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ALL-RUSSIAN CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY. The convocation of the Constituent Assembly as an organ of supreme democratic power was the demand of all socialist parties in pre-revolutionary Russia, from the Popular Socialists to the Bolsheviks. Elections to the Constituent Assembly were held at the end of 1917. The overwhelming majority of voters participating in the elections, about 90%, voted for the socialist parties, the socialists made up 90% of all deputies (the Bolsheviks received only 24% of the votes). But the Bolsheviks came to power under the slogan "All power to the Soviets!" They could maintain their autocracy, obtained at the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets, only by relying on the Soviets, opposing them to the Constituent Assembly. At the Second Congress of Soviets, the Bolsheviks promised to convene the Constituent Assembly and recognize it as the authority on which "the solution of all major issues depends," but they were not going to fulfill this promise. On December 3, at the Congress of Soviets of Peasant Deputies, Lenin, despite the protest of a number of delegates, declared: “The Soviets are higher than any parliaments, any Constituent Assemblies. The Bolshevik Party has always said that the highest body is the Soviets. The Bolsheviks considered the Constituent Assembly their main rival in the struggle for power. Immediately after the election, Lenin warned that the Constituent Assembly would "doom itself to political death" if it opposed Soviet power.
Lenin used the bitter struggle within the Socialist-Revolutionary Party and entered into a political bloc with the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries. Despite disagreements with them on the issues of a multi-party system and the dictatorship of the proletariat, a separate world, freedom of the press, the Bolsheviks received the support they needed to stay in power. The Central Committee of the Socialist-Revolutionaries, believing in the unconditional prestige and invulnerability of the Constituent Assembly, did not take real steps to protect it.
The Constituent Assembly opened on January 5, 1918 in the Tauride Palace. Ya.M. Sverdlov, who, by agreement of the Bolsheviks and the Left Social Revolutionaries, was supposed to open the meeting, was late. Lenin was nervous, because. the question was decided: to be or not to be his government.
Taking advantage of the confusion on the left side of the deputies, the Socialist-Revolutionary faction tried to seize the initiative and suggested that the oldest deputy, the Socialist-Revolutionary S.P. Shvetsov, open the meeting. But when he got up to the podium, he was met by a furious noise, the whistles of the Bolsheviks. Confused, Shvetsov announced a break, but Sverdlov, who arrived in time, snatched the bell from his hands and, on behalf of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of Soviets, proposed to continue the Constituent Assembly. 244 votes against 151 elected the Socialist-Revolutionary V.M. Chernov as its chairman. In his speech, Chernov announced the desirability of working with the Bolsheviks, but on the condition that they would not try to "push the Soviets against the Constituent Assembly." The Soviets, as class organizations, "should not pretend to replace the Constituent Assembly," Chernov emphasized. He announced his readiness to put to a referendum all the main questions in order to put an end to the undermining of the Constituent Assembly, and in his person - under the power of the people.
The Bolsheviks and Left SRs took Chernov's speech as an open confrontation with the Soviets and demanded a break for factional meetings. They never returned to the meeting room.
The members of the Constituent Assembly nevertheless opened the debate and decided not to disperse until the discussion of the documents prepared by the Socialist-Revolutionaries on the land, the state system, and the world was completed. But the head of the guard, sailor Zheleznyak, demanded that the deputies leave the meeting room, saying that "the guard was tired."
On January 6, the Council of People's Commissars adopted theses on the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, and on the night of the 7th All-Russian Central Executive Committee approved the decrees.
On January 10, the Third Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies opened in the Tauride Palace, convened in opposition to the Constituent Assembly. From the rostrum of the congress, the sailor Zheleznyak told how he and a group of military men dispersed the "cowardly Constituent Assembly." The speech of Lenin's comrade-in-arms L.D. Trotsky sounded class irreconcilable: “We know the Constituent Assembly by its deeds, by its composition, by its parties. They wanted to create a second chamber, the Chamber of Shadows of the February Revolution. And we do not in the least conceal or obscure the fact that in the fight against this attempt we have violated formal law. We also do not hide the fact that we used violence, but we did it in order to fight against all violence, we did it in the struggle for the triumph of the greatest ideals.
