Social-Democrats, represented by the Bolshevik and Menshevik wings of the RSDLP, were not the only political party in the early twentieth century in Russia which advocated a revolutionary transformation of the country’s political and economic system. By no means all of the revolutionary-minded members of the intelligentsia had converted to the Marxist version of Socialism. Many continued to adhere to the populist tradition of peasant socialism which had first appeared in the 1860s.  

At the end of 1901 and the beginning of 1902 these ‘neo-Narodniks’ established a new illegal organization, the Socialist Revolutionary Party. Its most important thinker and leader was Victor Chernov (1873-1952). The new party imitated the organizational and tactical methods of the ‘People’s Will’. It set up a terrorist wing, which assassinated many prominent officials, including one of the tsar’s uncles, Grand Duke Sergei Aleksandrovich, in February 1905. The SRs, as they were known, also conducted revolutionary agitation among the peasantry.