A Voice of SR Defensism in the Provinces

Abstract In 1917 Solomon Gurevich presented Smolenskii vestnik ’s readers with analysis of events from a defensist Socialist Revolutionary perspective. After surveying Gurevich’s biography, this essay considers his editorials on the war, peace, defensism, and internationalism. Gurevich hoped democratic revolution in Germany would end the war, but maintained Russia must continue fighting towards victory. He believed a democratic peace and repudiation of imperialism would hasten the coming of democratic socialism, and welcomed Wilsonian peace proposals and US intervention. He insisted that Russia’s revolutionary democratic future depended on sustaining the war effort and justified this defensism as harmonious with socialist internationalism.