The dispersal of the Constituent Assembly was not accepted by a significant part of the country's population, which placed great hopes on the democratically elected institution.
Lenin's opponent in the struggle for power, Chernov, addressed him with an open letter, reminding him of his "solemn and oathful promises to obey the will of the Constituent Assembly", and then dispersed him. He called Lenin a liar, "who stole people's trust with false promises and then blasphemously trampled on his word, his promises."
The Constituent Assembly was an important stage in the struggle of Lenin and the Bolsheviks against their political opponents in the socialist camp. They gradually cut off the most right-wing parts of it - first the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks in the days of the October Revolution of 1917, then the socialists in the Constituent Assembly, and finally, their allies - the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries.
Yefim Gimpelson
Application
The Russian Revolution, from its very beginning, promoted the Soviets of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies as a mass organization of all working and exploited classes, the only one capable of leading the struggle of these classes for their complete political and economic emancipation.
During the entire first period of the Russian revolution, the Soviets multiplied, grew and strengthened, living out from their own experience the illusions of conciliation with the bourgeoisie, the deceptive forms of bourgeois-democratic parliamentarism, coming to the practical conclusion that it was impossible to emancipate the oppressed classes without breaking with these forms and with any conciliation. Such a break was the October Revolution, the transfer of all power into the hands of the Soviets.
The Constituent Assembly, elected from lists drawn up before the October Revolution, was an expression of the old correlation of political forces, when the Compromisers and the Cadets were in power.
The people could not then, voting for the candidates of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, make a choice between the Right Socialist-Revolutionaries, supporters of the bourgeoisie, and the Left, supporters of socialism. Thus, this Constituent Assembly, which was supposed to be the crown of the bourgeois-parliamentary republic, could not but stand in the way of the October Revolution and Soviet power. The October Revolution, having given power to the Soviets and through the Soviets to the working and exploited classes, aroused the desperate resistance of the exploiters, and in the suppression of this resistance fully revealed itself as the beginning of the socialist revolution.
The working classes have had to experience that the old bourgeois parliamentarism has outlived itself, that it is completely incompatible with the tasks of realizing socialism, that not national, but only class institutions (such as the Soviets) are capable of defeating the resistance of the propertied classes and laying the foundations of a socialist society.
Any renunciation of the full power of the Soviets, of the Soviet Republic conquered by the people, in favor of bourgeois parliamentarism and a Constituent Assembly would now be a step backwards and the collapse of the entire October Workers' and Peasants' Revolution.
The Constituent Assembly, opened on January 5, by virtue of circumstances known to all, gave the majority to the Right Socialist-Revolutionary Party, the parties of Kerensky, Avksentiev and Chernov. Naturally, this party refused to accept for discussion the completely precise, clear, and not allowing for any misunderstandings proposal of the supreme organ of Soviet power, the Central Executive Committee of Soviets, to recognize the program of Soviet power, to recognize the "Declaration of the Rights of the Working and Exploited People", to recognize the October Revolution and Soviet power. Thus the Constituent Assembly severed all ties between itself and the Soviet Republic of Russia. The departure from such a Constituent Assembly of the factions of the Bolsheviks and the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, who now obviously constitute an enormous majority in the Soviets and enjoy the confidence of the workers and the majority of the peasants, was inevitable.
And outside the walls of the Constituent Assembly, the parties of the majority of the Constituent Assembly, the Right Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, are waging an open struggle against Soviet power, calling in their bodies to overthrow it, objectively thereby supporting the resistance of the exploiters to the transfer of land and factories into the hands of the working people.
It is clear that the rest of the Constituent Assembly can therefore only play the role of covering up the struggle of the bourgeois counter-revolution to overthrow the power of the Soviets.
