100 years ago, on January 6 (19), 1918, an event occurred that can be considered the day of the establishment of Soviet power with no less reason than October 25. This was the second act of the coup staged by the Bolsheviks with the support of the left Socialist Revolutionaries and anarchists. On January 6, the Constituent Assembly, whose meetings had opened with pomp the day before in Petrograd, in the Tauride Palace, was dissolved and ceased to exist.
"Liberal idea"
At the level of slogan phraseology, the Constituent Assembly was revered as a sacred cow by everyone who was involved in the political battles of 1917 - from the Octobrists to the Bolsheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries. Even Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich postponed the execution of the will of Emperor Nicholas, who transferred the supreme power to him, until the convening of the Assembly, making his decision dependent on the will of this institution, thereby legally abolishing not the monarchy, but the autocracy, which his holy brother did not want and could not do.
One of the main articles of accusation that the Bolsheviks and Left Socialist-Revolutionaries brought against the Provisional Government was the postponement of elections to the Constituent Assembly. Before the premiership of A.F. Kerensky's accusation was groundless. Such enterprises take time, and besides, Russia was at war and part of its territory was occupied by the enemy. But Kerensky, who felt comfortable in the position of ruler of a dying state and seriously dreamed of the role of the Russian Bonaparte saving the Fatherland from ultimate destruction, can easily be suspected of deliberately slowing down the election process. The decision of the Provisional Government to declare Russia a republic, taken on his initiative, clearly speaks of its real attitude towards the expression of the will of the people through the Constituent Assembly, because it was precisely supposed to be convened to establish the form government. And after this act it turned out that, just as the Bolsheviks confronted the Constituent Assembly with the fact of the existence of the power of the soviets, which they demanded to recognize and approve, so Kerensky and his comrades wanted the Constituent Assembly to simply vote for the usurpation they had already carried out earlier - an unauthorized replacement political system.
“If the masses get the ballots wrong, they will have to take up another weapon.”
Be that as it may, on June 14, 1917, elections were scheduled for the 17th, and the convocation of the Constituent Assembly on September 30, but on August 9, the Provisional Government, on the initiative of Kerensky, decided to postpone the elections to November 12, and the convocation of the Assembly to November 28 1917. The postponement of the elections gave the Bolsheviks a reason to once again criticize the Provisional Government. How sincere the Bolshevik leaders were in their demands for the speedy convening of the Assembly should be judged more by their deeds than by their propaganda and polemical statements, but also by some statements. Thus, one of the prominent Bolsheviks, V. Volodarsky, publicly stated that “the masses in Russia have never suffered from parliamentary cretinism” and “if the masses make a mistake with the ballots, they will have to take up another weapon.” And the leader of the Bolsheviks V.I. Lenin, according to the chronicler of the revolution N.N. Sukhanova, after his return to Russia from emigration in April 1917, called the Constituent Assembly a “liberal undertaking.”
Church and Constituent Assembly
The question of the Church’s attitude to the elections to the Constituent Assembly on September 27 was discussed at the Local Council, which was then meeting in Moscow. Some members of the Council, fearing that the Church's self-removal from politics would strengthen the position of extreme radicals, called for the direct participation of church authorities in the election campaign. So, A.V. Vasilyev, chairman of the “Cathedral Russia” society, said: “So that the Constituent Assembly does not turn out to be non-Russian and non-Christian in its composition, it is necessary to draw up lists of persons proposed for election... in dioceses, and in parishes... tirelessly invite the believing people not to shy away from elections and vote for the mentioned list." His proposal was supported by Count P.N. Apraksin. Professor B.V. Titlinov, later a renovationist, opposed the participation of the Council in the elections, arguing that political speeches violated the church charter of the Council. Prince E.N. Trubetskoy advocated finding a “middle royal path.” He suggested that the Council “appeal to the people, without relying on any political party, and definitely say that people should be elected who are devoted to the Church and the Motherland.”
We stopped at this decision. On October 4, the Local Council addressed the All-Russian flock with the message:
“This is not the first time in our history that the temple... of state life is collapsing, and disastrous turmoil befalls the Motherland... The intransigence of parties and class discord does not build up the power of the state, the wounds from a grave war and all-destroying discord are not healed... A kingdom divided into all will be exhausted (Matthew 12:25)… Let our people overcome the spirit of wickedness and hatred that overwhelms them, and then, with a united effort, they will easily and brightly accomplish their state work. Dry bones will gather and be clothed with flesh and come to life at the behest of the Spirit... In the Motherland the eye sees a holy land... Let the bearers of the faith be called upon to heal its illnesses.”
Elections and their result
After the fall of the Provisional Government, opponents of the Bolsheviks pinned their hopes on the Constituent Assembly removing them from power, so there were demands from various political parties for the immediate holding of elections. On the one hand, there seemed to be no reason to worry about this. A day after the proclamation of the power of the soviets, on October 27, 1917, the Council of People's Commissars issued a resolution to hold elections on the date previously set by the Provisional Government - November 12, 1917, but on the other hand, since the peasants, who made up 80 percent of the country's population, mainly followed the Social Revolutionaries, The Bolshevik leaders were concerned about the prospect of defeat in these elections. On November 20, at the plenum of the Central Committee of the RSDLP(b), I.V. Stalin proposed postponing the convening of the Constituent Assembly to a later date. A more radical initiative was made by L.D. Trotsky and N.I. Bukharin. They spoke out in favor of convening a revolutionary convention from the Bolshevik and Left Socialist-Revolutionary factions of the Assembly, so that this convention would replace the Constituent Assembly itself. But more moderate members of the Bolshevik Central Committee L.B. Kamenev, A.I. Rykov, V.P. Milyutin opposed the plan of such usurpation, and at that time their position prevailed.
The fundamental difference between the elections to the Constituent Assembly and the procedure for the formation of the State Duma and councils abolished by the Kerensky government was their universality: deputies of the State Duma were elected in the order of class representation, so that the votes of voters were not equivalent, and deputies of the councils were elected, as can be seen, from the very their names, from the workers', soldiers' and peasants' curiae, with the non-participation in the elections of persons belonging to the propertied classes, or, as they were then called, the qualifying classes, which, of course, did not interfere with people from the nobility, such as Kerensky, Tsereteli, Bukharin, Lunacharsky, Kollontai, or from the bourgeoisie, like Trotsky or Uritsky, became the elected representatives of the workers; for this, however, it was necessary to join parties that declared their commitment to protecting the interests of workers or peasants.
All adult citizens of Russia had the right to elect deputies to the Constituent Assembly. But voting was carried out according to party lists, and right-wing parties were banned by the Provisional Government, so their supporters for the most part did not want to participate in the elections, only a few of them decided to vote for the “lesser evil”, which they saw as the Cadets, who by that time found themselves on the right flank of the legal political spectrum.
Less than half of the citizens who had the right to vote took part in the elections, which were held as scheduled. Basically, their results were as expected. 715 deputies were elected. The Socialist Revolutionaries won, receiving 370 mandates. 40 deputies made up the faction of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries led by Spiridonova and Natanson, who finally formalized their break with the party of Savinkov, Kerensky and Chernov on the very eve of the elections and therefore faced difficulties in forming their electoral list, which is why their election results were inferior to the popularity of the party in peasant and soldier environment.
The Social Revolutionaries won the elections to the Constituent Assembly, receiving 370 seats; the Bolsheviks had 175 seats
The Bolsheviks received 175 seats in the Constituent Assembly, constituting the second largest faction in it. The Cadets, who received 17 mandates, and the Mensheviks with their faction of 15 people, mainly representing voters from Georgia, suffered a catastrophic defeat in the elections. Only the exotic Party of People's Socialists got fewer seats - 2 deputies. 86 mandates were received by deputies from national and regional parties.
The distribution of votes cast for different parties was, however, different in the capitals and in active army. About 1 million people voted in Petrograd - significantly more than half of the voters - and 45% of them gave their votes to the Bolsheviks, the Socialist Revolutionaries took only third place there with 17%, losing second to the Cadets, who received 27% of the votes in the imperial capital, unlike the picture of his crushing defeat in peasant Russia. In Moscow, the Bolsheviks also came in first place, receiving almost half of the votes. More than a third of the votes were cast for the Cadets there, so the Socialist-Revolutionaries lost in the capital as well. Thus, the polarization of political sentiment in the capitals was more acute than in the country: the moderate element there consolidated around the Cadet Party, which in the civil war that soon broke out represented the political face of the White armies. The Bolsheviks emerged victorious from the elections on the Western and Northern fronts and in the Baltic Fleet.
In a "clash of wills and interests"
The ongoing war, disorganization of transport and other difficulties inevitable in a country gripped by turmoil did not allow all deputies to arrive in the capital on time. By a resolution of the Council of People's Commissars of November 26, it was decided to consider the quorum necessary for the opening of the Constituent Assembly to be the presence of at least 400 elected deputies.
Anticipating the likely obstruction on the part of the Constituent Assembly of the decrees of the Second Congress of Soviets, the Bolshevik Council of People's Commissars took preventive measures against the likely event of a clash with the Constituent Assembly. On November 29, he banned “private meetings” of deputies of the Constituent Assembly. In response to this action, the Socialist Revolutionaries formed the “Union for the Defense of the Constituent Assembly.”
IN AND. Lenin: “The interests of the revolution stand above the formal rights of the Constituent Assembly”
At a meeting of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party, a new bureau of the Bolshevik faction of the Constituent Assembly was formed. Opponents of his dispersal were removed from it. The next day, Lenin compiled “Theses on the Constituent Assembly,” which stated that “convened according to the lists of parties that existed before the proletarian-peasant revolution, in an environment of bourgeois rule,” it “inevitably comes into conflict with the will and interests of the working and exploited classes who started the socialist revolution against the bourgeoisie on October 25. Naturally, the interests of this revolution stand above the formal rights of the Constituent Assembly... Any attempt, direct or indirect, to consider the question of the Constituent Assembly from the formal legal side, within the framework of ordinary bourgeois democracy, without taking into account the class struggle and civil war is a betrayal of the cause of the proletariat and a transition to the point of view of the bourgeoisie.” The Social Revolutionaries energetically campaigned for the slogan “All power to the Constituent Assembly,” and one of the Bolshevik leaders G.E. Zinoviev stated then that “this slogan means “Down with the Soviets.”
The situation in the country was heating up. On December 23, martial law was declared in Petrograd. In Socialist Revolutionary circles, the possibility of physically eliminating the Bolshevik leaders Lenin and Trotsky was discussed. But the prospect of an inevitable civil war in this case with negligible chances of success frightened the Socialist Revolutionary leadership, and the idea of resorting to the practice of terror so familiar to the Socialist Revolutionaries was rejected.
On January 1, 1918, the first and unsuccessful attempt was made on Lenin, but its probable organizer was not the Social Revolutionaries, but cadet N.V. Nekrasov, who, however, subsequently collaborated with the Soviet authorities. On January 3, a meeting of the Central Committee of the Socialist Revolutionary Party took place. It raised the question of an armed overthrow of the power of the soviets, but such a proposal was not accepted: in the capital there were units that supported the Socialist Revolutionaries, and among them the Semenovsky and Preobrazhensky regiments, but the soldier’s councils of other regiments of the Petrograd garrison followed the Bolsheviks. The reason for this was that after the abdication of Emperor Nicholas II, the soldiers no longer saw the point in continuing the war. The slogan proclaimed by Lenin, “Let us turn the war of peoples into a civil war,” was addressed to European social democracy and was not widely known among soldiers, but his call for an immediate conclusion of peace, which was the quintessence of Bolshevik propaganda, was more attractive to soldiers than “revolutionary defencism.” » SRs. Realizing this, the Socialist Revolutionary Central Committee limited itself to making a decision on the opening day of the Constituent Assembly on January 5 to hold a peaceful demonstration in its support.
In response, on the same day, the Bolshevik Pravda published a resolution of the Cheka, signed by a member of the board of this institution, Uritsky, which prohibited demonstrations and rallies in the territory adjacent to the Tauride Palace. Fulfilling this decree, a regiment of Latvian riflemen and a Lithuanian regiment occupied the approaches to the palace. On January 5, in Petrograd, supporters of the Socialist Revolutionaries and Cadets staged demonstrations in support of the Constituent Assembly. There is extremely conflicting information about the number of their participants: from 10 to 100 thousand people. These demonstrations were dispersed by Latvian riflemen and soldiers of the Lithuanian regiment. At the same time, according to information published the next day in Izvestia of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, 21 people died. On the same day, a similar demonstration took place in Moscow, but there, as in the November days during the seizure of power by the Bolshevik Soviet, this event entailed great bloodshed. The Social Revolutionaries and Cadets offered armed resistance to the soldiers who dispersed them. The firefight continued throughout the day, and the number of casualties on both sides was 50 people, more than 200 were wounded.
First day of meetings
On the morning of January 5 (18), 410 deputies arrived at the Tauride Palace. At the suggestion of the Bolshevik Skvortsov-Stepanov, the deputies sang “The Internationale”. Only the Cadets and some representatives of national factions refrained from singing, so that a significant majority of the Assembly - Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, right and left Socialist Revolutionaries - with this singing announced to the country and the world both the “boil” of their “indignant mind” and their decisive intention to “tear up” (this is exactly what the first edition of the Russian translation was, instead of the later “we will destroy”) “to the foundations” the old world of “violence” and build “ new world", in which he who was nothing will become everything." The only dispute was about who was to destroy the old world and build a new one - the party of revolutionary terrorists (Socialist Revolutionaries) or the Bolsheviks.
The meeting of the Constituent Assembly was opened by the Bolshevik Ya.M. Sverdlov, who served as chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. In his speech, he expressed hope for “full recognition by the Constituent Assembly of all decrees and resolutions of the Council of People’s Commissars” and proposed to accept what V.I. Lenin drafted the “Declaration of the Rights of the Working and Exploited People,” in which the form of government in Russia was designated as “a republic of councils of workers, soldiers and peasants’ deputies.” The draft also reproduced the main provisions of the resolution on peace, agrarian reform and workers' control in enterprises adopted by the Second Congress of Soviets.
The Left Social Revolutionaries and Bolsheviks proposed electing M.A. as chairman of the All-Russian Constituent Assembly. Spiridonov. 153 deputies voted for her. By a majority of 244 votes, V.M. was elected Chairman of the Assembly. Chernov.
On the first and last day of the meetings of the Assembly, the Socialist-Revolutionaries V.M. spoke. Chernov, V.M. Zenzinov, I.I. Bunakov-Fondaminsky (who later converted to Orthodoxy, died in Auschwitz and canonized by the Patriarchate of Constantinople), left Socialist-Revolutionaries I.Z. Steinberg, V.A. Karelin, A.S. Severov-Odoevsky, Bolsheviks N.I. Bukharin, P.E. Dybenko, F.F. Raskolnikov, Menshevik I.G. Tsereteli.
