Revolutionary Communists

(Party of Revolutionary Communists, PRC), a political party founded in September 1918 in Moscow by a group of Left Socialist Revolutionaries (Left SR’s) who broke with their party after the Left SR revolt in 1918, accepted Soviet power, and considered it necessary to work jointly with the RCP (Bolshevik). Among the leaders of the Revolutionary Communists were A. L. Kolegaev, M. A. Natanson, A. P. Novitskii, and A. M. Ustinov. In September 1918 the Revolutionary Communists began publishing the newspaper Volia Truda (The Will of Labor), which in December became the organ of the party’s Central Committee.

On a number of ideological questions the Revolutionary Communists held Narodnik (Populist) views. They believed, for example, that the building of socialism should be carried out under “the dictatorship of the working people and through the socialization of the means of production.” In their program, adopted in October 1919, and in their letter to the Central Committee of the RCP(B), the Revolutionary Communists emphasized that they would do everything possible to assist in the consolidation of Soviet power and would preserve a united front with the RCP(B) in the interest of the struggle for socialism.

Revolutionary Communist representatives took part in congresses of the Soviets and served on the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. Submitting to the decision of the Second Congress of the Communist International in 1920 that it was in admissible for two Communist parties to exist in one country, the Revolutionary Communists voted to join the RCP(B) at the Sixth Congress of the PRC in September 1920. At that time the PRC had approximately 2,000 members. On Oct. 4, 1920, the Central Committee of the RCP(B) passed a resolution entitled On the Entry of the Party of Revolutionary Communists Into the RCP. The PRC members joined the RCP(B) on terms worked out jointly by the Central Committee of the RCP(B) and the Central Politburo of the PRC.