Committee to Save the Homeland and the Revolution

a counterrevolutionary organization established on the night of Oct. 26 (Nov. 8), 1917, in Petrograd to oppose the Great October Socialist Revolution. The committee consisted of Socialist Revolutionaries (SR’s), including N. D. Avksent’ev (chairman), A. R. Gots, V. M. Zenzinov, and V. M. Chernov. It also included representatives of the town council, the SR-Menshevik Central Executive Committee of Soviets of the First Convocation, the Executive Committee of the All-Russian Soviet of Peasants’ Deputies, the postal and telegraph union, the Central Soviet for the Navy, the Pre-Parliament, and other organizations and members of the Menshevik and SR factions who had left the second congress of soviets.

The committee was linked with embassies of the Entente states; it had contacts with A. F. Kerensky, who headed a campaign of cossack units against Petrograd (the Kerensky-Krasnov Revolt of 1917), and with outlying counterrevolutionary organizations (the committees of public security). The committee disseminated anti-Bolshevik appeals and leaflets, supported the counterrevolutionary bureaucracy, and promoted acts of sabotage against Soviet power. The right SR’s (including Gots and A. A. Bruderer) used the cover of the Committee to Save the Homeland and the Revolution to organize the Junkers’ Mutiny on October 29 (November 11), 1917, in Petrograd. After the rebellion was suppressed, the committee collapsed, and its members formed the Union for the Defense of the Constituent Assembly.