marxist" ones in Russia in 1917, *both* wings of the SR's were unduly influenced by the Marxist parties--the Left SR's by the Bolsheviks and the Right and Center SR's by the Mensheviks. The latter is the more curious development, since, as Radkey noted, it meant the dependency of a large party on a smaller one.
 
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