Aspects of Early Twentieth-Century Russian Terrorism: The Socialist-Revolutionary Combat Organization

The only consolidated leftist party in Russia that formally incorporated terrorist tactics into its program between the turn of the century and 1917 was the Party of Socialist-Revolutionaries (PSR), which came into existence when several autonomous neo-Populist groups in Russia and abroad united into a single organization in late 1901. By 1905 it had become the most formidable political foe of the tsarist regime. Its members were not unique in proclaiming political assassination an expedient revolutionary method, but it was the PSR that came to be perceived as the ‘party of terror’, for the party was particularly notorious for its highly planned and frequently successful assassination attempts aimed at representatives of the central government in the capital cities of Moscow and St Petersburg.