The meeting did not end when night fell. At 3 o’clock on January 6, after the Socialist Revolutionary and Kadet factions of the Constituent Assembly, together with small factions, finally refused to consider the draft “Declaration of the Rights of the Working and Exploited People” drawn up by Lenin, which transferred all power in the country to the soviets, Raskolnikov, on behalf of the Bolshevik faction, declared : “Not wanting for a minute to cover up the crimes of the enemies of the people, we... are leaving the Constituent Assembly,” and the Bolsheviks left the Tauride Palace. The Left Socialist Revolutionary faction followed their example at 4 a.m. Its representative Karelin, taking the floor, said: “The Constituent Assembly is in no way a reflection of the mood and will of the working masses... We are going to bring our strength, our energy to Soviet institutions.”
The Constituent Assembly proclaimed Russia a federal democratic republic
As a result of obstruction by two factions of the Constituent Assembly, its quorum (400 members) was lost. The deputies remaining in the Tauride Palace, chaired by V.M. Chernov decided, however, to continue the work and, almost without discussion, hastily voted for a number of decisions that were fundamental in content, but remained only on paper. The Constituent Assembly proclaimed Russia a federal democratic republic - two days earlier, the Soviet All-Russian Central Executive Committee had decided that the Russian Soviet Republic was a federation of Soviet national republics. The Constituent Assembly issued a law on land, in which it was declared public property; According to this law, private ownership of land was abolished and landowners' lands were subject to nationalization. This law had no fundamental differences from the decree of the Second Congress of Soviets “On Land,” since the main provisions of the decree followed not the Bolshevik, but the Socialist Revolutionary agrarian program, which the peasants sympathized with.
The Constituent Assembly also issued a peace proclamation calling on the warring powers to immediately begin negotiations to end the war. This appeal also did not have radical differences from the Bolshevik “Decree on Peace”: on the one hand, the Socialist Revolutionaries had long been in favor of concluding peace without annexations and indemnities, and on the other, the Bolsheviks, in their demand for immediate peace, did not directly speak out for capitulation, and, as this can be seen from the real course of events, the Red Army created by the Soviet government before the conclusion Treaty of Brest-Litovsk tried, although unsuccessfully, to resist the advance of German and Austro-Hungarian troops inland.
Moreover, the Constituent Assembly also advocated the introduction of workers' control in factories and factories, and in this, without disagreeing with the position of the Bolsheviks.
What separated the Bolsheviks, who ruled the soviets, and the Socialist Revolutionaries, who dominated the Constituent Assembly, was not the remaining doctrinal differences, but the question of power. For the Constituent Assembly, the confrontation between the Bolsheviks and the Socialist Revolutionaries ended with the cessation of its meetings.
"The guard is tired"
At the beginning of 5 o'clock in the morning, the head of the security of the Constituent Assembly, anarchist A. Zheleznyakov, received an order from People's Commissar Dybenko (they were both sailors of the Baltic Fleet) to stop the meeting. Zheleznyakov approached the Chairman of the Assembly Chernov and told him: “I have received instructions to bring to your attention that all those present leave the meeting room because the guard is tired.” The deputies complied with this demand, deciding to meet again in the Tauride Palace in the evening of the same day, at 17:00.
When Lenin was informed about the closure of the Constituent Assembly, he suddenly... laughed. Laughed contagiously, to the point of tears
Bukharin recalled that when Lenin was informed about the closure of the Constituent Assembly, he “asked to repeat something from what was said about the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly and suddenly laughed. He laughed for a long time, repeated to himself the words of the narrator and laughed and laughed. Fun, infectious, to the point of tears. Laughed." Another Bolshevik leader, Trotsky, later ironically said: the Socialist Revolutionaries and Cadets “carefully developed the ritual of the first meeting. They brought candles with them in case the Bolsheviks turned off the electricity, and a large number of sandwiches in case they were deprived of food. So democracy came to fight dictatorship - fully armed with sandwiches and candles.”
On the morning of January 6, the Bolshevik Pravda published an article in which the Constituent Assembly was given, to put it mildly, an overly temperamental characterization, in its bitingness bordering on public abuse, in the style of party propaganda of that era:
“The servants of bankers, capitalists and landowners... slaves of the American dollar, killers from around the corner, right-wing Socialist Revolutionaries demand all the power in the Constituent Assembly for themselves and their masters - the enemies of the people. In words they seem to join the people's demands: land, peace and control, but in reality they are trying to tighten the noose around the neck of socialist power and revolution. But workers, peasants and soldiers will not fall for the bait of the false words of the worst enemies of socialism, in the name of the socialist revolution and socialist Soviet republic they will sweep away all its obvious and hidden killers.”
On the evening of January 6, deputies of the Constituent Assembly came to the Tauride Palace with the intention of continuing the debate and saw that its doors were locked, and a guard armed with machine guns was stationed near them. The deputies had to disperse to their apartments and hotels, where visiting members of the Assembly were accommodated. On January 9, 1918, the decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, dated the 6th, was published on the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly.
On January 18 (31), the Council of People's Commissars issued a decree according to which all references to the upcoming Constituent Assembly and to the temporary nature of the Soviet government itself were eliminated from the acts it issued. On the same day, a similar decision was made by the III All-Russian Congress of Soviets.
Thus, the experiment with the Constituent Assembly, on which many politicians had relied, ended with a sudden death.
Komuch and Kolchak
But this institution also had a kind of posthumous history. After the conclusion of the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty, a full-scale civil war began in Russia, as Lenin predicted. The Czechoslovak Corps, formed from captured Austro-Hungarian soldiers of Czech and Slovak nationalities to participate in hostilities on the side of Russia and the Entente, was subject to disarmament under the terms of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty. But the corps did not obey the corresponding order of the Council of People's Commissars and in the summer of 1918 overthrew the local bodies of Soviet power in the Volga region, on Southern Urals and in Siberia - where its parts were located. With his support, the so-called Komuch was formed in Samara - the Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly, headed by Chernov from those of its deputies who came to Samara. Similar institutions appeared in Omsk, Ufa and some other cities. These committees formed regional provisional governments.
A.V. Kolchak: “The dispersal of the Constituent Assembly is the merit of the Bolsheviks, this should be given them a plus”
In September, a State Meeting of representatives of regional governments was held in Ufa, at which the All-Russian Directory was established, headed by the Socialist-Revolutionary N.D. Avksentiev. The advance of the Red Army forced the Directory to move to Omsk. In October, Admiral A.V. arrived in Omsk. Kolchak. On November 4, at the insistence of the British General Knox and with the support of the cadets, he was appointed Minister of War and Navy in the government of the directory, and two weeks later, on the night of November 18, a military coup was carried out: the head of the directory Avksentiev and its members Zenzinov, Rogovsky and Argunov were arrested and then exiled abroad, and Admiral Kolchak issued an order by which he announced his appointment as Supreme Ruler of Russia. Several members of the Constituent Assembly, headed by V.M. Chernov, who gathered at the congress in Yekaterinburg, protested against the coup. In response to A.V. Kolchak issued an order for the immediate arrest of Chernov and other participants in the Yekaterinburg Congress.
The deputies who fled from Yekaterinburg moved to Ufa and there campaigned against the Kolchak dictatorship. On November 30, the Supreme Ruler of Russia ordered the members of the Constituent Assembly to be brought before a military court “for attempting to raise an uprising and conduct destructive agitation among the troops.” On December 2, a detachment under the command of Colonel Kruglevsky arrested 25 deputies of the Constituent Assembly. They were transported in a freight car to Omsk and thrown into prison there. When the attempt to free them failed, most of them were killed.
And already as an epilogue to the history of the Constituent Assembly, we can cite the words of Admiral A.V., who was arrested by the command of the Czechoslovak corps and then handed over to the Bolsheviks. Kolchak, said in January 1920 during interrogation: “I believed that even if the Bolsheviks had few positive aspects, then the dispersal of this Constituent Assembly is their merit, and this should be considered a plus for them.”
From this whole story it is extremely clear that the prospect of establishing a liberal regime in Russia in 1917 was absolutely not visible. Of course, the Bolsheviks were not guaranteed victory in the civil war, but the alternatives were either a military dictatorship or the collapse of the country with the establishment of the most different forms board on its ruins. Even the best possible outcome of the turmoil - the restoration of autocratic rule, with its extremely low probability, although at the end of the civil war the masses, but not the politicians, yearned for the lost tsarist power - was still more realistic than the establishment of liberal democracy in the country .
There would seem to be no particular reason to retrospectively regret the defeat of the Social Revolutionaries in the battle with another revolutionary party - the Bolsheviks. But one extremely important sad consequence follows from this defeat of theirs. The party discipline of the Socialist Revolutionaries, unlike the Social Democrats, did not require them to adhere to Marxism with its atheistic component. Therefore, if we imagine the impossible - the assertion of the power of the Constituent Assembly and the Socialist Revolutionary government formed by it, then the separation of the Church from the state would not have been carried out as hastily as the Bolsheviks did, and the corresponding act would not have been as draconian in nature as the Soviet decree on separation issued immediately after the Third Congress of Soviets approved the decision of the Council of People's Commissars to close the Constituent Assembly.
The myth that the Bolsheviks illegally dispersed the “Constituent Assembly” - supposedly the only source of legitimate power - is easily broken, and we have already considered this issue, based on the data of V. Karpets: “Constituent Assembly” by the evening of January 5, 1918 (the moment of dissolution ) did not have a quorum, and therefore all its decisions were legally void.
S.G. writes about the same thing. Kara-Murza and S. Chernyakhovsky, based on whose works we will make a small reconstruction.
First, a short excursion into the history of the Constituent Assembly.
Yu. Chernyakhovsky writes that
The Provisional Government constantly delayed the convening of the Council, and that the fundamental decision to convene the Council was made under pressure from the Petrograd Soviet
:
“If we consider March 2, 1917 as the date of formation of the first Provisional Government, then we can say that for three and a half weeks it, on the one hand, simply delayed the issue of a decision on convening the Constituent Assembly, and on the other, refused to accept any significant issues of changes in life of Russia."
Cartoon "The Provisional Government at Work." 1917
Read more.
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The fundamental decision to convene the Council was made under pressure from the Petrograd Soviet at a meeting of the contact group only on March 26. The deadline for its collection was assigned to the summer months, and for its preparation a Special Meeting was created, which was supposed to adopt the election law and conduct the elections themselves. Moreover, the first meeting of the Special Meeting was scheduled only for May 25.
The convening of the Constituent Assembly, which made sense and could have been assembled by May 1917 in order to prevent a power vacuum in the country, was delayed in every possible way by various forces, but to a large extent - namely the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries, who made up the ruling coalition since the spring-summer of 1917 .
Even the draft regulations on the elections of the USSR were published only two months later - on July 26, 1917, and then in incomplete form. Its second part, together with the order to use it, was approved only on September 11th. And the division of the regulations for elections in the army and navy, which for military conditions meant the representation of the interests of a huge part of the voters - and even later: only on September 23.
Established under the Provisional Government, in addition to the Special Meeting, the Legal Meeting and the Special Commission developed and developed a number of future basic laws, among which there were no ones devoted to either agrarian or labor issues (that is, their activities have rolled back even in comparison with the work of the State Duma, which tried to resolve these issues),nor the issues of Russia's exit from the war.
... In June, the Provisional Government nevertheless set the deadline for convening the Council for September 30. On August 7, the All-Russian Commission for the Convening of the Constituent Assembly was created. The elections were first scheduled for July 14, then postponed to September 17. Then the rightists demanded that the convocation be postponed for a month. At the same time, the idea of replacing the Constituent Assembly with an interim president arose. Moreover, all this happened not under the first, Cadet Provisional Government, but under the second and third, formed on a coalition basis with significant representation of the Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks. In September, mass pressure forced the Provisional Government to set the election date for September 12, and the deadline for convening the Council of Representatives for November 28.However, neither the elections nor, naturally, the gathering of the Assembly were ensured, and this deadline was again postponed
- already in January 1918.
Ultimately, the Bolsheviks, who had already taken power, began organizing the elections.The organizational conditions for this were created by a resolution of the Council of People's Commissars of November 12 (that is, already five days after the seizure of power), which, in fact, made it possible to at least start elections on November 25.<...>
On the results of the elections to the Constituent Assembly that took place:
… Ultimately, the election results were as follows: the Socialist Revolutionaries collected 17,490,837 votes, the Bolsheviks in 60 precincts (not all precincts issued their ballots) - 9,563,358 votes, the Mensheviks in 54 precincts - 1.7 million votes. The Cadets received 1,856,639 votes, together with the more right-wing ones - 4.62 million.
In total, 35.5 million voters participated in the elections. The share of the Bolsheviks was almost 27%, the share of the Socialist Revolutionaries - about 54%, the Mensheviks - approximately 5%; the right received 13% of the vote in the region.
Very important figures that opponents of Soviet power prefer to keep silent:
=Number of elected delegates and quorum=.
A total of 715 delegates were elected, Quorum is set at 400 delegates. According to various sources, on January 18, at the opening of the Council, from 402 to 410 delegates were present at the meeting - that is, a quorum was difficult to obtain.
S. Kara-Murza:
... There are discrepancies in the data provided by historians on the number of votes cast for certain parties in the elections. Apparently, about 44 million participated in the elections.
voters. 715 deputies were elected (according to other sources, 703). For the Socialist Revolutionaries,
Mensheviks, various national parties voted about 60%. About 25% are for the Bolsheviks. About 15% are for the Cadets and other right-wing parties.
Thus, parties with a fundamentally bourgeois program received about 15%
of those who took part in the elections, parties with different socialist programs - 85%. The conflict that arose in connection with the Constituent Assembly is a conflict between the socialists, and above all, between the two revolutionary socialist parties, the Bolsheviks and the Socialist Revolutionaries (the Mensheviks had 16 seats, and the Socialist Revolutionaries 410). Chernov even declared “the will for socialism” from the chairman’s seat. This is important to emphasize, because During the years of perestroika, the press introduced into the public consciousness the idea that it was a question of a choice between the bourgeois-liberal and socialist path of development of Russia. On a number of issues (for example, in relation to terrorism), the Bolsheviks were a more moderate party than the Socialist Revolutionaries. The transfer of power to the Constituent Assembly (considered as a speculative option) would not mean the emergence of a capable bourgeois statehood, but the continuation of the “Kerenschina”.
The Constituent Assembly began its work on January 5, 1918 in Petrograd, in the Tauride Palace. About 410 deputies were present with a quorum of 400.
*
On the conflict of interests directly at the meeting and the loss of legitimacy by the Constituent Assembly:
S. Kara-Murza.
...Right Social Revolutionary V.M. Chernov was elected chairman ( former minister Temporary
government). Chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee Ya.M. Sverdlov read " Declaration of the Rights of Working and Exploited People"and invited the meeting to accept it, that is, to recognize Soviet power and its most important decrees: on peace, land, etc. The Left Socialist Revolutionaries also called on the meeting to accept the Declaration and transfer power to the Soviets.
