The party was founded in Russia in 1901 as a consolidation and continuation of the old Narodniki-movement. Unlike the Russian Social-Democratic Party, which adhered to Marxist doctrines, they held that the Russian peasantry was the backbone of Russian socialism. Unlike the social-democrats, they advocated armed resistance against tsarism.
The party played an important role in the Russian Revolution of 1917, but after the Bolshevik victory in the civil war, in 1920, the socialist revolutionaries were persecuted as mercilessly as all other revolutionary groups outside the Bolshevik party.
Many of them fled from Russia and formed new groups in exile.
Because of its reverence for the peasantry and its rural roots, the party did not attract many Jews but it did have some Jewish members. One of them was Mendel Rosenbaum. Although we do not know much about him, we know he must have been a member of some importance because two Yiddish letters and one Hebrew letter from his parents are in the archives. The content of the letters, requests for news and demands for more letters, are purely personal.
Inventory of Partija Socialistov-Revoljucionerov Archives