Therefore, the Central Executive Committee decides: The Constituent Assembly is dissolved.
The i's on the question of the "Constituent Assembly" have been dotted, and have been done for a long time.
We just need to periodically remind ourselves of this so as not to succumb to the speculations on this subject by liberals, neo-blykhs and pseudo-monarchists.
Brief and capacious material will remind someone, and for someone it will reveal long-known facts about the short life of the Constituent Assembly.
V. Karpets."Ucheredilka": truth and lies.
Today, not only the media, but also the Russian authorities are actively raising the issue of the Constituent Assembly, the dissolution of which they are trying to present as a crime of the Bolsheviks and a violation of the “natural”, “normal” historical path of Russia. But is it?
The very idea of the Constituent Assembly as a form of government similar to the Zemsky Sobor (which was elected tsar on February 21, 1613 Mikhail Romanov), put forward in 1825 by the Decembrists, then, in the 1860s, it was supported by the organizations "Land and Freedom" and "Narodnaya Volya", and in 1903 included the requirement to convene the Constituent Assembly in its program RSDLP. But during the First Russian Revolution of 1905-07. the masses proposed a higher form of democracy, the soviets. “The Russian people have made a gigantic leap — a leap from tsarism to the Soviets. This is an irrefutable and nowhere else unheard of fact.”(V. Lenin, vol. 35, p. 239). After the February Revolution of 1917, the Provisional Government, which overthrew the tsar, did not resolve a single painful issue until October 1917 and in every possible way delayed the convocation of the Constituent Assembly, the election of delegates of which began only after the overthrow of the Provisional Government, on November 12 (25), 1917 and continued until January 1918. On October 25 (November 7), 1917, the October Socialist Revolution took place under the slogan "All power to the Soviets!" Before her, a split into left and right occurred in the Socialist-Revolutionary Party; the left followed the Bolsheviks, who led this revolution (i.e., the balance of political forces changed). On October 26, 1917, the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets adopted the Declaration of the Working and Exploited People. Decrees of the Soviet government followed, resolving the most sensitive issues: the decree on peace; on the nationalization of land, banks, factories; about the eight-hour working day and others.
First meeting of the Constituent Assembly opened on January 5 (18), 1918 in the Tauride Palace of Petrograd, where 410 delegates from 715 elected (i.e. 57.3% -arctus). The Presidium, which consisted of Right Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, refused to consider the Declaration and recognize the decrees of Soviet power. Then the Bolsheviks (120 delegates) left the hall. Behind them are the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries (another 150). Only 140 delegates left out of 410 (34% of the participants or 19.6% of the elected -arctus). It is clear that in such a composition the decisions of the Constituent Assembly and it itself could not be considered legitimate,
therefore, the meeting was interrupted at five o'clock in the morning on January 6 (19), 1918 by a guard of revolutionary sailors. On January 6 (19), 1918, the Council of People's Commissars decided to dissolve the Constituent Assembly, and on the same day this decision was formalized by a decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, where, in particular, it was said : “The Constituent Assembly severed all ties between itself and the Soviet Republic of Russia. The departure from such a Constituent Assembly of the factions of the Bolsheviks and Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, who now obviously constitute an enormous majority in the Soviets and enjoy the confidence of the workers and the majority of the peasants, was inevitable ... It is clear that the remaining part of the Constituent Assembly can therefore only play the role of covering up the struggle of the bourgeois counter-revolution for the overthrow of the power of the Soviets. Therefore, the Central Executive Committee decides: The Constituent Assembly is dissolved.
This decree was approved on January 19 (31), 1918 by the delegates of the Third All-Russian Congress of Soviets - 1647 with a decisive vote and 210 with an advisory one. In the same Tauride Palace in Petrograd. (By the way, the speakers were the Bolsheviks: according to the Report - Lenin, Sverdlov; according to the formation of the RSFSR - Stalin).