The Constituent Assembly rejected the Declaration (237 votes against 138). After that The Bolsheviks and Left Socialist Revolutionaries left the meeting. The meeting, no longer having a quorum, adopted a resolution that the supreme power in the country belonged to it.At five o'clock in the morning, the anarchist sailor A.G. Zheleznyakov, who commanded the guard, suggested that V.M. Chernov stop the meeting, saying: “The guard is tired.”
Yu. Chernyakhovsky writes about this in more detail:
Already at the beginning of the meeting of the Council of Representatives, the confrontation took place along the lines of two votes: the election of a chairman and the approval of the agenda. According to the first, 158 delegates voted for the candidacy of the left Socialist Revolutionaries and Bolsheviks, Maria Spiridonova, and 244 delegates voted for the candidacy of Chernov, nominated by the right Socialist Revolutionaries. That is, it immediately attracts attention that the Bolsheviks did not vote for a representative of their party and did not put forward their candidacy at all, but went to support the compromise figure of the leader of the Left Socialist Revolutionaries, that is, they initially focused on a compromise with the Socialist Revolutionary Party, which was not accepted by the latter’s delegates.
On the second question, 273 delegates against 146 voted for the agenda proposed by the Social Revolutionaries. This meant that the majority of delegates refused to even consider the declaration of the working and exploited people proposed by the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. After that The Bolshevik delegation at a separate meeting decided to leave the US, announcing its declaration. The Left Socialist Revolutionaries tried to continue working in the US and announced their declaration, which demanded that the US immediately resolve issues about land and peace.
However, the right-wing Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks refused to discuss this either. At 2:30 the Left Social Revolutionaries left the meeting room. Thus, the CA finally lost its quorum.About 270 of the 700 elected delegates remained in the hall. For another hour and a half, they made fiery speeches and bickered, but were unable to vote on a single meaningful decision.
At four o'clock in the morning I went up to the podium Zheleznyak and on behalf of the guard he uttered his historical phrase: “ Guard us
tall».
S. Kara-Murza:
At 4.40 the Constituent Assembly ceased its activities. On January 6, 1918, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee adopted a decree “On the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly.” ... The refusal of the right Socialist Revolutionaries to cooperate with the Soviet government sent events into a worse corridor.
A compromise, according to V.I. Lenin, would prevent a civil war.”
***
Lenin's fears were confirmed by the subsequent history of the members of the Constituent Assembly.
*
This is the history of the activities of that very Constituent Assembly, which is retroactively entrusted with such big hopes anti-Bolsheviks. Who use their myth of the Constituent Assembly only to fight history Soviet Russia, the world's first workers' state.
The struggle for the All-Russian Constituent Assembly and the shooting of demonstrations in its support in Petrograd and Moscow on January 5, 1918.
“From November 12 to 14, 1917, elections to the Constituent Assembly took place. They ended with a major victory for the Socialist Revolutionaries, who won more than half of the mandates, while the Bolsheviks received only 25 general electoral votes (Out of 703 mandates, the P.S.-R. received 299, the Ukrainian P.S.-R. - 81, and other national Socialist-Revolutionary groups - 19; the Bolsheviks got 168, the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries - 39, the Mensheviks - 18, the Cadets - 15 and the People's Socialists - 4. See: O. N. Radkey, “The elections to the Russian Constituent Assembly of 1917” , Cambridge, Maza., 1950, pp. 16-17, 21). By decision of the Central Committee of the P.S.-R. dated November 17, the question of convening the Constituent Assembly took a central place in the party’s activities. To protect the Constituent Assembly, the Central Committee recognized the need to organize “all the living forces of the country, armed and unarmed.” The Fourth Congress of the P.S.-R., held from November 26 to December 5 in Petrograd, pointed out the need to concentrate “sufficient organized forces” around the protection of the Constituent Assembly in order, if necessary, to “take the fight against the criminal encroachment on the supreme will of the people.” . The same fourth congress, by an overwhelming majority of votes, restored the left-center leadership of the party and “condemned the Central Committee’s delay in coalition politics and its tolerance of the “personal” policies of some right-wing leaders.”
The meeting of the Constituent Assembly was initially scheduled for November 28. On this day, about 40 delegates, with some difficulty, managed to get through the security posted by the Bolsheviks to the Tauride Palace, where they decided to postpone the official opening of the Assembly until a sufficient number of deputies arrived, and until then come to the Tauride Palace every day. That same evening the Bolsheviks began arresting the delegates. At first it was the cadets, but soon it was the SR’s turn: V.N. was arrested. Filippovsky. According to the Central Committee of the P.S.-R., the Bolshevik commander-in-chief V.N. Krylenko, in his order for the army, stated: “Let your hand not tremble if you have to raise it against the deputies.”
In early December, by order of the Council of People's Commissars, the Tauride Palace was cleared and temporarily sealed. In response to this, the Social Revolutionaries called on the population to support the Constituent Assembly. 109 deputies of the Socialist Republic wrote in a letter published on December 9 in the party newspaper “Delo Naroda”: “We call on the people to support their elected representatives by all measures and means. We call on everyone to fight against the new rapists against the will of the people. /.../ Be ready, at the call of the Constituent Assembly, to stand together in its defense.” And then, in December, the Central Committee of the P.S.-R. called on workers, peasants and soldiers: “Get ready to immediately defend it [the Constituent Assembly]. But on December 12, the Central Committee decided to abandon terror in the fight against the Bolsheviks, not to force the convening of the Constituent Assembly and to wait for a favorable moment. The Constituent Assembly nevertheless opened on January 5, 1918. It bore little resemblance to parliament, as the galleries were occupied by armed Red Guards and sailors holding the delegates at gunpoint. “We, the deputies, were surrounded by an angry crowd, ready every minute to rush at us and tear us to pieces,” recalled a deputy from the P.S.-R. V.M. Zenzinov. Chernov, elected chairman, was targeted by the sailors, and the same happened to others, for example, O.S. Minor. After the majority of the Constituent Assembly refused to recognize the leading role of the Soviet government, the Bolsheviks and Left Socialist-Revolutionaries left the hall. After one day of meetings, at which the land law was also adopted, the Soviet government dispersed the Constituent Assembly."
In Petrograd, on the orders of the Bolsheviks, a peaceful demonstration in defense of the Constituent Assembly was shot. There were killed and wounded. Some claimed that 7-10 people were killed and 23 were injured; others - that 21 people died, and there were still others who claimed that there were about 100 victims." Among the dead were the Socialist Revolutionaries E.S. Gorbachevskaya, G.I. Logvinov and A. Efimov. In Moscow, a demonstration in defense of the Constituent Assembly was was also shot; among the dead was A.M. Ratner, brother of the member of the Central Committee of the P.S.-R. E.M. Ratner.” 
The Socialist Revolutionary Party after the October Revolution of 1917. Documents from the AKP Archive. Collected and provided with notes and an outline of the history of the party in the post-revolutionary period by Mark Jansen. Amsterdam. 1989. pp. 16-17.
“The peaceful demonstration that took place in Petrograd on January 5, 1918 in support of the Constituent Assembly was shot by the Red Guard. The shooting took place at the corner of Nevsky and Liteiny Prospekts and in the area of Kirochnaya Street. The main column of up to 60 thousand people was dispersed, but other columns of demonstrators reached the Tauride Palace and were dispersed only after additional troops arrived.
The dispersal of the demonstration was led by a special headquarters headed by V.I. Lenin, Ya.M. Sverdlov, N.I. Podvoisky, M.S. Uritsky, V.D. Bonch-Bruevich. According to various estimates, the death toll ranged from 7 to 100 people. The demonstrators mainly consisted of intellectuals, office workers and university students. At the same time, a significant number of workers took part in the demonstration. The demonstration was accompanied by Socialist Revolutionary warriors, who did not offer serious resistance to the Red Guards. According to the testimony of the former Socialist Revolutionary V.K. Dzerulya, “all the demonstrators, including the PC, walked without weapons, and there was even an order from the PC in the districts so that no one would take weapons with them.”
“Delo Naroda”, December 9, appeal from the Union for the Defense of the Constituent Assembly:“Everyone, as one person, to defend freedom of speech and the press! Everyone to defend the Constituent Assembly!
Be ready, at the call of the Constituent Assembly, to stand together in its defense!”
"Pravda", No. 203, December 12, 1917:“...Several dozen people who called themselves deputies, without presenting their documents, burst into the building of the Tauride Palace on the evening of December 11, accompanied by armed White Guards, cadets and several thousand bourgeois and saboteur officials... Their goal was to create an allegedly “legal” a cover for the Kadet-Kaledin counter-revolutionary uprising.They wanted to present the voice of several dozen bourgeois deputies as the voice of the Constituent Assembly.
Central Committee of the Cadets Party continuously sends Kornilov officers to the south to help Kaledin. The Council of People's Commissars declares the Constitutional Democratic Party to be the party of enemies of the people.
Conspiracy of the Cadets is distinguished by its harmony and unity of plan: attack from the south, sabotage throughout the country and a central speech in the Constituent Assembly"
Decree of the Council of People's Commissars, December 13, 1917:“Members of the leading institutions of the Cadet Party, as a party of enemies of the people, are subject to arrest and trial by revolutionary tribunals.
Local councils are charged with special supervision of the Cadet Party due to its connection with the Kornilov-Kaledin civil war against the revolution."
All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the 1st convocation, December 28 (January 7), 1918:"... "Every living thing in the country, and above all the working class and the army, must take up arms in defense of the people's power in the person of the Constituent Assembly... Notifying about this, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the 1st convocation calls on you, comrades, immediately enter into direct communication with him."
Telegram, P. Dybenko - Tsentrobalt, January 3, 1918:“Urgently, no later than January 4, send 1000 sailors for two or three days to guard and fight against the counter-revolution on January 5. Send a detachment with rifles and cartridges - if not, then the weapons will be issued on the spot. Comrades Khovrin are appointed commanders of the detachment and Zheleznyakov.”
P.E. Dybenko:" On the eve of the opening of the founding, a detachment of sailors, united and disciplined, arrives in Petrograd.
As in the October days, the fleet came to defend Soviet power. Protect from whom? - From ordinary demonstrators and soft-bodied intelligentsia. Or maybe the founders of the founding body will come forward “with their breasts” to protect the brainchild doomed to death?
But they were unable to do this."
From the memoirs of B. Sokolov, a member of the AKP Military Commission:...How will we defend the Constituent Assembly? How will we defend ourselves?
I asked this question almost on the first day to the responsible leader of faction X. He made a perplexed face.
"Protect? Self-defense? What an absurdity. Do you understand what you are saying? After all, we are the people’s representatives... We must give the people new life, new laws, and defending the Constituent Assembly is the business of the people who elected us.”
And this opinion, which I heard and greatly amazed me, corresponded to the mood of the majority of the faction...
These days, these weeks, I have repeatedly had the opportunity to talk with visiting deputies and find out their point of view on the tactics that we should adhere to. As a general rule, the position of the majority of deputies was as follows.
“We must avoid adventurism at all costs. If the Bolsheviks committed a crime against the Russian people by overthrowing the Provisional Government and arbitrarily seizing power into their own hands, if they resorted to incorrect and ugly methods, this does not mean that we should follow their example. Not at all. We must follow the path of exclusive legality, we must defend the law in the only way acceptable for the people's representatives, the parliamentary path. Enough blood, enough adventure. The dispute must be transferred to the resolution of the All-Russian Constituent Assembly, and here, in the face of the entire people, the entire country, it will receive its fair resolution.”
This position, this tactic, which I find it difficult to call anything other than “purely parliamentary,” was adhered to not only by the right Socialist Revolutionaries and Centerists, but also by the Chernivtsi. And Chernivtsi, perhaps even more so than others. For, precisely, V. Chernov was one of the most ardent opponents of the civil war and one of those who hoped for a peaceful resolution of the conflict with the Bolsheviks, believing that “the Bolsheviks would save before the All-Russian Constituent Assembly”...
“Strict parliamentarism” was defended by the vast majority of the Socialist Revolutionary faction of the Constituent Assembly. Those who disagreed with these tactics and who called for action were a tiny minority. Specific gravity This minority in the faction was very small. They were looked upon as people infected with adventurism, insufficiently imbued with statehood, and not politically mature enough.
This group of oppositionists consisted mainly of deputies from the front or people involved in one way or another in the great war. Among them one can name D. Surguchev (later shot by the Bolsheviks), Fortunatov, Lieutenant Kh., Sergei Maslov, a member of the Central Committee, now shot by Onipko. I also joined this group.
At the end of November, with the arrival of members of the Constituent Assembly in Petrograd and when the purely parliamentary position of the Socialist Revolutionary faction became clear, it was during these days, but at the insistence of mainly front-line deputies, that the Military Commission was reorganized. Expanded in its scope, it received a certain autonomy from the Central Committee. It included representatives of the military deputies of the faction of the Constituent Assembly, among them myself, two members of the Central Committee, as well as a number of energetic military Socialist Revolutionaries. Its presidium included Surguchev, a member of the Central Committee, and myself (as chairman). Funds for its activities were given by front-line organizations. The work of the commission... was carried out in separate sections, independent from each other and, to a certain extent, secretive.
Of course, the work of the newly organized commission cannot in any way be called perfect or in the least satisfactory; it had too little time at its disposal, and its activities took place in a very difficult environment. Nevertheless, something was achieved.
Actually, we can only talk about two sides of the activities of this commission: its work in the Petrograd garrison and its military endeavors and enterprises.
The task of the Military Commission was to select from the Petrograd garrison those units that were most combat-ready and at the same time most anti-Bolshevik. In the very first days of our stay in Petrograd, my comrades and I visited most of the military units located in Petrograd. Here and there we held small meetings to gauge the mood of the soldiers, but in most cases we limited ourselves to conversations with committees and groups of soldiers. The situation is completely hopeless in the Jaeger Regiment, as well as in the Pavlovsk and others. A more favorable situation was outlined in the Izmailovsky regiment, as well as in a number of technical and artillery units, and only in three units did we find what we were looking for. Preserved combat effectiveness, the presence of a certain discipline and unquestionable anti-Bolshevism.
These were the Semenovsky and Preobrazhensky regiments and the armored division located in the companies of the Izmailovsky regiment. Both the regimental and company committees of the first two regiments, for the most part, consisted of non-party people, but sharply and consciously opposed to the Bolsheviks. In the regiments there were a considerable number of St. George cavaliers wounded in the German war, as well as those dissatisfied with the Bolshevik devastation. The relationship between the command staff, regimental committees and the mass of soldiers was quite friendly.
