Viktor Mikhailovich Chernov (russian: Ви́ктор Миха́йлович Черно́в; December 7, 1873 – April 15, 1952) was a Russian revolutionary and one of the founders of the Russian

Socialist-Revolutionary Party The Socialist Revolutionary Party, or the Party of Socialist-Revolutionaries (the SRs, , or Esers, russian: эсеры, translit=esery, label=none; russian: Партия социалистов-революционеров, ), was a major polit ...

. He was the primary party theoretician or the 'brain' of the party, and was more of an analyst than a political leader. Following the

February Revolution of 1917 The February Revolution ( rus, Февра́льская револю́ция, r=Fevral'skaya revolyutsiya, p=fʲɪvˈralʲskəjə rʲɪvɐˈlʲutsɨjə), known in Soviet historiography as the February Bourgeois Democratic Revolution and somet ...

, Chernov was Minister for Agriculture in the

Russian Provisional Government The Russian Provisional Government ( rus, Временное правительство России, Vremennoye pravitel'stvo Rossii) was a provisional government of the Russian Republic, announced two days before and established immediately ...

and advocating immediate land reform. Later on, he was Chairman of the

Russian Constituent Assembly The All Russian Constituent Assembly (Всероссийское Учредительное собрание, Vserossiyskoye Uchreditelnoye sobraniye) was a constituent assembly convened in Russia after the October Revolution of 1917. It met fo ...

Biography

Early years

Viktor Chernov was born in

Novouzensk Novouzensk ( rus, Новоузе́нск, p=nəvəʊˈzʲɛnsk) is a town and the administrative center of Novouzensky District of Saratov Oblast, Russia, located on the left bank of the Bolshoy Uzen River at its confluence with the Chertanly Ri ...

, a town southeast of

Saratov Saratov (, ; rus, Сара́тов, a=Ru-Saratov.ogg, p=sɐˈratəf) is the largest city and administrative center of Saratov Oblast, Russia, and a major port on the Volga River upstream (north) of Volgograd. Saratov had a population of 901, ...

Samara Samara ( rus, Сама́ра, p=sɐˈmarə), known from 1935 to 1991 as Kuybyshev (; ), is the largest city and administrative centre of Samara Oblast. The city is located at the confluence of the Volga and the Samara rivers, with a population ...

guberniya. He was the son of a former

serf Serfdom was the status of many peasants under feudalism, specifically relating to manorialism, and similar systems. It was a condition of debt bondage and indentured servitude with similarities to and differences from slavery, which developed ...

peasant A peasant is a pre-industrial agricultural laborer or a farmer with limited land-ownership, especially one living in the Middle Ages under feudalism and paying rent, tax, fees, or services to a landlord. In Europe, three classes of peasa ...

who had risen to become a low-level functionary in the local

civil service The civil service is a collective term for a sector of government composed mainly of career civil servants hired on professional merit rather than appointed or elected, whose institutional tenure typically survives transitions of political leaders ...

.Maureen Perrie, "Viktor Mikhailovich Chernov," in George Jackson with Robert Devlin (eds.), ''Dictionary of the Russian Revolution.'' Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1989; pp. 116-119. Chernov attended gymnasium in Saratov, a hotbed of radicalism, where he joined a populist discussion circle in which he studied the works of

Nikolay Dobrolyubov Nikolay Alexandrovich Dobrolyubov ( rus, Никола́й Алекса́ндрович Добролю́бов, p=nʲɪkɐˈlaj ɐlʲɪˈksandrəvʲɪtɕ dəbrɐˈlʲubəf, a=Nikolay Alyeksandrovich Dobrolyubov.ru.vorb.oga; 5 February Old_Style_a ...

and

Nikolay Mikhaylovsky Nikolay Konstantinovich Mikhaylovsky () (, Meshchovsk–, Saint Petersburg) was a Russian literary critic, sociologist, writer on public affairs, and one of the theoreticians of the Narodniki movement. Biography The school of thinkers he bel ...

. His radical proclivities attracted the attention of the local police and Chernov transferred to school in Iurev for his final year of study. Chernov enrolled in the Law department of

Moscow University M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU; russian: Московский государственный университет имени М. В. Ломоносова) is a public research university in Moscow, Russia and the most prestigious ...

, where he once again joined a radical discussion circle, defending populist views against

Marxists Marxism is a left-wing to far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand class relations and social conflict and a dialectical ...

. He was arrested for his political activities in the spring of 1894 and spent 9 months in

Peter and Paul Fortress The Peter and Paul Fortress is the original citadel of St. Petersburg, Russia, founded by Peter the Great in 1703 and built to Domenico Trezzini's designs from 1706 to 1740 as a star fortress. Between the first half of the 1700s and early 1920 ...

in St. Petersburg. Following his incarceration, Chernov was sentenced to a period of administrative exile in central Russia.

Political career

By the end of the 1880s, he was involved in revolutionary activity. He attended the law faculty of

and in the early 1890s joined the

Narodniks The Narodniks (russian: народники, ) were a politically conscious movement of the Russian intelligentsia in the 1860s and 1870s, some of whom became involved in revolutionary agitation against tsarism. Their ideology, known as Narodism, ...

