Topic summary
Left SR uprising
Left SR Party
BolsheviksDmitry Popov
Mikhail Muravyov†
Yakov Blumkin
Felix Dzerzhinsky
Jukums Vācietis
Yakov Peters
Ivar Smilga
Cheka
The Left SR uprising, or Left SR revolt, was a rebellion against the Bolsheviks by the Left Socialist Revolutionary Party in Moscow, Soviet Russia, on 6–7 July 1918. It was one of a number of left-wing uprisings against the Bolsheviks that took place during the Russian Civil War.
The Left SRs had entered the Bolshevik government of Soviet Russia after the October Revolution of 1917, but resigned from the Council of People's Commissars in March 1918 in protest of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Left SRs continued to work in other organizations (notably the Cheka) while denouncing the treaty and the policy of requisitioning grain from the peasants.
After winning only a minority of seats in the 5th All-Russian Congress of Soviets, on 6 July the Left SRs assassinated Wilhelm von Mirbach, the German ambassador in Moscow, in the hope of recommencing the war against "German Imperialism" and of igniting a popular uprising. The rebels occupied the Cheka headquarters and took its leader Felix Dzerzhinsky hostage, seized the telephone exchange and telegraph office, and issued manifestos. Mikhail Muravyov, a Left SR and Red Army commander in the East, seized Simbirsk.
After the uprising was suppressed with help from the Latvian Riflemen, the Bolsheviks arrested most of the party's leaders, and expelled all of its members from the soviets.