We decided to choose these three parts as the center of militant anti-Bolshevism. Through our Socialist Revolutionary and related front-line organizations, we urgently called in the most energetic and militant element. Throughout December, over 600 officers and soldiers arrived from the front, who were distributed between separate companies of the Preobrazhensky and Semenovsky regiments. Moreover, the majority of those who arrived were sent to the Semenovsky regiment, and a minority of approximately 1/3, to the Preobrazhensky regiment. We managed to get some of those called up to become members of both company and regimental committees. We assigned several specialists, mostly former students, to the armored division.
Thus, at the end of December we significantly increased both the combat effectiveness and the anti-Bolshevism of the above-mentioned units.
In order to raise the spirits of “our” units, as well as in order to create an unfriendly mood towards the Bolsheviks in the Petrograd garrison, it was decided to publish a daily soldier’s newspaper “The Gray Overcoat”.
Summing up the results of our activities in the Petrograd garrison, I must say that we managed, albeit to an insignificant extent, to carry out work to protect the Constituent Assembly. At the same time, by the opening day of the Constituent Assembly, i.e. By January 5, the people's representatives had at their disposal two regiments, relatively combat-ready and certainly ready, who decided to take up arms in defense. Why didn’t this armed uprising take place on January 5th? Why?..
The Bolsheviks not only conducted energetic propaganda among the Petrograd garrison, but, taking advantage of the rich military reserves at their disposal, forced all kinds of combat, so-called Red Guard units. We tried to follow their example. Alas, our endeavors in this direction were far from brilliant. While the whole of Petrograd was completely overflowing with all kinds of weapons, we had the latter at our disposal in very limited quantities. And therefore it turned out that our warriors were unarmed or equipped with such primitive weapons that they could not count. Yes, however, the workers, since it was among them that our vigilantes were recruited, were not particularly enthusiastic about joining the fighting squads. I just had to work in this direction in the Narva and Kolomna regions.
Meeting of workers of the Franco-Russian plant and the New Admiralty. Of course, meetings of workers who sympathize with us and belong to the anti-Bolshevik party.
I explain the situation and the general need, from my point of view, to defend the Constituent Assembly with an armed hand. In response, a series of questions and worries.
“Has not enough brotherly blood been shed?” “There was a war for four years, all blood and gore...” “The Bolsheviks are truly scoundrels, but they are unlikely to encroach on the US.”
“But in my opinion,” said one of the young workers, “we need, comrades, to think not about quarreling with the Bolsheviks, but how to come to an understanding with them. Still, you see, they defend the interests of the proletariat. Who is in the Kolomna commissariat now? All our Franco-Russians, Bolsheviks...”
This was still a time when the workers, even those who were definitely opposed to the Bolsheviks, harbored some illusions about the latter and their intentions. As a result, about fifteen people signed up for the vigilantes. The Bolsheviks at the same factory had three times more vigilantes.
The results of our activities in this direction boiled down to the fact that on paper we had up to two thousand worker vigilantes. But only on paper. For most of them did not show up and were generally imbued with a spirit of indifference and despondency. And taking into account the forces that could defend the U.S. with weapons in hand, we did not take these fighting squads into account...
In addition to recruiting vigilantes among Petrograd workers, there were attempts on our part to organize squads of front-line soldiers, front-line soldiers and officers... Some of our front-line organizations were quite strong and active. This could especially be said about the committees of the Southwestern and Romanian Fronts. Back in November, the Military Commission resorted to the help of these committees, and they began to send front-line soldiers to Petrograd, the most reliable, well-armed, sent as if on a business trip on official business. Some of these front-line soldiers, as was said, were sent to “strengthen” the Semenovsky and Preobrazhensky regiments. But we wanted to leave some of the arriving soldiers at our immediate disposal, forming them into combat flying detachments. To this end, we took steps to place them, as secretly as possible, in Petrograd itself, without arousing the suspicions of the Bolsheviks for the time being. After some hesitation, we settled on the idea of opening a soldiers' people's university. In mid-December, one was opened within the walls of one of the higher educational institutions. The opening itself took place with the knowledge and sanction of the Bolshevik authorities, for the program indicated in it was quite innocent, general cultural and educational, and among the leaders and lecturers of the university there were persons known to be loyal to the Bolshevik government.
It was in our interests to keep these militant cadets together so that in the event of an unexpected arrest they could provide resistance and so that it would be easier to use them in the event of an action against the Bolsheviks. After a long search, I succeeded, thanks to the assistance of the famous public figure K., to set up such a hostel, designed for two hundred people, in the premises of the Red Cross on Fontanka.
Arriving front-line soldiers showed up for courses and from here went to the hostel. As a rule, they came with guns, equipped with several hand grenades. By the end of December, there were already several dozen such cadets. And since these were all fighting and decisive people, they represented an undoubted force.
This business was not developed on a full scale, since the Central Committee of the Socialist Revolutionaries saw it as too risky an adventure. We were asked to suspend this endeavor. That's what we did."
P. Dashevsky, member of the bureau of the AKP military commission:"...The initial plan of our headquarters and the military commission stated that from the first moment...we would directly act as active initiators of an armed uprising. In this spirit, all our preparations took place during the month before the opening of the Constituent Assembly, according to the directives of the Central Committee. In this direction “All the discussions of the military commission and our garrison meeting were going on with the participation of citizen Likhach.”
N. Likhach:"...The party had no real forces on which it could rely."
G. Semenov, head of the military commission under the Petrograd Committee of the AKP:“Gradually, cells were created in the regiments: Semenovsky, Preobrazhensky, Grenadier, Izmailovsky, motor-pontoon, reserve electrical-technical, chemical and engineer battalions and in the 5th armored division. The commander of one of the battalions of the motor-pontoon regiment is warrant officer Mavrinsky, comrade "The chairman of the regimental committee of the Semenovsky regiment and a member of the chemical battalion committee, Usenko, were members of the military commission. The number of each cell was from 10 to 40 people"
It was decided to organize an intelligence department. A front-line officer was sent to the headquarters of the Red Guard with a forged letter, who soon received the post of assistant to Mekhanoshin and kept us informed of the location of the Bolshevik units.
By the end of December... the commander of the 5th armored division, the commissar and the entire division committee, was ours. The Semenovsky regiment agreed to march if it was called upon by the entire Socialist Revolutionary faction of the Constituent Assembly, and then not first, but behind the armored division. And the Preobrazhensky regiment agreed to perform if Semenovsky spoke.
I believed that we had no troops (except for the armored division), and thought to send the expected mass demonstration led by vigilantes to the Semenovsky regiment, staging an uprising, hoping that the Semenovites would join, move to the Preobrazhensky and, together with the latter, to the Tauride Palace to begin active actions. The headquarters accepted my plan."
Resolution of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of January 3 (16), "Pravda" January 4 (17), 1918:“Any attempt on the part of anyone or any institution to appropriate to itself certain functions of state power will be considered as a counter-revolutionary action. Any such attempt will be suppressed by all means at the disposal of the Soviet government, up to and including the use of armed force.”
Extraordinary Commission for the Protection of Petrograd, January 3:"...Any attempt to penetrate... into the area of the Tauride Palace and Smolny, starting from January 5, will be vigorously stopped military force"
The formed “Union for the Defense of the Constituent Assembly,” under the leadership of the right Socialist Revolutionary V.N. Filippovsky, which included right Socialist Revolutionaries, people’s socialists, Menshevik defencists, and part of the Cadets, decided to organize a demonstration in support of the US.
To suppress the conspiracy and maintain order on the opening day of the Constituent Assembly, an Emergency Military Council was created.
The Tauride Palace, where the Constituent Assembly was to open on January 5, the council ordered the approaches to the palace, the Smolny area and other important positions of St. Petersburg to be guarded by sailors. They were commanded by People's Commissar for Maritime Affairs P.E. Dybenko.
Tauride Palace - 100 people; Nikolaev Academy - Foundry - Kirochnaya - 300 people; state bank - 450 people. The Peter and Paul Fortress will have 4 seaplanes.
V.D. Bonch-Bruevich:“We are approaching January 5, and I want to warn you that we must meet this day with complete seriousness... All factories and military units must be on full alert. It is better to exaggerate than to understate the danger. Let us have confidence that We are ready to repel and suppress, if necessary, mercilessly every directed blow."
P.E. Dybenko:"January 18. (5 January) From early morning, while the average person was still sleeping peacefully, loyal sentries of Soviet power - detachments of sailors - took up their posts on the main streets of Petrograd. They were given a strict order: to maintain order in the city... The leaders of the detachments were all combat comrades, tested back in July and October.
Zheleznyak and his detachment solemnly come forward to guard the Tauride Palace - the Constituent Assembly. An anarchist sailor, he was sincerely indignant at the Second Congress of the Baltic Fleet at the fact that it was proposed to nominate him as a candidate for the Constituent Assembly. Now, proudly speaking with the detachment, he declares with a sly smile: “I’ll take the place of honor.” Yes, he was not mistaken. He took an honorable place in history.
At 3 o'clock in the afternoon, having checked the guards with comrade Myasnikov, I rush to Tavrichesky. Its entrances are guarded by sailors. In the corridor of Tavrichesky I meet Bonch-Bruevich.
Well, how? Is everything calm in the city? Are there many demonstrators? Where are they going? Is there information that they are heading straight to Tavrichesky?
Some confusion is visible on his face.
I just toured the guards. Everything is in place. No demonstrators are moving towards Tavrichesky, and if they do, the sailors will not let them through. They have strict orders.
All this is fine, but they say that Petrograd regiments marched along with the demonstrators.
Comrade Bonch-Bruevich, all this is nonsense. What now are the Petrograd regiments? - Not a single one of them is combat-ready. 5 thousand sailors were brought to the city.
Bonch-Bruevich, somewhat reassured, leaves for a meeting.
At about 5 o'clock Bonch-Bruevich comes up again and in a confused, excited voice says:
You said that everything is calm in the city; Meanwhile, information has now been received that a demonstration of about 10 thousand along with soldiers is moving at the corner of Kirochnaya and Liteiny Prospects. Heading straight to Tavrichesky. What measures have been taken?
At the corner of Liteiny there is a detachment of 500 people under the command of Comrade Khovrin. Demonstrators will not penetrate Tavrichesky.
Still, go now yourself. Look everywhere and report immediately. Comrade Lenin is worried.
I drive around the guards in my car. A rather impressive demonstration actually approached the corner of Liteiny, demanding to be allowed through to the Tauride Palace. The sailors did not let us through. There was a moment when it seemed that the demonstrators would rush at the sailor detachment. Several shots were fired into the car. A platoon of sailors fired a salvo into the air. The crowd scattered in all directions. But even before late evening, separate small groups demonstrated around the city, trying to get to Tauride. Access was firmly blocked."
V.D. Bonch-Bruevich:“The city was divided into sections. A commandant was appointed in the Tauride Palace, and M.S. Uritsky was promoted to this position. Blagonravov remained the head of our base - the Peter and Paul Fortress, and Eremeev - as commander of the troops of the Petrograd district. Me during the Founding Day meeting appointed commandant of Smolny and subordinated the entire region to me... I was responsible for all order in this area, including those demonstrations that were expected around the Tauride Palace... I understood perfectly well that this area is the most important of all of Petrograd... that this is where the demonstrations will be heading."
Union for the Defense of the Constituent Assembly, appeal January 5 (18):"Citizens, you... must tell him ( Constituent Assembly) that the capital of the revolution is animated by the desire to move the entire people to the final feats required by the salvation of the country. Everyone for the demonstration on January 5th!”
Petrograd Council of People's Commissars, January 5:“Under the slogan “all power to the Constituent Assembly” lies the slogan “down with the councils”. That is why all the capitalists, the entire Black Hundred, all the bankers stand strongly for this slogan!”
From the defensive speech of AKP Central Committee member A.R. Gotsa at the trial of the S.R., August 1, 1922: “We definitely stated that yes, we considered it necessary to organize all those forces, military and combat, that were at our disposal, so that in case the Bolshevik government dared to encroach on the constituent assembly, to give it proper support. This was the main political task in these days. This is the first one.
Further, we considered it necessary not to limit ourselves only to the mobilization of those military forces that were at our disposal, we believed that the people themselves, the working class of Petrograd itself, should manifest their will to defend the constituent assembly. He had to declare his will loudly, clearly, comprehensively, addressing the representatives of Smolny - “do not dare to encroach on the constituent assembly, for behind the constituent assembly there is a united iron phalanx workers' army" That's what we wanted. Therefore, we, turning to all parties, to the entire working class of Petrograd, said: “go to a peaceful unarmed demonstration, go in order to
to reveal your will, in order to manifest your mood. 
And citizen Krylenko says (let’s assume, for a moment, that his version is correct) that yes, I do not deny that you organized a peaceful demonstration, which was supposed to summarize this will, but besides this there was another demonstration, no longer peaceful, which should was to come from armored cars, Semenovtsev, etc. Let's assume for a moment that your concept is correct, but all this does not change the essence of the matter. All the armed demonstrations (let’s assume your version) that were planned then did not take place, did not take place, because all these mythical armored cars that you, as commander in chief, operated with, placed them with the help of my friend Timofeev and threw them at Smolny,
It’s all surreal, it’s all fortune telling on tea leaves. You know well that not a single armored car left. From my point of view, it’s very bad that I didn’t leave, but that’s a different question. We do not establish what is good and what is bad, but we establish facts. And the facts are such that even if we assume our subjective most passionate desire to assemble an armored fist (we absolutely had such a desire, such a task), we did not succeed in this fortune-telling, we failed because simply, without further ado, we did not have this fist. When we tried to squeeze it, it remained in this form (gestures). That's the problem. This is the state of affairs. The armored cars did not come out. The Semenovsky regiment did not leave.
Did we have any intention? Yes. And here Timofeev definitely said that we, members of the Central Committee. would be considered criminal on their part. if we had not taken all measures to organize, gather a fist, organize armed defense of the constituent assembly. We decided that the moment you decide to encroach on the sovereignty of the constituent assembly, to lay your hand on it, we must rebuff you. We considered this not only our right, but also our sacred duty to the working class. And if we had not made every effort to complete this task, we would indeed bear full responsibility not to you, but to the entire working class of Russia. But, I repeat, we bone fide did everything we could, and if, nevertheless, we did not succeed, it was for the reason mentioned by Count. Pokrovsky. Why was gr. Krylenko piled up all these facts, why did he need, in addition to the desire to use these facts, as incriminating material against us, in order to once again prove that this party is hypocrisy, and utter several loud philippics, which he is not bad at.