Only on June 8, 1918 in Samara, "liberated" from Soviet power as a result of the uprising of the Czechoslovak corps, five delegates from among the right SRs (I. Brushvit, V. Volsky - chairman, P. Klimushkin, I. Nesterov and B. Fortunatov) the Committee of Members of the All-Russian Constituent Assembly (Komuch) was formed, which played a truly "outstanding" role in inciting civil war in Russia. But even during the heyday of Komuch, in the early autumn of 1918, only 97 out of 715 delegates were listed in its composition ( 13,6% - arctus). In the future, the "opposition" delegates to the Constituent Assembly from among the Right Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks did not play any independent role in the "white" movement, since they were considered, if not "red", then "pink", and some of them were shot by Kolchak for "revolutionary propaganda" ".
These are the historical facts. From which it follows that the real logic of the revolutionary and political struggle in general is very far from the logic of the “crocodile tears” of domestic liberals who are ready to mourn the “death of Russian democracy” in January 1918, successfully and without any damage to themselves “digesting” the results of the “Russian victory”. democracy” in October 1993, although the sailor Zheleznyak and his comrades did not shoot their political opponents with machine guns at all (we are not even talking about tank guns here).
In conclusion, we can only repeat Lenin's well-known words: "The assimilation of the October Revolution by the people has not yet ended" (V.I. Lenin, vol. 35, p. 241). They are very relevant today.
The convocation of the Constituent Assembly in Russia was the main problem of the country at the beginning of the 20th century. This body was supposed to solve the most important issues of the collapsing state, but they could not assemble it in any way ...
The idea of such a convocation was put forward by the Decembrists in their demands: they proposed to create, or rather, to revive the Zemsky Sobors, the predecessors of the Constituent Assembly. The Constituent Assembly is a kind of parliamentary institution designed to solve the problems of the state structure of the country and adopt the Constitution of Russia. Such a body was badly needed in the ruling at that time. However, neither the Soviets nor the Provisional Government wanted the convocation, since these bodies were afraid of losing their power.
Everything was for the convocation of the Constituent Assembly: first of all, the law. The regulation on elections to this representative body was created already in August 1917. It established several rules, namely: the age limit (all citizens - only from 20 years old, the military - from 18 years old) and the election procedure: universal, equal and secret suffrage. Elections to the Constituent Assembly were held only in November of the same year. According to their results, the majority of seats were taken by the Russian Social Revolutionaries - Socialist-Revolutionaries (they had about 40% of the votes), the Bolsheviks had the second place in terms of the majority - more than 23%. The rest were distributed among the Cadets, Mensheviks and other few parties.
Despite the fact that elections to the new long-awaited body were held at the end of 1917, it met only at the beginning of the next year - on January 5th.
The convocation of the Constituent Assembly meant the hope of all parties and people for the resolution of the main problems: the structure of the country, namely, the form of its government.
The Bolsheviks, who had already seized power by that time, did not receive a majority in the new parliament, were very afraid for their positions, and this was not in vain. The deputies sat all day long.
It took place in the famous revolutionary St. Petersburg.
The members of the numerous parties of Russia elected by the people could not come to a consensus, plus everything, the Constituent Assembly refused to accept the Bolshevik "Declaration of the rights of the working and exploited people."
This meant that it refused to accept all the decrees adopted by it. The famous statement of the sailor Zheleznyak, addressed to the deputies, that “the guard was tired of guarding”, marked the beginning. It happened on the night of January 5-6, and in the evening of the same day, having again come to the Tauride Palace, the deputies saw that it was closed. The decree on the dissolution of the long-awaited Russian parliament was published and adopted at the end of January 1918.
The convocation of the Constituent Assembly in Russia is only a cover for Soviet power, only an excuse for it to be considered legitimate. The assembly, which sat just over a day, was unable to resolve the main issues, it was dispersed by the Bolsheviks, who were afraid of losing power.
Material from the Uncyclopedia
A representative institution created on the basis of universal suffrage, designed in accordance with state-legal views to establish the form of government and develop the constitution of the country.
