Abstract

This is the first dissertation analyzing the life and thought of Victor Chernov , leader of the Party of Socialists-Revolutionaries, the largest antigovernment organization in tsarist Russia in the early 20th century, and the leading party in 1917. Using published materials, archival sources, and the works of other historians, the thesis evaluates Chernov's involvement in the revolutionary movement, his philosophical and ethical essays, and the party program he authored. Chernov's thought represents the culmination of the Russian intellectual tradition destroyed by the Bolsheviks. The principal focus of the dissertation is on the decisive period of 1917-1920, when Chernov's theoretical ideas were tested in practice. Chernov's role in 1917 and during the ensuing Civil War shows his views and actions as consistent and viable. His participation in the Provisional Government was an honest and serious effort to prepare for the agrarian reform that was to be implemented based on legislation by the Constituent Assembly. The left center position Chernov occupied in the party placed him between the party's two wings, irreconcilable in the context of the polarization of political forces in 1917. Chernov presided over the Constituent Assembly for a single day before the Bolsheviks dispersed it by force. His democratic and Populist inclinations inevitably led him to take an intermediary stand between the Whites and the Reds during the Civil War of 1918-1920, causing him to spend most of this time underground. For a short time he was one of the leaders of the Komuch government, which attempted to oppose the Bolsheviks in the Volga region. He also opposed Kolchak's dictatorship. Chernov's spectacular appearance at a printers' meeting to address a British delegation visiting Moscow in 1920 demonstrated his uncompromising attitude vis a vis the Bolsheviks. This dissertation attempts to place Chernov's weaknesses, initially inflated out of proportion by his political enemies, and subsequently by Soviet historians, in a more objective context