After a 3 week break for the holidays, a new episode of Revolutions Podcast has finally come out: 10.81- The Revolt of the Left SRs: Hey it was worth a shot. Well, actually, probably not.

Once again, this is all fascinating stuff.  

I forget where I had first learned about the Bolshevik crackdown the SRs.  I think it was from this book here.  But prior to Mike Duncan's podcast, I had never known anything about the Left SRs or their coalition with the Bolsheviks.  It's all fascinating stuff.

Based on what Mike Duncan says about the Left SRs, I have a lot of sympathy for them.  It sounds like they were trying to preserve the spirit of the October Revolution (keeping working control of factories, keeping peasant control of land, etc), and also trying to curb the Bolshevik excesses.  It's interesting to think about how history would have been different if the Left SRs had won.  (And as Mike Duncan points out, they nearly did win.  It sounds like they could have taken control that night if they had actually wanted to.)

But, on the other hand, although I'm in sympathy with the Left SRs generally, it sounds like for all their legitimate objections against the Bolsheviks, their main issue was the resumption of the war against Germany.  And this sounds like insanity.  Based on everything Mike Duncan has said in previous episodes, Russia was just not able to resume the war against Germany.  So it's unfortunate that the SRs made this their main issue.  

* I mentioned in my comments on episode 10.77  that I remembered Emma Goldman's objections to the treaty of Brest-Litovsk from Emma Goldman's autobiography.  Interesting to hear that Mike Duncan mentions that Maria Spiridonova had mentioned this to Emma Goldman years later.