Why did he need this? I'll tell you why. This was necessary in order to hide, obscure, veil the true meaning, both tragic and political meaning events of the day on January 5. And this day will go down in history not as the day of the party’s hypocrisy, but as the day of the bloody crime you committed against the working people, because on that day you shot at peaceful demonstrations, because on that day you shed the blood of workers on the streets of Petrograd, and this blood caused a spirit of indignation Then. In order to hide this fact, in order to veil the crime not of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, but of some other party, you had, of course, to pile up and build the hypotheses that we note, because in this regard you were banging on a completely open door. Yes, we wanted to defend, but this fact, the fact of our desire to defend, does not in any way justify the fact that you shot an unarmed demonstration that moved towards you with the aim of seizing power. Let me point out that in the file there is copy No. of “Del Naroda”, in which on the eve of January 5 the following statement was placed: The city of Petrograd has been turned into an armed camp. The Bolsheviks are spreading the news that the Socialist-Revolutionaries are preparing an armed seizure of power, that they are forging a conspiracy against the Council of People's Commissars. Don’t believe this provocation and go to a peaceful demonstration. And it was true, we did not set out to organize a coup, we did not set out to seize power by conspiracy, no, we openly said that this was the only legal one. legitimate power, and all citizens and all workers must submit to it, before it all parties that have been at odds up to this point must humble themselves and lay down their bloody weapons.
And unless these parties take the path of agreement and reconciliation with it, then this Constituent Assembly has the right, of course, not to use exhortations or flowery speeches. and with the sword to humble all other parties. And our job was to forge this sword, and if we failed, then it is not our fault, but our misfortune. But, moreover, this day was not only a day of crime on the part of the Bolsheviks, but this day played the role of a turning point in the history of Bolshevik tactics. In order not to be unfounded, let me refer to an authoritative person who is unconditional for you.
I think that I will be allowed gr. The Chairman will refer in this case to Rosa Luxemburg. I take the liberty of pointing out that in the book she published under the title “Russian Revolution”, she wrote: “an outstanding role in the Bolshevik policy was played by the well-known dispersal of the Constituent Assembly on January 5, 1918. This measure determined their future position.
It was, to a certain extent, a turning point in their tactics. It is known that Lenin and friends
they vigorously demanded the convening of the Constituent Assembly before their October victory. This policy of delaying this issue on the part of the Kerensky government was one of the points of accusation by the Bolsheviks against this government and gave them a reason for the most fierce attacks on it. Trotsky even says in one of his interesting articles from “The October Revolution to the Brest-Litovsk Peace” that the October revolution was a real salvation for the Constituent Assembly, as well as for the entire revolution. Well, as the Bolsheviks understand the word “salvation”, we saw this enough from practice on the day of January 5th. Apparently, to save them means to shoot. Further, she points out the entire inconsistency of the argumentation that the Bolsheviks used to politically justify their act of violence against the Constituent Assembly. What arguments were put forward by the Bolsheviks then to justify the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly? What did they say? They said, first of all, that the Constituent Assembly was yesterday’s revolution. It does not reflect the real balance of power that was established after the October victory. That this day has already passed, this is a turned page of the book of history and it is impossible to rely on it
decide the destinies of today. Further, in addition to these general political considerations, they also pointed out that in this election campaign the Socialist Revolutionary Party acted as a single party, which had not yet split, had not yet separated the so-called left socialist revolutionaries from their party. These two considerations were usually put forward to justify this tactic politically. What does Rosa Luxemburg answer to this? Again I prefer to speak in her words, because her authority, I have no doubt, is for you...
BUKHARIN. She wanted to burn this book.
GOC. I don't know whether she wanted to burn this book or not. I don’t think that she wanted to burn it, I think that she didn’t want to burn it, but because she later changed her point of view in some respects, from this statement these views do not lose all their deep value and instructiveness. Regarding what she wanted to burn, let me tell you, Citizen Bukharin, this is already in the realm of fantasy. We do not know about these intentions, at least from the literature.
BUKHARIN. - You are not familiar with literature.
GOC - Let's not polemicize, citizen Bukharin. Let me point out how she responded to those considerations from the book that Citizen Bukharin would like to burn. I understand why he would want to burn this book, because this book is a vivid, instructive, eloquent act against him and against his friends. Now what is she saying? She says the following: “One must only be surprised that such smart people as Lenin and Trotsky did not come to the self-evident conclusions. If the Constituent Assembly was elected long before the turning point - the October revolution and reflects the past, and not the new situation in the country, then the conclusion naturally arises that it is necessary to cash out the outdated, stillborn Constituent Assembly, and immediately call elections to a new Constituent Assembly.” This is literally what we said at one time in those books that we do not renounce and which we are not going to burn. But the Bolsheviks did not follow this path. “They did not want to hand over,” she says further, “to hand over the fate of the revolution into the hands of an assembly that expressed the mood of yesterday’s Russia, a period of hesitation and coalition with the bourgeoisie, when they had only one thing left: to immediately convene a new Constituent Assembly in place of the old one, emerging from the depths of a renewed country that has moved on a new path.” Instead, Trotsky, based on the unsuitability of this meeting, comes to general conclusions about the uselessness and unsuitability in general of any popular representation based on universal suffrage. Already on this day, on the day of January 5th, that cardinal question was posed with all its cutting severity, which then constantly divided us into two hostile camps. The question was posed like this: dictatorship or democracy. Should the state rely on the minority, or should the state rely on the majority of the working class. As long as you had the hope that the majority of the constituent assembly would be yours, you did not rebel, and only when you were convinced that you could not create this majority, that the relationship of social forces among the working people was such that it was against you , only from that moment you turned the front against the Constituent Assembly and from that moment you put forward the concept: “dictatorship”.
When I talk about democracy now, I consider it necessary first of all to refer to theory No. 2 of citizen Krylenko. Citizen Krylenko here with great enthusiasm, with great polemical and dialectical skill, I give him credit, developed before us here a theory that we, in fact, at least many of us, I say this frankly, preached about 15 years ago in circles for the second type. Citizen Krylenko said: there is no need to be fetishists, idolaters of democracy. Democracy is not a fetish, not an idol to which one must bow and break one’s forehead. Citizen Krylenko, I think that even everyone who did not study at the seminary, but who has become involved in one way or another with international socialism, knows perfectly well that for no socialist, democracy, of course, is not a fetish, is not an idol, but is only that form and the only form in which the socialist ideals in the name and for which we fight can be realized.
But citizen Krylenko went further. He says: freedom is a tool for us, i.e. if we need freedom, then we use it. if they claim freedom, if they crave it, if others strive for it, then we point this weapon against them.
Let me tell you that this is the most incorrect and most destructive understanding of freedom. For us, freedom is that life-giving atmosphere in which any broad, mass workers’ socialist movement is the only thing possible; it is the element that must envelop, surround and permeate this workers’ movement. Outside these conditions, outside the forms of freedom, the broadest freedom, no independent activity of the working masses is possible. Do I need you, people who call themselves Marxist socialists, to prove that socialism is impossible without the broadest initiative of the working masses, which, for its part, cannot take place without freedom.
Freedom is the soul of socialism, it is the main condition for the independent activity of the masses. If you are this vital nerve, this basic essence, if you cut this nerve, then, of course, there will be nothing left from the initiative of the masses, and then there will only be a direct path - the path to the theory that citizen Krylenko developed here - to the theory of unenlightened dark masses, for whom it is harmful to come into too much contact with political parties, which can lead them, inexperienced, inexperienced, dark, down, carry them along, drag them into a swamp from which they, poor things, will never crawl out. What is this if not the classically expressed theory of Pobedonostsev. What is this in its socialist essence if not the same desire of Pobedonostsev to protect the pure Orthodox people from the corrupting influence of Western democracy, which can only muddy the purity of his consciousness, which can only corrupt him, which he will be powerless to understand and, like a child who is given sharp knife, can only inflict sharp, dangerous wounds on himself.
And already one step from this concept of citizen Lunacharsky, which was started by citizen Krylenko, only one step to the legend of the Grand Inquisitor of Tolstoy, I apologize, Dostoevsky. So this legend is the logical natural conclusion of the cycle of thoughts that Citizen Krylenko and Citizen Lunacharsky were developing here in front of us now and which, one might say, can be compressed into one political concept- the concept of dictatorship in your understanding. Let me again refer to Rosa Luxemburg...
CHAIRMAN - Couldn't I ask you to be closer to the point? The founders, thank God, were dispersed. We are interested in your further position, and not in the fact that the Constituent Assembly was dispersed, whether this is good or bad. They dispersed and did well.
GOC - in this regard, of course, I will not argue whether it is good that they dispersed the Constituent Assembly, whether it is good or bad that they hit this or that gentleman on the head. In this regard, I do not consider it possible or appropriate to conduct a political debate, albeit in the form of a defensive speech. I still haven’t left the framework that you showed me. I'm following your instructions...
CHAIRMAN - Instructions regarding the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat are for us the initial form, not subject to discussion. We are the organs of this dictatorship. The question regarding universal suffrage is a settled issue, not subject to discussion, so all the talk here about it is completely in vain.
GOC - Maybe we are having a lot of conversations here in vain, because one very correct thought was expressed by citizen Krylenko. He said: “from the very beginning, in fact, from the moment of your first statements, it was possible to say that the issue was settled and to begin passing a verdict.”
The opening day of the Constituent Assembly arrived on January 5, 1918. There were no severe frosts. Demonstrations in support of the Constituent Assembly took place in many areas of the city. Demonstrators began to gather in the morning at nine assembly points designated by the Union for the Defense of the Constituent Assembly. The route of movement included the merging of the columns on the Field of Mars and the subsequent advance to the Tauride Palace from Liteyny Prospekt.
The column of workers of the Alexander Nevsky district, walking from the Field of Mars to the Tauride Palace, looked especially massive and united. There are no exact data on the number of demonstrators, but according to M. Kapustin, 200 thousand people took part in them. According to other sources, the main column of demonstrators numbered 60 thousand people. On January 5, Pravda banned all rallies and demonstrations in Petrograd in areas adjacent to the Tauride Palace. It was declared that they would be suppressed by military force. At the same time, Bolshevik agitators the most important factories(Obukhovsky, Baltiysky, etc.) tried to enlist the support of the workers, but were unsuccessful. As part of the columns of demonstrators, the workers moved towards Tavrichesky and were shot with machine guns.
V.M. Chernov:“It was necessary to morally disarm... the Bolsheviks. To do this, we promoted a demonstration of the civilian population absolutely unarmed, against which it would not be easy to use brute force. Everything, in our opinion, depended on not giving the Bolsheviks even a shadow of moral justification for the transition to bloodshed. Only in this case, we thought, can even their most resolute defenders waver and our most indecisive friends be imbued with determination..."
Paevsky, head of the Petrograd fighting squads of the AKP:“So we went alone. Along the way, several districts joined us.
The composition of the procession was as follows: a small number of party members, a squad, a lot of young ladies, high school students, especially students, many officials from all departments, cadet organizations with their green and white flags, poalei-tion, etc., in the complete absence of workers and soldier. From the side, from the crowd of workers, ridicule was heard at the bourgeois composition of the procession."
"New Life," January 6, 1918:"...When the demonstrators appeared at the Panteleimon Church, the sailors and Red Guards standing on the corner of Liteiny Prospekt and Panteleimonovskaya Street immediately opened rifle fire. The standard bearers and the music orchestra of the Obukhov plant, who were walking ahead of the demonstration, were the first to come under fire. After the shooting of the demonstrators, the Red Guards and sailors began the ceremonial burning of the selected banners."
: "We gathered between 9 and 10 in a restaurant on Kirochnaya Street, and the final preparations were made there. And then in in perfect order moved to the Tauride Palace. All the streets were occupied by troops, there were machine guns on the corners, and in general the whole city looked like a military camp. By 12 o'clock we arrived at the Tauride Palace, and guards crossed bayonets in front of us
From 9 am, columns of demonstrators moved from the St. Petersburg suburbs to the center. The manifestation was indeed very large. Although I was not there, but according to rumors that reached us - almost every minute someone came running - there were over 100,000 people. In this regard, we were not mistaken, and some military units also walked in the crowd, but these were not units, but separate groups of soldiers and sailors. They were met by detachments of soldiers, sailors and even horsemen specially sent against the crowd, and when the crowd did not want to disperse, they began to shoot at it. I don’t know exactly how many were killed, but we, standing in the courtyard of the Tauride Palace, heard the chatter of machine guns and rifle salvos... By three o’clock it was all over. Several dozen killed, several hundred wounded."
M.M. Ter-Poghosyan:“...There were us at Liteiny - I can’t say for sure, but when I climbed onto the stand near the gate and looked, I couldn’t see the end of this crowd - huge, many tens of thousands. And so I remember, I was walking at the head ...
At this time, Bolshevik units - regular units - appeared from the ledge opposite us from the side of the District Court and, therefore, cut us off and began to put pressure. Then they moved away and on both sides of the street knelt at the ready, and the shooting began."
From the speech at the trial of the Socialist-Revolutionary. Member of the Central Committee of the AKP E.S. Berg:"I am a worker. And during the demonstration in defense of the Constituent Assembly, I took part in it. The Petrograd Committee declared a peaceful demonstration and the Committee itself, including myself, walked unarmed at the head of the procession from the Petrograd side. On the way, at the corner of Liteiny and Furshtadtskaya, our road was blocked by an armed chain. We entered into negotiations with the soldiers to obtain access to the Tauride Palace. They answered us with bullets. Here Logvinov, a peasant, a member of the Executive Committee of the Council of Peasant Deputies, who was walking with a banner, was killed. He was killed by an explosive bullet, which blew off half of his skull. And he was killed when, after the first shots, he lay down on the ground. Gorbachevskaya, an old party worker, was also killed there. Other processions were shot at in other places. 6 workers of the Marcus plant were killed, and workers of the Obukhov plant were killed. On January 9, I took part in the funeral of those killed; there were 8 coffins there, because the authorities did not give us the rest of the dead, and among them were 3 Socialist-Revolutionaries, 2 Socialist-Democrats. and 3 non-party members and almost all of them were workers. Here's the truth about this demonstration. They said here that it was a demonstration of officials, students, the bourgeoisie and that there were no workers in it. So why is there not a single official, not a single bourgeois among those killed, and all of them are workers and socialists? The demonstration was peaceful - this was the resolution of the Petrograd Committee, which carried out the directives of the Central Committee and transmitted them to the districts.
Approaching the Tauride Palace, in order to greet the Uchr on behalf of the workers of some factories and factories. Collected, I and three fellow workers could not get there because there was shooting all around. The demonstration did not disperse; it was shot. And it was you who shot a peaceful workers’ demonstration in defense of the Constituent Assembly!”
P.I.Stuchka: “..In the security of the Smolny and Tauride Palace (during the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly), the first place was occupied by comrades selected by the Latvian rifle regiments.”
"Pravda", January 6:“It’s quiet on the streets on January 5th. Occasionally small groups of intellectuals with posters appear, they are dispersed. According to the emergency headquarters, armed clashes took place between groups of armed demonstrators and patrols. They shot at soldiers from windows and from rooftops. Those arrested had revolvers, bombs and grenades.” .