For the first time, the demand for the convocation of the Constituent Assembly (Great Council) was put forward by the Decembrists. Subsequently, the idea of the Constituent Assembly (Zemsky Sobor) was developed by "Land and Freedom", and then entered the program of the Narodnaya Volya (see Populism). At the beginning of the XX century. the slogan of the Constituent Assembly was widely used in the struggle against the autocracy and was included in the programs of many political parties.
After the February Revolution, most political parties proclaimed the convocation of the Constituent Assembly as one of the main demands and called for not solving the most important tasks of the revolution before its opening. The Bolshevik Party, without formally rejecting this idea, believed that after the development of a democratic revolution into a socialist one, the dictatorship of the proletariat would come, the state form of which should be a republic of Soviets, and not a parliamentary republic. But for the Provisional Government, the main task was to convene the Constituent Assembly, which it announced in March 1917. In this regard, a Special Conference was created to prepare the election law, which completed its work by early September. The regulation on elections to the Constituent Assembly, developed by him and approved by the Provisional Government, provided for a proportional system based on universal suffrage. In August, the All-Russian Commission for Elections to the Constituent Assembly began its work, the tasks of which were the technical preparation of the elections and the general management of their conduct.
In September, the councils of city dumas and zemstvos, which had previously drawn up voter lists for local self-government bodies, began compiling voter lists for the Constituent Assembly. Candidate lists of political parties were published in October.
The Bolshevik Party, which came to power after the October Revolution, fearing the discontent of the masses, among whom the slogan of convening the Constituent Assembly became popular, did not cancel the elections to it. The Soviet government adopted a resolution to convene the Constituent Assembly at the appointed time - November 12. But due to poor preparations and outbreaks of civil war in some places, the elections were not held on time in far from all constituencies. In a number of places they took place in late November - early December, and in several remote districts - in early January 1918. Not without reason fearing the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly by the Bolsheviks, the leaders of a number of political parties created the "Union for the Defense of the Constituent Assembly" in late November. Under the slogan "All power to the Constituent Assembly!" the union tried to oppose it to the Soviet regime and conducted propaganda in this direction. At the meeting of the Constituent Assembly that opened on January 5, 1918 in Petrograd in the Tauride Palace, about 410 deputies out of 715 elected were present. Among them, the Socialist-Revolutionaries-centrists prevailed, headed by V. M. Chernov, who became its chairman. There were 155 people (38.5%) of the Bolsheviks and the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries adjoining them. Most of the deputies refused to discuss the “Declaration of the rights of the working and exploited people” proposed by the chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, Ya. M. Sverdlov, and did not recognize the decrees of the Soviet government. In this regard, the Bolshevik faction, and then the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries and some other groups called off the meeting. The meeting, which lasted 13 hours, was closed in the morning at the request of the head of the guard of the palace A. G. Zheleznyakov, who informed V. M. Chernov received from a member of the Soviet government
P. E. Dybenko instructions: everyone present to leave the room, as the time is late and the guard is tired. The All-Russian Central Executive Committee, on the report of V. I. Lenin, adopted a decree on the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, approved by the 3rd All-Russian Congress of Soviets. Demonstrations in support of the Constituent Assembly were dispersed by the Bolsheviks.
A number of deputies of the Constituent Assembly gathered in Samara, forming on June 8, 1918 the Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly (Komuch). During the Civil War, the slogan of the Constituent Assembly became the basis of the political programs of the Socialist-Revolutionaries, Mensheviks, and some of the leaders of the White movement.
And the overthrow of the tsar, monarchical Russia passed into the status of "republic". The provisional government (as the new authorities called themselves) shouldered the entire burden of government. By that time, many parties had appeared that had followers and put forward their program for further restructuring. In order to hold decent elections, the Constituent Assembly was organized. The year 1917, among other things, becomes famous for the great turmoil surrounding the preparations for this event. And it was this year that the first vote took place. The most prominent parties were:
Bolsheviks;
Mensheviks;
The elections in 1917 began with preparations.
