SR Party founder who chaired the last unified anti-Bolshevik government, overthrown by Kolchak
Trotsky called him 'the complete caricature of a statesman. A really charming teacher of language in a ladies' seminary in Oryol — that is really all you can say about him.'
A founder and right-wing leader of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, he led the SR faction in the 1905 St. Petersburg Soviet and served as Minister of the Interior and chairman of the Pre-Parliament in Kerensky's Provisional Government. During the Civil War, as the culmination of efforts to unite the anti-Bolshevik camp, he was elected chairman of the Provisional All-Russian Government (Ufa Directory) at the Ufa State Conference. Arrested and expelled by Kolchak's coup in November 1918, he continued émigré journalistic work in Paris and New York. His political trajectory encapsulates the collapse of democratic socialism in the Russian Revolution, crushed between armed extremes.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1905SR faction leader, vice-chairman of the St. Petersburg Soviet
- 1907Elected to SR Central Committee; exiled to Obdorsk, escaped abroad
- 1907–1917Edited SR newspaper Znamya Truda in Paris exile
- 1917Chairman of All-Russian Soviet of Peasants' Deputies; Minister of Interior
- 1917Chairman of the All-Russian Democratic Conference and Pre-Parliament
- 1918Chairman, Ufa State Conference; headed the Provisional All-Russian Government
- 1918–1940Émigré political work in Paris; Freemasonry; published Sovremennye Zapiski
- 1940–1943Published Za Svobodu (For Freedom) in New York
Related historical events
- 1905–1907The Revolution of 1905SR faction leader in the SovietLed the three-person SR delegation on the Petersburg Soviet's Executive Committee, representing his party in the three-faction cooperative framework alongside Bolsheviks and Mensheviks.
- 1917.10–1918.01The October RevolutionOrganiser of anti-Bolshevik resistanceImmediately after the October Revolution, he organised resistance to defend the Constituent Assembly and was arrested by the new regime.
- 1918–1922The Civil War and Foreign InterventionChairman of the Ufa DirectoryElected chairman of the Provisional All-Russian Government, he led the democratic anti-Bolshevik camp until Cossack detachments arrested him in Omsk on 18 November 1918. Ousted by the Kolchak coup and expelled abroad.
The Ufa Directory and the Kolchak Coup
Immediately after the October Revolution, Avksentiev stood at the centre of the anti-Bolshevik resistance in the name of defending the Constituent Assembly. He was among the organisers of the Committee for the Salvation of the Homeland and Revolution and sat in the leadership of the Union for the Defence of the Constituent Assembly, for which the new authorities imprisoned him in the Peter and Paul Fortress. Released through the intervention of Isaac Steinberg, the SR People's Commissar of Justice, he joined the leadership of the Union for the Regeneration of Russia in March 1918, which sought to bind the disparate anti-Bolshevik forces together. At the end of May that year he left for Siberia by decision of the SR Central Committee, which regarded the region as a potential base of resistance to the Bolshevik regime.
On 23 September 1918 the Ufa State Conference established the Provisional All-Russian Government, the Ufa Directory, unifying the scattered anti-Bolshevik governments of eastern Russia. The elected slate was Avksentiev (chairman), the Kadet Astrov, General Boldyrev, Vologodsky and Chaikovsky, but the five members actually present, namely Avksentiev, Boldyrev, Vologodsky, the Kadet Vinogradov and the SR Zenzinov, formed the Directory. It brought under one roof the Komuch (Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly), the Provisional Siberian Government, the Ural, Bashkir and Alash-Orda governments, and the Cossack hosts. On 9 October the Directory moved to Omsk, retaining the Siberian government's legislation while abolishing the regional, national and Cossack governments and proclaiming the reunification of Russia and the restoration of treaties with the Entente.
Yet this unity was a provisional compromise between forces fundamentally at odds. The socialist members were pressed by Chernov's Constituent Assembly committee to account for their actions, while the military and the officer and bureaucratic elite wanted a one-man dictatorship. Less than a fortnight after Admiral Kolchak took office as Minister of War and the Navy on 5 November 1918, on the night of 18 November he carried out a coup in Omsk with the backing of the Allies, the officer corps and the Cossack units, dissolving the Directory. Avksentiev, Zenzinov and Argunov were arrested by Krasilnikov's detachment and expelled abroad, while most of the ministers who had abetted the coup simply joined Kolchak's Omsk government. The attempt to build a unified democratic government between the armed extremes thus ended, and with it Avksentiev's career in office.