M. Gorky, "New Life" (January 9, 1918):“On January 5, 1918, the unarmed St. Petersburg democracy - workers, office workers - peacefully demonstrated in honor of the Constituent Assembly... Pravda lies when it writes that the demonstration on January 5 was organized by the bourgeoisie, bankers, etc., and that it was the “bourgeoisie” and the “Kaledinites” who went to the Tauride Palace." Pravda lies - it knows very well that the "bourgeoisie" have nothing to rejoice about the opening of the Constituent Assembly, they have nothing to do in the midst of 246 socialists of one party and 140 - - Bolsheviks. Pravda knows that workers from Obukhovsky, Patronny and other factories took part in the demonstration, that under the red banners of the Russian Social Democratic Party workers from Vasileostrovsky, Vyborg and other districts walked to the Tauride Palace. It was these workers who were shot, and how many "No matter how Pravda lies, it will not hide the shameful fact... So, on January 5, the unarmed workers of Petrograd were shot. They were shot without warning that they would shoot, they were shot from ambushes, through the cracks of fences, cowardly, like real murderers."
Sokolov, member of the Constituent Assembly, Socialist Revolutionary:"...The people in Petrograd were opposed to the Bolsheviks, but we were unable to lead this anti-Bolshevik movement."
The opening of the Meeting at noon did not take place, and only at 16:00 more than 400 delegates entered the White Hall of the Tauride Palace. The transcript convinces us that from the moment the Constituent Assembly opened, its work resembled a sharp political battle.
The Meeting opened twice. The first time it was opened by the oldest deputy, former Narodnaya Volya member S. Shevtsov. Then - Ya.M. Sverdlov, opened it on behalf of the Council of People's Commissars. Then long arguments began about the presidium and the chairman. The Bolsheviks and Left Socialist-Revolutionaries were in a clear minority, and the Socialist-Revolutionary V.M. Chernov was elected chairman.
V.M.Zenzinov:“The city was an armed camp that day; Bolshevik troops surrounded the building of the Tauride Palace, which was prepared for meetings of the Constituent Assembly, with a solid wall. In front of us... these walls moved apart. These sailors and soldiers, standing here in full weapons... In the building we were surrounded in the choirs and aisles by an angry crowd. A frenzied roar filled the room."
M.V.Vishnyak, secretary of the USSR:“In front of the façade of Tavrichesky, the entire area is lined with cannons, machine guns, and camp kitchens. Machine-gun belts are randomly piled up in a heap. All the gates are locked. Only the outer gate on the left is ajar, and people are allowed into it with tickets. The armed guards peer intently into the face before letting them in; they look around from behind, he probes his back... This is the first external security... They let him through the left door. Again, internal control. People are checking not in greatcoats, but in jackets and tunics... There are armed people everywhere. Most of all sailors and Latvians.. "There is a final cordon at the entrance to the meeting hall. The external situation leaves no doubt about the Bolshevik views and intentions."
V.D. Bonch-Bruevich:“They were scattered everywhere. The sailors walked importantly and decorously in pairs through the halls, holding guns on their left shoulders in a belt.” There are also armed people on the sides of the stands and in the corridors. The public galleries are jam-packed. However, these are all people of the Bolsheviks and Left Socialist Revolutionaries. Entrance tickets to the galleries, approximately 400 pieces, were distributed among Petrograd sailors, soldiers and workers by Uritsky. There were very few supporters of the Socialist Revolutionaries in the hall."
P.E. Dybenko: " After the party meetings, the Constituent Assembly opens. The entire procedure for the opening and election of the Presidium of the Constituent Assembly was of a clownish, frivolous nature. They showered each other with witticisms and filled their idle time with picks. For the general laughter and amusement of the watching sailors, I sent a note to the founding presidium with a proposal to elect Kerensky and Kornilov as secretaries. Chernov just threw up his hands at this and said somewhat touchingly: “After all, Kornilov and Kerensky are not here.”
The Presidium has been chosen. Chernov, in an hour and a half speech, poured out all the sorrows and insults inflicted by the Bolsheviks on the long-suffering democracy. Other living shadows of the Provisional Government, which has sunk into eternity, also appear. At about one o'clock in the morning the Bolsheviks leave the Constituent Assembly. The Left Socialist-Revolutionaries still remain.
In one of the rooms remote from the meeting hall of the Tauride Palace are Comrade Lenin and several other comrades. Regarding the Constituent Assembly, a decision was made: the next day, none of the members of the founding body should be allowed into the Tauride Palace and thereby consider the Constituent Assembly dissolved.
At about half-past three the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries also left the meeting hall. At this moment Comrade Zheleznyak comes up to me and reports:
The sailors are tired and want to sleep. What should I do?
I gave the order to disperse the Constituent Assembly after the people's commissars left Tavrichesky. Comrade Lenin learned about this order. He contacted me and demanded its cancellation.
Will you sign, Vladimir Ilyich, that tomorrow not a single sailor’s head will fall on the streets of Petrograd?
Comrade Lenin resorts to the assistance of Kollontai to force me to cancel the order. I'm calling Zheleznyak. Lenin suggests that he not carry out the order and superimposes his resolution on my written order:
"T. Zheleznyak. The Constituent Assembly will not be dispersed until the end of today’s meeting.”
In words, he adds: “Tomorrow morning, don’t let anyone through to Tavrichesky.”
V.I. Lenin, January 5:“Comrade soldiers and sailors on guard duty within the walls of the Tauride Palace are ordered not to allow any violence against the counter-revolutionary part of the Constituent Assembly and, while freely releasing everyone from the Tauride Palace, not to let anyone into it without special orders.
Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars V. Ulyanov (Lenin)"
P.E. Dybenko:“Zheleznyak, addressing Vladimir Ilyich, asks the inscription “Zheleznyak” to be replaced with “order of Dybenko.” Vladimir Ilyich half-jokingly waves it off and immediately leaves in the car. Two sailors are traveling with Vladimir Ilyich for security.
Tavrichesky and the rest of the people's commissars leave behind Comrade Lenin. On my way out I meet Zheleznyak.
Zheleznyak: What will happen to me if I do not carry out the orders of Comrade Lenin?
Disperse the founders, and we'll sort it out tomorrow.
Zheleznyak was just waiting for this. Without noise, calmly and simply, he approached the chairman of the founding body, Chernov, put his hand on his shoulder and declared that, due to the fact that the guard was tired, he invited the meeting to go home.
The “living forces” of the country quickly evaporated without the slightest resistance.
Thus the long-awaited All-Russian Parliament ended its existence. In fact, it was dispersed not on the day of its opening, but on October 25. A detachment of sailors under the command of Comrade Zheleznyak only carried out the order of the October Revolution."
Zheleznyakov. I have received instructions to bring to your attention that all those present leave the meeting room because the guard is tired.
(Voices: “We don’t need a guard”).
Chernov. What instructions? From whom?
Zheleznyakov. I am the head of the security of the Tauride Palace, I have instructions from the commissioner.
Chernov. All members of the Constituent Assembly are also very tired, but no amount of fatigue can interrupt the announcement of the land law that Russia is waiting for... The Constituent Assembly can disperse only if force is used!..
Zheleznyakov.... I ask you to leave the meeting room"
The majority of deputies refused to approve the extremist “Declaration of the Rights of the Working and Exploited People” and other Bolshevik decrees. In retaliation, the Bolsheviks, and then the Left Socialist Revolutionaries, left the meeting room. The remaining deputies continued to discuss issues about land, power, etc. until 5 a.m. on January 6.
At 4:20 a.m. on the morning of January 6, when the discussion of the land issue was coming to an end, Chernov, who was announcing the “Draft of the Basic Law on Land,” was approached by the head of the guard of the Tauride Palace, sailor A. Zheleznyakov. He said that he had instructions to stop the meeting; all those present must leave the meeting room because the guard was tired. The meeting was interrupted and the next meeting was scheduled for 5 p.m.
V.M. Chernov:"- I declare a break until 5 o'clock in the evening! - I submit to armed force! I protest, but I submit to violence!"
From the memoirs of a member of the Military Commission of the AKP B. Sokolov: “We, I’m talking about the Military Commission, had no doubt at all about the positive attitude of the Central Committee to our action plan. And the greater the disappointment... On January 3, at a meeting of the Military Commission, we were informed about the decision of our Central Committee. This decree categorically prohibited armed action, as an untimely and unreliable act. A peaceful demonstration was recommended, and it was suggested that soldiers and other military officials take part in the demonstration unarmed, “to avoid unnecessary bloodshed.”
The motives for this decision were apparently quite varied. We, the uninitiated, were told about them in a significantly abbreviated form. In any case, this decision was dictated by the best intentions.
Firstly, the fear of civil war or, more precisely, fratricide. It was Chernov who made the famous saying that “we must not shed a single drop of people’s blood.” “And the Bolsheviks,” he was asked, “is it possible to shed the blood of the Bolsheviks?” “The Bolsheviks are the same people.” The armed struggle against the Bolsheviks at that time was considered as truly fratricide, as an undesirable struggle.
Secondly, many people remember the failures of the Moscow and Petrograd armed uprisings in defense of the Provisional Government. These speeches showed the impotence and disorganization of democracy. This resulted in a kind of fear of new armed uprisings, lack of self-confidence, and, moreover, a conviction in the obvious failure of such uprisings.
Thirdly, the mood that I spoke about at the beginning of this article certainly prevailed. The conviction, imbued with fatalism, about the omnipotence of Bolshevism, that Bolshevism is a popular phenomenon that is capturing wider and wider circles of the masses.
“We must let Bolshevism get rid of it.” “Let Bolshevism outlive itself.” This is the slogan put forward precisely at this time, and I think it played a rather sad role in the history of the anti-Bolshevik struggle. For this slogan signifies a passive policy.
Finally, fourthly, there was the same idealism, based on faith in the triumph of democratic principles, on faith in the will of the people. “Is it acceptable,” asked the prominent leader Kh., “for us to impose our will, our decision on the people. If the majority of the people really gravitate toward Bolshevism, then we must listen to the voice of the people. The people themselves will decide who the Truth is for, and they will follow those whom they trust more. There is no need for violence against the will of the people.”
“We are representatives of democracy and we defend the principles of popular rule. Is it permissible, until the people have spoken their word, to start an internecine civil war and shed fraternal blood? It is up to the All-Russian Constituent Assembly, in which the opinion of the entire country will be reflected as a focal point, to say “yes” or “no”.
It is very difficult to say which of the just listed motives was decisive for abandoning the armed uprising we had planned. The fear of adventurism, which generally characterizes all the activities of the AKP after the February revolution, the desire for a strict, elevated to the principle of legality based on democratic principles, self-doubt - all this, closely intertwined with each other, I think, played an equal role in this decision .
So we were faced with a ban on armed action. This ban took us by surprise. Reported to the Plenum of the Military Commission, it gave rise to many misunderstandings and discontent. It seems that we managed to warn the Defense Committee about our change of decision at the very last minute. They, in turn, took urgent steps and changed the assembly points. The Semenovites experienced the most excitement.
Boris Petrov and I visited the regiment to report to its leaders that the armed demonstration was canceled and that they were asked to “come to the demonstration unarmed so that blood would not be shed.”
The second half of the sentence caused a storm of indignation among them... “Why, comrades, are you really laughing at us? Or are you kidding?.. We are not small children and if we went to fight the Bolsheviks, we would do it quite consciously... But blood... blood, perhaps, would not have been shed if we had gone out with a whole regiment armed "
We talked for a long time with the Semyonovites, and the more we talked, the clearer it became that our refusal to take armed action had erected a blank wall of mutual misunderstanding between them and us.
“Intellectuals... They are wise without knowing what. Now it is clear that there are no military people between them.”
And despite lengthy exhortations, that evening the Semyonovites refused to defend the newspaper “Seraya Overcoat” that we published.
“No need. They'll cover it anyway. There’s just one gimmick.”..”
The doors of the Tauride Palace were closed to members of the Constituent Assembly forever. On the night of January 6-7, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee approved the decree written earlier by Lenin on the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly.
List of used literature and sources
Amursky I. E. Sailor Zheleznyakov - M.: Moscow Worker, 1968.
Bonch-Bruevich M. D. All power to the Soviets! - M.: Military Publishing House, 1958.
Budberg A. Diary of a White Guard. - Mn.: Harvest, M.: AST, 2001;
Vasiliev V. E. And our spirit is young. - M.: Voenizdat, 1981.
V. Vladimirov “The Year of Service of Socialists to Capitalists” Essays on the history of the counter-revolution in 1918 Edited by Ya. A. Yakovlev State Publishing House Moscow Leningrad, 1927
Golinkov D. L., “Who was the organizer of the cadet uprising in October 1917,” “Questions of History,” 1966, No. 3;
Dybenko P.E. From the depths of the royal fleet to the Great October Revolution. - M.: Military Publishing House, 1958.
Kerensky A.F., Gatchina, from the collection. Art. “From Afar”, Paris, 1922 (3)
Lutovinov I. S., “Liquidation of the Kerensky-Krasnov rebellion”, M., 1965;
Mstislavsky S.D. "Collection. Candid stories." - M.: Voenizdat, 1998
The Socialist Revolutionary Party after the October Revolution of 1917. Documents from the AKP Archive. Collected and provided with notes and an outline of the history of the party in the post-revolutionary period by Mark Jansen. Amsterdam. 1989.
Socialist Revolutionary Party. Documents and materials. In 3 volumes/T.3.Ch. October 1917 - 1925 - M.: ROSSPEN, 2000.
Minutes of meetings of the Central Committee of the Socialist Revolutionary Party (June 1917 - March 1918) with comments by V.M. Chernov "Questions of History", 2000, N 7, 8, 9, 10
The trial of the socialist revolutionaries (June-August 1922). Preparation. Carrying out. Results. Collection of documents / Comp. S.A. Krasilnikov, K.N. Morozov, I.V. Chubykin. -M.: ROSSPEN, 2002.
socialist.memo.ru – Russian socialists and anarchists after October 1917
In the early morning of January 19, 1918, having dispersed the Constituent Assembly, the Bolsheviks unleashed a civil war: the discussion ended, from that day on political issues were resolved on the battlefield
On the Constituent Assembly, a representative body popularly elected to determine the form of government, political system, political system and so on have long been dreams of all political parties opposed to the autocracy: from the Cadets to the Bolsheviks.
Before the emperor had time to abdicate the throne, the Provisional Committee State Duma(the prototype of the Provisional Government) announced the immediate convening of the Constituent Assembly. And the Provisional Government itself, immediately after its formation, declared the convening of the Constituent Assembly as its top priority. Already on March 13, a decision was made to create a Special Meeting to prepare a law on elections to the Constituent Assembly. The election date is expected any day now.
However, the car, which was rapidly picking up speed, suddenly began to sharply slow down. It took a whole month just to form the composition of the Special Meeting of 82 people, which began work only at the end of May. The meeting took three months to develop the Regulations on the elections to the Constituent Assembly.