Preparing for the elections
Representatives of all parties and all kinds of associations that existed at that time took part in the preparation. The printing house produced large editions of literature, leaflets, and other things. Polls were conducted on the streets. Various speeches were also held in order to acquaint the people with the policy of a particular party.
The event promised to be democratic. What was not until now in the Russian Empire. Any citizen of 20 years of age or a person serving in the army at the age of 18 could become a voter. Women could also vote. What was a curiosity not only in Russia, but also in most countries. The exceptions were Denmark, New Zealand, Norway and some states of America, where women have established equal rights with men.
Vote
The 1917 Constituent Assembly elections were held in several constituencies into which the country was divided. The deputy quota was allocated at the rate of one per two hundred thousand people. The only exception was Siberia. The local calculation was carried out on the basis of one hundred and seventy-nine thousand people.
The principle of proportionality, characteristic of the selection to the Constituent Assembly of 1917, was borrowed from the Belgians. And the main feature of this system was considered that, in addition to the majority, a minority of the population is also allowed. For this, about twelve districts were organized in small districts with their characteristic elections.
Elections to the Constituent Assembly of 1917 were held in November. This event lasted no more than three days.
Election results
At the end of the elections to the Constituent Assembly in 1917, the results showed that the Socialist-Revolutionaries were in the lead, with about 50% of the votes. In second place were the Bolsheviks. Their percentage of votes did not exceed 25. In the lower places were the Mensheviks and the Cadets.
Liquidation of the cadet party
The Bolsheviks, under public pressure, did not prevent the elections to the Constituent Assembly in 1917, but were defeated there. In order to somehow reduce the number of their competitors, they prepared a decree, subsequently approved by the Council of People's Commissars and stating that the Cadets Party is the party of enemies of the people. After that, the Cadets were deprived of their mandates.
Then they were arrested and executed. The Left Socialist-Revolutionaries wanted to come to their aid, but the Council of People's Commissars completely forbade them to do this, referring to the same decree. Later, Kokoshkin, the leader of the Kadet Party, was killed. The Constituent Assembly (1917) passed without the presence of the Cadets. In addition to Kokoshkin, Deputy Shingarev, the leader of the Constitutional Democratic Party, was also shot the same night.
Dispersal of the Constituent Assembly, or "The guard is tired"
After a series of repressions against figures from other parties, the Bolsheviks made a loud statement in one of the newspapers. The Pravda newspaper at that time spoke in detail about the activities of the deputies included in the Constituent Assembly (1917). In Russia, this newspaper was the most popular. What was the surprise when it published a statement by the leaders of the Bolsheviks, threatening to consolidate their power by revolutionary actions, if such was not recognized at the meeting.
Nevertheless, the meeting took place. Lenin's declaration "on the workers" never received recognition, which led to the fact that at three o'clock in the morning the Bolsheviks left where the meeting was held. An hour later, the Left SRs also left behind them. The remaining parties, with the chairman Chernov elected by a majority vote, adopted documents relating to:
the law on land as public property;
Negotiating with warring powers;
Proclamation of Russia as a democratic republic.
However, none of these documents was accepted by the Bolsheviks. Moreover, the next day, not one of the deputies who decided them was allowed into the Tauride Palace. The meeting itself was dispersed by the anarchist sailor Zheleznyakov with the words "I will ask you to stop the meeting, the guard is tired and wants to sleep." This phrase has gone down in history.
Effects
Neither elections for deputies nor the convocation of the Constituent Assembly in 1917 led to anything. Everything was already predetermined by the Bolsheviks. The meeting itself was approved by them for demonstrative purposes.
Further actions of the meeting participants unleashed a revolutionary situation in the country.
Despite the fact that the right-wing parties of the Constituent Assembly were banned, the goal of the White movement was to convene and hold the Constituent Assembly again, but not the one that the sailor Zheleznyak stopped. Since the first (it is also the last) Constituent Assembly was entirely controlled by the Bolsheviks.