; in 1894, he joined

Mark Natanson Mark Andreyevich Natanson (russian: Марк Андре́евич Натансо́н; party name: Bobrov) (25 December 1850 ( N.S. 6 January 1851) – 29 July 1919) was a Russian revolutionary who was one of the founders of the Circle of Tchaikov ...

's " People's Right" (''Narodnoe pravo'') group, an attempt to unite all the socialist movements in Russia, and with other members was arrested, jailed, and exiled. After marrying Anastasia Sletova in 1898 and spending some time organizing the peasants around

Tambov Tambov (, ; rus, Тамбов, p=tɐmˈbof) is a city and the administrative center of Tambov Oblast, central Russia, at the confluence of the Tsna and Studenets Rivers, about south-southeast of Moscow. Population: 280,161 ( 2010 Census); 29 ...

, he went abroad to Zurich in 1899. He joined the

upon its founding in 1901 and became the editor of its newspaper ''Revolutionary Russia''. He returned to Russia after the

Revolution of 1905 The Russian Revolution of 1905,. also known as the First Russian Revolution,. occurred on 22 January 1905, and was a wave of mass political and social unrest that spread through vast areas of the Russian Empire. The mass unrest was directed again ...

; after boycotting the elections for the First Duma, he won election to the Second

Duma A duma (russian: дума) is a Russian assembly with advisory or legislative functions. The term ''boyar duma'' is used to refer to advisory councils in Russia from the 10th to 17th centuries. Starting in the 18th century, city dumas were f ...

and became a leader of the SR faction. In 1907, he published ''Philosophical and Sociological Studies'' in which he espoused the viewpoint of

Richard Avenarius Richard Ludwig Heinrich Avenarius (19 November 1843 – 18 August 1896) was a German-Swiss philosopher. He formulated the radical positivist doctrine of "empirical criticism" or empirio-criticism. Life Avenarius attended the Nicolaischule in ...

. As such, he was one of the Russian Machists criticised by Lenin in ''

Materialism and Empirio-criticism ''Materialism and Empirio-criticism'' ( Russian: ''Материализм и эмпириокритицизм, Materializm i empiriokrititsizm'') is a philosophical work by Vladimir Lenin, published in 1909. It was an obligatory subject of study ...

'' (1909). Under

Alexander Kerensky Alexander Fyodorovich Kerensky, ; original spelling: ( – 11 June 1970) was a Russian lawyer and revolutionary who led the Russian Provisional Government and the short-lived Russian Republic for three months from late July to early Novem ...

provisional government A provisional government, also called an interim government, an emergency government, or a transitional government, is an emergency governmental authority set up to manage a political transition generally in the cases of a newly formed state or ...

in 1917, Chernov was the Minister for Agriculture. On 17 March the Provisional Government issued its first appeal to the peasant population. It stated that the land question must be solved not by force but by legislation to be passed by the people's representatives. In summer the Stolypin land-tenure laws were suspended. Chernov resigned shortly after the departure of

Prince Lvov Lvov (russian: Львов) is the name of a princely Russian family of Rurikid stock. The family is descended from the princes of Yaroslavl where early members of the family are buried. Notable members *Knyaz Matvey Danilovich (?–1603), Voivod ...

. Then on 9 August the elections were postponed until 12 November. Chernov continued his campaign for immediate agrarian reform. The Union of Landowners saw in Chernov its principal enemy.Lazar Volin (1970) A century of Russian agriculture. From Alexander II to Khrushchev, p. 121, 124, 127. Harvard University Press Chernov and his wife were both elected to the Assembly from

. In January 1918 he was Chairman of the

, which was dissolved by the

Bolsheviks The Bolsheviks (russian: Большевики́, from большинство́ ''bol'shinstvó'', 'majority'),; derived from ''bol'shinstvó'' (большинство́), "majority", literally meaning "one of the majority". also known in English ...

shortly after it began meeting. He became a member of an anti-Bolshevik government leading the more moderate Social Revolutionaries in

, before fleeing to Europe and then in 1941 to the United States. There he continued to publish his periodical 'Za svobodu' (For Liberty). Chernov died in New York City in 1952.

Sources

* * *Alexander Trapeznik,
The Revolutionary Career of Viktor Mikhailovich Chernov (1873-1952)
, M.A. thesis, University of Tasmania, 1988

Notes

Footnotes

External links

Victor Chernov website
*Victor Chernov,
Bolshevik Romance and Reality
' ''Foreign Affairs'', January 1927 *Victor Chernov,
The Soviet Government and the Communist Party
' ''Foreign Affairs'', January 1929 *Victor Chernov,
Russia's Two Parties
' ''Foreign Affairs'', October 1930. {{DEFAULTSORT:Chernov, Viktor 1873 births 1952 deaths American people of Russian descent Asian democratic socialists European democratic socialists Members of the Executive of the Labour and Socialist International Ministers of the Russian Provisional Government Narodniks People of the Russian Revolution Russian anti-communists Russian Constituent Assembly members Russian revolutionaries Russian socialists Socialist Revolutionary Party politicians Trudoviks White Russian emigrants to the United States