It was the most democratic election law in the world: all persons over 20 years of age were allowed to vote, regardless of gender, nationality and their social status (for comparison: elections to the councils were multi-stage, indirect, the intelligentsia, entrepreneurs, clergy and non-socialist parties). This looked unusual - at that time women in almost no country in the world had the right to vote (they received voting rights in Great Britain and Germany in 1918, in the USA in 1920, and in France in 1944). In many electoral systems property qualifications or other complex systems restrictions on representation.
Campaigning for a constituent assembly in Teatralny Proezd. Photo: RIA Novosti
The elections, originally scheduled for September 17 and the convening of the assembly on September 30, were postponed to November 12 and 28 respectively. What explains such a sharp decline in the pace of preparations for the convening of the Constituent Assembly? Apparently, having made sure that the monarchists do not pose a serious danger to the revolution, the Provisional Government cools down on the idea of convening the Constituent Assembly as soon as possible. They are not afraid of the danger “from the left”.
This delay played into the hands of the Bolsheviks. In April-May their political influence was negligible. During the months provided by the Provisional Government, against the backdrop of the collapse of the political and economic life, they significantly strengthen their positions in factories and military units, and win a majority in the Soviets. At the same time, they are prudently putting forward the popular slogan about the speedy convening of the Constituent Assembly, they say, with us there will be no delays.
The Bolsheviks take power before the appointed election date. Not without some hesitation, they decide to hold elections to the Constituent Assembly. Probably not everyone remembers that the Bolshevik Council of People's Commissars was only a provisional government formed to govern the country, until the convening of the Constituent Assembly. Thus, the Bolsheviks lull the vigilance of most of their opponents, saying that we will not last long, only until the convening of the Constituent Assembly, to which we will immediately submit.
The Socialist Revolutionary Party wins the election with 40% of the votes. The Bolsheviks took second place, receiving 24% of the vote. Third place was taken by the Ukrainian Socialist Revolutionaries - 7.7%. The cadets came fourth. Although the total number of votes they received was low - only 4.7% - they performed very well in major cities. In Petrograd and Moscow, the Cadets took second place after the Bolsheviks. In a number of provincial cities, the party actually arrived first. However, this interest simply drowned in the sea of peasants: they received nothing in the village. The Mensheviks received only 2.6% of the votes.
The elections demonstrated the balance of political forces in Russia. The Bolsheviks won in Petrograd, where their headquarters were located, in Moscow and several industrial central regions, where they had strong branches, in the Baltic Fleet and on several fronts.
The Social Revolutionaries won in all peasant regions, especially the wealthy ones. But they were defeated in almost all cities. It is worth noting that the Social Revolutionaries went to the elections with a single list, despite the fact that by that time a split had already formed in the party and it was divided into right and left - close to the Bolsheviks. Nevertheless, there were few left Socialist Revolutionaries, and the party maintained a majority even without them.
Residents of Moscow at the building of the election commission for the Constituent Assembly of the Pyatnitsky Commissariat on election day in 1917. Photo: RIA Novosti
In national regions, national parties showed good results: in Kazakhstan - Alash Orda, in Azerbaijan - Musavat, in Armenia - Dashnaktsutyun. It is curious that such people as Kerensky, Petlyura, General Kaledin and Ataman Dutov were elected to the Constituent Assembly.
After the defeat in the elections, the Bolsheviks began a decisive struggle against the Constituent Assembly. A few weeks before the start of the meeting, by decree of the Council of People's Commissars, the Cadets Party was outlawed and was unable to take part in the work of the representative body. Lenin speaks in Pravda with theses about the uselessness of the Constituent Assembly.
The day before the start of its work, the Bolsheviks hastily adopted the “Declaration of the Rights of the Working and Exploited People,” which proclaims the Russian Republic to be Soviet. Only a person authorized by the Council of People's Commissars had the right to open a meeting of the Constituent Assembly, i.e. Bolshevik.
To definitely finish off the Assembly, on the same day they adopted a decree “On recognizing as counter-revolutionary actions all attempts to usurp the functions of state power,” which reads:
"All power is in Russian Republic belongs to the Soviets and Soviet institutions. Therefore, any attempt on the part of anyone or any institution to appropriate to itself certain functions of state power will be considered as a counter-revolutionary action. Any such attempt will be suppressed by all means at the disposal of the Soviet government, up to and including the use of armed force.”
The only thing left for the Constituent Assembly was to assemble its own army. But this meant starting a civil war, which is exactly what the Bolsheviks wanted and the Socialist-Revolutionaries avoided with all their might. On January 3, the Central Committee of the Socialist Revolutionary Party decided not to use force to defend the Constituent Assembly. Social Revolutionary leader V.M. Chernov sincerely believes that “the Bolsheviks will save before the All-Russian Constituent Assembly.”
In case of armed uprisings, the Bolsheviks brought the most loyal military units to Petrograd: Latvian riflemen and Baltic sailors led by Pavel Dybenko. Any demonstrations were prohibited in the area of the Tauride Palace, and the building was cordoned off by soldiers. However, the Constituent Assembly found many supporters who took to the streets. The Reds simply shot these demonstrations.
Finally, on January 18, 1918, the first and last meeting of the Constituent Assembly began. It looked the least like parliament. The deputies reached their places through numerous cordons of armed soldiers. The building was surrounded by Bolshevik detachments who openly mocked the people's representatives. In fact, they found themselves hostages.
The Bolsheviks initially knew that the meeting would be dispersed. But the delegation was sent there to misbehave and mock. The meeting was opened by the representative of the Bolsheviks, Chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee Yakov Sverdlov. Viktor Chernov was elected Chairman of the Constituent Assembly, significantly ahead of his competitor, the left Socialist Revolutionary party Maria Spiridonova, supported by a coalition of left Socialist Revolutionaries and Bolsheviks. Representatives of the Reds actually read out an ultimatum, inviting the deputies to unconditionally recognize the power of the Soviets by adopting the “Declaration of the Rights of the Working and Exploited People.” This automatically meant the meaninglessness of the existence of the Constituent Assembly, since it was recognition of the power of the Bolsheviks. The deputies refused to accept the ultimatum, after which the Reds defiantly left the “counter-revolutionary meeting.” Further, the Constituent Assembly approved some decisions previously adopted by the Bolshevik Council of People's Commissars and the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, in particular on the nationalization of landowners' lands, which in meaning corresponded to the "Decree on Land" and a call to the participants in the First World War to begin immediate peace negotiations, which in meaning partly corresponded to the Bolshevik "Decree on Peace."
Lenin instructed the guards to allow the deputies to sit until the end. And the next day, no one is allowed into the building. But I didn’t have the strength to endure it. Therefore, without waiting for the end of the meeting, it lasted until the early morning next day, - guards led by anarchist Anatoly Zheleznyakov (known to everyone as “sailor Zheleznyak”) dispersed the deputies. The building was cordoned off and no one was allowed in. On the same day, a decree dissolving the assembly was published in Pravda.
The Constituent Assembly ceased to exist by decision of the Council of People's Commissars of Russia. This decision was confirmed by the Third Unifying All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies. By the decision of the same congress, all references to the Constituent Assembly were excluded from laws and regulations.
Demonstration in support of the “Constituent Assembly”
But the idea of the meeting did not die. The civil war, in fact, was fought under the White slogan “all power to the Constituent Assembly” and the counter slogan of the Reds “all power to the Soviets.” Subsequently, the transfer of power to the Constituent Assembly - as the last legitimate institution of power - became the main slogan of almost all white armies. And we partially succeeded in doing this. After the uprising of the Czechoslovak Legion, the government of KOMUCH (Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly) was proclaimed in the Volga region liberated from the Bolsheviks. KOMUCH became one of the first anti-Bolshevik governments in Russia. It actually included several deputies from the assembly dispersed by the Bolsheviks. The People's Army of KOMUCH was also created, one of whose units was commanded by Kappel.
Later, under the onslaught of the Reds, KOMUCH united with the Provisional Siberian Government, creating a single government - the Directory. As a result of a military coup, it was dissolved, and power passed to its military and naval minister, Kolchak, supported by the military.
The Constituent Assembly turned out to be powerless due to unjustified delay in preparing for its convening. It was important to convene it in the very first months after the February Revolution, before the collapse and chaos had yet reached the stage where they were irreversible, and the Bolsheviks had not gained strength.
The story of the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly clearly points to one important circumstance. Unlike, say, Germany, supporters of totalitarianism in Russia did not win democratic elections. Communist = Soviet power established itself in Russia through violence. The Russian people never chose it voluntarily. As soon as, after 70 years of dominance, the communists risked holding real alternative elections, they were defeated again.
The Constituent Assembly is a representative body in Russia, elected in November 1917 and convened in January 1918 to determine the state structure of Russia. It nationalized the landowners' land, called for a peace treaty, and proclaimed Russia a federal democratic republic, thereby abandoning the monarchical form of government. The meeting refused to consider the Declaration of the Rights of the Working and Exploited People, which would have vested the councils of workers' and peasants' deputies with state power, thereby rendering the councils' further actions illegitimate. Dispersed by the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of Soviets of Workers' and Peasants' Deputies, the dispersal was confirmed by the III All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Peasants' Deputies.
The convening of the Constituent Assembly was one of the primary tasks of the Provisional Government. The very name of the government, “Provisional,” came from the idea of the “undecidedness” of the structure of power in Russia before the Constituent Assembly. But it hesitated with him. After the overthrow of the Provisional Government in October 1917, the issue of the Constituent Assembly became paramount for all parties. The Bolsheviks, fearing the discontent of the people, since the idea of convening the Constituent Assembly was very popular, accelerated the elections to it planned by the Provisional Government. On October 27, 1917, the Council of People's Commissars adopted and published, signed by V.I. Lenin, a resolution on holding general elections to the Constituent Assembly on the appointed date - November 12, 1917.
Not a single resolution of the Provisional Government, despite the lengthy preparatory work of specially created commissions, established exactly what number of members of the Constituent Assembly was necessary for its opening. This quorum was determined only by a resolution of Lenin’s Council of People’s Commissars of November 26, according to which the Constituent Assembly was to be opened “upon the arrival in Petrograd of more than 400 members of the U.S.,” which amounted to more than 50% of the total intended number of members of the Constituent Assembly.
As Richard Pipes points out, the Bolsheviks failed to gain control of the Commission for Conducting Elections to the Constituent Assembly; The commission announced that it considered the October Uprising illegal and did not recognize the authority of the Bolshevik Council of People's Commissars.
By the time the candidate lists for the All-Russian Constituent Assembly were registered, a split had occurred in the AKP - the left wing of the party separated and proclaimed the creation of the Party of Left Socialist Revolutionaries (Internationalists), but did not have time to put up a separate list. This gave rise to a number of members of the RSDLP (b), led by then Prime Minister Vladimir Lenin, to put forward a proposal to postpone the elections, but the All-Russian Workers' and Peasants' Government rejected this proposal.
Less than 50% of voters took part in the elections. A total of 715 deputies were elected, of which 370 mandates were received by right-wing Socialist-Revolutionaries and centrists, 175 by Bolsheviks, 40 by left-wing Socialist-Revolutionaries, 17 by Cadets, 15 by Mensheviks, 86 by deputies from national groups (Socialist Revolutionaries 51.7%, Bolsheviks - 24, 5%, Left Social Revolutionaries - 5.6%, Cadets 2.4%, Mensheviks - 2.1%). The Mensheviks suffered a crushing defeat in the elections, gaining less than 3% of the votes, the lion's share of which was represented by Transcaucasia. Subsequently, the Mensheviks came to power in Georgia.
The election results in different regions varied sharply: for example, in Petrograd, about 930 thousand people took part in the elections, 45% of the votes were cast for the Bolsheviks, 27% for the Cadets, and 17% for the Socialist Revolutionaries. In Moscow the Bolsheviks received 48%, on the Northern Front - 56%, and on the Western Front - 67%; in the Baltic Fleet - 58.2%, in 20 districts of the North-Western and Central Industrial Regions - a total of 53.1%. Thus, the Bolsheviks recruited greatest number voices in Petrograd, Moscow, large industrial cities, the Northern and Western fronts, as well as the Baltic Fleet. At the same time, the Socialist Revolutionaries were in the lead due to non-industrial areas and the southern fronts.
Richard Pipes in his work “Bolsheviks in the Struggle for Power” draws attention to the significant, in his opinion, successes of the Cadet party in these elections: by the end of 1917, all right-wing parties ceased their activities, and the Cadets began to attract all right-wing votes, including supporters of restoration autocratic monarchy. In Petrograd and Moscow they get second place behind the Bolsheviks, gaining 26.2% and 34.2% of the votes, respectively, and beat the Bolsheviks in 11 of 38 provincial cities. At the same time, the Cadets as a whole received only 4.5% of the seats in the Constituent Assembly
Making a decision on dissolution
After the elections of the Constituent Assembly, it became clear that it would be Socialist-Revolutionary in composition. In addition, politicians such as Kerensky, atamans Dutov and Kaledin, and the Ukrainian General Secretary of Military Affairs Petliura were elected to the Assembly (see List of members of the Constituent Assembly).
The Bolsheviks' course for radical reforms was under threat. In addition, the Socialist Revolutionaries were supporters of continuing the “war to a victorious end” (“revolutionary defencism”), which prompted the dispersal of the Assembly of wavering soldiers and sailors. The coalition of Bolsheviks and Left Socialist Revolutionaries decides to disperse the meeting as “counter-revolutionary.” Lenin was immediately sharply opposed to the Assembly. Sukhanov N. N. in his fundamental work “Notes on the Revolution” claims that Lenin, even after his arrival from exile in April 1917, considered the Constituent Assembly a “liberal undertaking.” The Commissioner of Propaganda, Press and Agitation of the Northern Region, Volodarsky, goes even further and states that “the masses in Russia have never suffered from parliamentary cretinism,” and “if the masses make a mistake with the ballots, they will have to take up another weapon.”
During the discussion, Kamenev, Rykov, Milyutin speak from “pro-establishment” positions. On November 20, Narkomnats Stalin proposed postponing the convening of the Assembly. People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs Trotsky and co-chairman of the Bolshevik faction in the Constituent Assembly Bukharin propose convening a “revolutionary convention” of the Bolshevik and Left Socialist Revolutionary factions, by analogy with the events of the French Revolution. This point of view is also supported by the left Socialist-Revolutionary Nathanson.
According to Trotsky's memoirs.
Shortly before the convening of the Constituent Assembly, Mark Nathanson, the oldest member of the Central Committee of the Left Socialist Revolutionary Party, came to us and from the first words said: “after all, we will probably have to disperse the Constituent Assembly by force...
- Bravo! - Lenin exclaimed. - What is true is true! Will yours agree to this?
- We have some hesitations, but I think that in the end they will agree.
On November 23, 1917, the Bolsheviks, under the leadership of Stalin and Petrovsky, occupied the Commission for Elections to the Constituent Assembly, which had already completed its work, appointing M. S. Uritsky as its new commissioner. On November 26, the Predovnarkom Lenin signed the decree “For the opening of the Constituent Assembly,” which required a quorum for its opening 400 people, and, according to the decree, the Assembly was to be opened by a person authorized by the Council of People's Commissars, that is, a Bolshevik. Thus, the Bolsheviks managed to delay the opening of the Assembly until its 400 delegates gathered in Petrograd.
On November 28, 60 delegates, mostly right-wing Social Revolutionaries, gather in Petrograd and try to start the work of the Assembly. On the same day, the Predsovnarkom Lenin outlawed the Cadet Party, issuing a decree “On the arrest of the leaders of the civil war against the revolution.” Stalin comments on this decision with the words: “we definitely must finish off the cadets, or they will finish us off.” The Left Socialist Revolutionaries, while generally welcoming this step, express dissatisfaction with the fact that such a decision was made by the Bolsheviks without consultation with their allies. The left Socialist-Revolutionary I.Z. Steinberg is sharply opposed, who, having called the cadets “counter-revolutionaries,” spoke out against the arrest in this case of the entire party without exception. The cadet newspaper "Rech" is closed, and two weeks later it reopens under the name "Our Century".
On November 29, the Bolshevik Council of People's Commissars prohibits "private meetings" of delegates of the Constituent Assembly. At the same time, the Right Socialist Revolutionaries formed the “Union for the Defense of the Constituent Assembly.”
In general, the internal party discussion ends with Lenin's victory. On December 11, he sought re-election of the bureau of the Bolshevik faction in the Constituent Assembly, some of whose members spoke out against the dispersal. On December 12, 1917, Lenin compiled “Theses on the Constituent Assembly,” in which he stated that “... Any attempt, direct or indirect, to consider the question of the Constituent Assembly from a formal legal side, within the framework of ordinary bourgeois democracy, without taking into account the class struggle and civil war is a betrayal of the cause of the proletariat and a transition to the point of view of the bourgeoisie,” and the slogan “All power to the Constituent Assembly” was declared the slogan of the “Kaledinites.” On December 22, Zinoviev declares that under this slogan “lies the slogan “Down with the Soviets”.”
On December 20, the Council of People's Commissars decides to open the work of the Assembly on January 5. On December 22, the resolution of the Council of People's Commissars was approved by the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. In opposition to the Constituent Assembly, the Bolsheviks and Left Socialist Revolutionaries are preparing to convene the Third All-Russian Congress of Soviets in January 1918. On December 23, martial law was introduced in Petrograd.
Already on January 1, 1918, the first unsuccessful attempt on Lenin took place.
In mid-January, a second attempt on Lenin's life was foiled.
At a meeting of the Central Committee of the AKP, held on January 3, 1918, an armed uprising on the opening day of the Constituent Assembly, proposed by the party’s military commission, was rejected “as an untimely and unreliable act.”
Boris Petrov and I visited the regiment to report to its leaders that the armed demonstration was canceled and that they were asked to “come to the demonstration unarmed so that blood would not be shed.”
The second half of the sentence caused a storm of indignation among them... “Why, comrades, are you really laughing at us? Or are you joking?.. We are not small children and if we went to fight the Bolsheviks, we would do it would have been completely deliberate... And blood... blood, perhaps, would not have been shed if we had come out as a whole regiment armed.”
We talked for a long time with the Semyonovites, and the more we talked, the clearer it became that our refusal to take armed action had erected a blank wall of mutual misunderstanding between them and us.
“Intellectuals... They are wise without knowing what. Now it is clear that there are no military people among them.”
Trotsky L.D. subsequently sarcastically remarked the following about the Socialist Revolutionary deputies:
But they carefully developed the ritual of the first meeting. They brought candles with them in case the Bolsheviks turned off the electricity, and a large number of sandwiches in case they were deprived of food. So democracy came to fight dictatorship - fully armed with sandwiches and candles.
First meeting and dissolution
Bolshevik shooting of a workers' demonstration in support of the meeting
On January 5 (18), Pravda published a resolution signed by a member of the All-Chka board, since March the head of the Petrograd Cheka, M. S. Uritsky, who banned all rallies and demonstrations in Petrograd in areas adjacent to the Tauride Palace. This was done out of fear of any provocations and pogroms, since recently, on December 11, the Tauride Palace had already been captured by an armed crowd (Pravda, No. 203 of December 12, 1917). It was also known about the intention of the right Social Revolutionaries to take up arms . The Social Revolutionaries intended to withdraw the Semenovsky and Preobrazhensky regiments, accompanied by the armored cars of the Izmailovsky armored division. Preparations were also being made for the “removal from use as hostages” of Lenin and Trotsky. Only on January 3, the Central Committee of the Right Social Revolutionaries abandoned these plans. The armored cars were disabled, as a result of which the soldiers refused to leave the barracks, and it was not possible to enlist the support of the workers. The leadership of the Socialist-Revolutionaries considered the elimination of the Bolshevik leaders inappropriate, since this would cause “such indignation among the workers and soldiers that it could end in a general pogrom of the intelligentsia. After all, for many, many, Lenin and Trotsky are popular leaders...”.
According to Bonch-Bruevich, the instructions for dispersing the demonstrators read: “Bring back the unarmed. Armed people showing hostile intentions should not be allowed close, persuade them to disperse and not interfere with the guard to carry out the order given to him. In case of failure to comply with the order, disarm and arrest. For armed resistance respond with merciless armed resistance. If any workers appear at the demonstration, convince them to the last extreme, like lost comrades going against their comrades and the people's power." At the same time, Bolshevik agitators at the most important factories (Obukhovsky, Baltiysky, etc.) tried to enlist the support of the workers, but were unsuccessful. The workers remained neutral.
Together with the rear units of the Latvian riflemen and the Lithuanian Life Guards regiment, the Bolsheviks surrounded the approaches to the Tauride Palace. Assembly supporters responded with demonstrations of support; According to various sources, from 10 to 100 thousand people took part in the demonstrations. On January 5, 1918, as part of columns of demonstrators, workers, employees, and intellectuals moved to Tauride and were shot with machine guns. From the testimony of Obukhov plant worker D.N. Bogdanov dated January 29, 1918, a participant in the demonstration in support of the Constituent Assembly:
“I, as a participant in the procession back on January 9, 1905, must state the fact that I did not see such a cruel reprisal there, what our “comrades” did, who still dare to call themselves such, and in conclusion I must say that after that I execution and the savagery that the Red Guards and sailors did to our comrades, and even more so after they began to tear out banners and break poles, and then burn them at the stake, I could not understand what country I was in: or a socialist country, or in the country of savages who are capable of doing everything that the Nikolaev satraps could not do, Lenin’s fellows have now done.”
GA RF. F.1810. Op.1. D.514. L.79-80
The number of deaths was estimated to range from 8 to 21 people. The official figure was 21 people (Izvestia of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, January 6, 1918), hundreds of wounded. Among the dead were the Socialist Revolutionaries E. S. Gorbachevskaya, G. I. Logvinov and A. Efimov. A few days later the victims were buried at the Preobrazhenskoye cemetery.
M. Gorky wrote about this in “Untimely Thoughts”:
... "Pravda" is lying - it knows very well that the "bourgeoisie" have nothing to rejoice about the opening of the Constituent Assembly, they have nothing to do among 246 socialists of one party and 140 Bolsheviks.
Pravda knows that workers from the Obukhov, Patronny and other factories took part in the demonstration, and that under the red banners of the Russian Social-Democratic Party. workers from Vasileostrovsky, Vyborg and other districts marched to the Tauride Palace. It was these workers who were shot, and no matter how much Pravda lies, it will not hide the shameful fact.
The “bourgeoisie” may have rejoiced when they saw soldiers and the Red Guard snatching revolutionary banners from the hands of the workers, trampling them underfoot and burning them at the stake. But it is possible that this pleasant spectacle no longer pleased all the “bourgeois”, because even among them there are honest people who sincerely love their people, their country.
One of these was Andrei Ivanovich Shingarev, who was vilely killed by some animals.
So, on January 5, the unarmed workers of Petrograd were shot. They shot without warning that they would shoot, they shot from ambushes, through the cracks of fences, cowardly, like real murderers...
On January 5, a demonstration in support of the Constituent Assembly in Moscow was dispersed. According to official data (Izvestia of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. 1918. January 11), the number of killed was more than 50, the number of wounded was more than 200. The firefights lasted all day, the building of the Dorogomilovsky Council was blown up, and the chief of staff of the Red Guard of the Dorogomilovsky district, P. G. Tyapkin, and several Red Guards.
First and last meeting
The meeting of the Constituent Assembly opened on January 5 (18), 1918 in the Tauride Palace in Petrograd. It was attended by 410 deputies; the majority belonged to the centrist Socialist-Revolutionaries; the Bolsheviks and Left Socialist-Revolutionaries had 155 mandates (38.5%). The meeting was opened on behalf of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee by its chairman Yakov Sverdlov, who expressed hope for “full recognition by the Constituent Assembly of all decrees and resolutions of the Council of People’s Commissars” and proposed to accept the draft “Declaration of the Rights of the Working and Exploited People” written by V. I. Lenin, the 1st paragraph of which declared Russia "Republic of Soviets of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies." However, the Assembly, by a majority of 237 votes to 146, refuses to even discuss the Bolshevik Declaration.
Viktor Mikhailovich Chernov was elected Chairman of the All-Russian Constituent Assembly, for whom 244 votes were cast. The second contender was the leader of the Left Socialist Revolutionary Party, Maria Aleksandrovna Spiridonova, supported by the Bolsheviks; 153 deputies cast their votes for her.
Lenin, through the Bolshevik Skvortsov-Stepanov, invites the Assembly to sing “The Internationale,” which is what all the socialists present do, from the Bolsheviks to the right-wing Socialist Revolutionaries, who are sharply opposed to them.
During the second part of the meeting, at three o'clock in the morning, the Bolshevik representative Fyodor Raskolnikov declares that the Bolsheviks (in protest against the non-acceptance of the Declaration) are leaving the meeting. On behalf of the Bolsheviks, he declares that “not wishing for a moment to cover up the crimes of the enemies of the people, we declare that we are leaving the Constituent Assembly in order to transfer to the Soviet power of deputies the final decision on the issue of attitude towards the counter-revolutionary part of the Constituent Assembly.”
According to the Bolshevik Meshcheryakov, after the departure of the faction, many guard soldiers guarding the Assembly “took their rifles at the ready,” one even “took aim at the crowd of Socialist Revolutionary delegates,” and Lenin personally stated that the departure of the Bolshevik faction of the Assembly “will have such an effect on the soldiers and sailors holding guard, that they will immediately shoot all the remaining Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks." One of his contemporaries, M. Vishnyak, comments on the situation in the meeting room as follows:
Having descended from the platform, I went to see what was happening in the choir... Individual groups continued to “rally” and argue. Some of the deputies are trying to convince the soldiers of the rightness of the meeting and the criminality of the Bolsheviks. It flashes: “And a bullet for Lenin if he deceives!”
Following the Bolsheviks at four o’clock in the morning, the Left Socialist Revolutionary faction left the Assembly, declaring through its representative Karelin that “The Constituent Assembly is in no way a reflection of the mood and will of the working masses... We are leaving, withdrawing from this Assembly... We are going for in order to bring our strength, our energy to Soviet institutions, to the Central Executive Committee."
The remaining deputies, chaired by the leader of the Social Revolutionaries Viktor Chernov, continued their work and adopted the following resolutions:
the first 10 points of the agrarian law, which declared land to be the property of the whole people;
appealing to the warring powers to begin peace negotiations;
declaration proclaiming the creation of the Russian Democratic Federative Republic.
Lenin ordered not to disperse the meeting immediately, but to wait for the meeting to end and then close the Tauride Palace and not allow anyone there the next day. The meeting, however, dragged on until late at night and then into the morning. At 5 o’clock in the morning on January 6 (19), having informed the presiding Socialist-Revolutionary Chernov that “the guard is tired” (“I have received instructions to bring to your attention that all those present leave the meeting room because the guard is tired”), the head of security anarchist A. Zheleznyakov closed the meeting, inviting the deputies to disperse. On January 6, at 4:40 a.m., the delegates dispersed, deciding to meet on the same day at 5:00 p.m. Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars Lenin orders the guards of the Tauride Palace "not to allow any violence against the counter-revolutionary part of the Constituent Assembly and, while freely releasing everyone from the Tauride Palace, not to let anyone into it without special orders."
Commissioner Dybenko declares to the head of security, Zheleznyakov, that it is necessary to disperse the Assembly by force immediately, without waiting for the end of the meeting, according to Lenin’s order (“I cancel Lenin’s order. Disperse the Constituent Assembly, and we’ll sort it out tomorrow”). Dybenko himself was also elected to the Constituent Assembly from the Baltic Fleet; At the meeting, he sent a note to the presidium with a comic proposal to “elect Kerensky and Kornilov as secretaries.”
On the evening of the same day, January 6, deputies found the doors of the Tauride Palace locked. At the entrance there was a guard with machine guns and two light artillery pieces. Security said there would be no meeting. On January 9, the decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee on the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, adopted on January 6, was published.
On January 6, 1918, the Pravda newspaper announced that
Servants of bankers, capitalists and landowners, allies of Kaledin, Dutov, slaves of the American dollar, killers from around the corner, the right-wing Socialist Revolutionaries demand the establishment. the assembly of all power for themselves and their masters - the enemies of the people.
In words they seem to join the people's demands: land, peace and control, but in reality they are trying to tighten the noose around the neck of socialist power and revolution.
But workers, peasants and soldiers will not fall for the bait of the false words of the worst enemies of socialism; in the name of the socialist revolution and the socialist Soviet republic, they will sweep away all its obvious and hidden killers.
On January 18, the Council of People's Commissars adopted a decree ordering the removal of all references to the Constituent Assembly from existing laws. On January 18 (31), the III All-Russian Congress of Soviets approved the decree on the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly and decided to remove from the legislation indications of its temporary nature (“pending the convening of the Constituent Assembly”).
Murder of Shingaryov and Kokoshkin
By the time the meeting was convened, one of the leaders of the Constitutional Democratic Party (People's Freedom Party) and deputy of the Constituent Assembly, Shingaryov, was arrested by the Bolshevik authorities on November 28 (the day of the supposed opening of the Constituent Assembly), and on January 5 (18) he was imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress. On January 6 (19), he was transferred to the Mariinsky Prison Hospital, where on the night of January 7 (20), he was killed by sailors along with another cadet leader, Kokoshkin.
Dispersal of the Constituent Assembly
Although the right-wing parties suffered a crushing defeat in the elections, since some of them were banned and campaigning for them was prohibited by the Bolsheviks, the defense of the Constituent Assembly became one of the slogans of the White movement.
By the summer of 1918, with the support of the rebellious Czechoslovak Corps, several Socialist Revolutionary and pro-Socialist Revolutionary governments were formed in the vast territory of the Volga region and Siberia, which began an armed struggle against the created