After the prospect of winning the election to the Constituent Assembly finally collapsed, before Bolsheviks and shared power with them left SRs especially acute was the question of the further retention of power. The democratic act of transferring power to the popularly and legally elected Constituent Assembly now meant the transfer of power into the hands of the Socialist-Revolutionary government, which received an overwhelming (58%) majority of the votes. In other words, the minority - the Bolsheviks and the Left SRs - were threatened with responsibility for October coup before the country's parliamentary majority. This fear of being held accountable for the coup forced even those Bolsheviks who had previously stood for the preservation of constitutional legality to reconsider their positions.
So Bukharin, Ryazanov, Lozovsky, who previously advocated the support of authority Constituent Assembly, slipped into the Leninist position of "dispersing" it. On November 29, Bukharin submitted a proposal to the Central Committee that the Bolshevik delegates to the Constituent Assembly and their supporters should expel all right-wing deputies from the Assembly and declare, following the model of the Jacobins, the left wing of the Constituent Assembly a "Revolutionary Convention".
constituent Assembly
The situation in the country, the workers' demonstrations in Petrograd, which welcomed the Assembly, did not allow Lenin to forbid its convocation. According to the original plan, it was supposed to meet on December 12, 1917. Lenin and his supporters tried in every possible way to delay its convocation and decided to repeat the tactics of the October Revolution, timing the convocation of the Constituent Assembly to III Congress of Soviets, whose delegates were practically not chosen, but sent by local Bolsheviks, Left Socialist-Revolutionaries and Menshevik organizations. III Congress of Soviets Lenin tried to present as a legal support and legal source of power Council people's commissars - an organ of the party dictatorship.
But after numerous public protests Council of People's Commissars he was nevertheless forced to schedule the opening of the Constituent Assembly for January 5, 1918, or when at least 400 deputies would gather.
Lenin's tactics found support among the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, who also had a growing sense of fear of the Constituent Assembly. On the eve of the convocation Maria Spiridonova said it never got better Soviets and that there is no need to hesitate on the question of dissolving the Constituent Assembly. She was supported by another oldest leader of the Left SRs Natanson, who arrived in the same way as Lenin, from Switzerland and was associated with the same German intermediaries. In passing, we point out that one of them, a Swiss Fritz Platten, was almost all the time under Lenin in the days preceding the convocation of the Constituent Assembly and spoke at the III Congress of Soviets.
In order to find out what the tactics of the Bolsheviks relied on in the matter of the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly they planned, one should, running a little ahead, stop at the Bolshevik understanding of the basic provisions of democracy.
More long time after the dispersal, the Bolsheviks were forced to deal with the issue of the Constituent Assembly, in every possible way proving to the masses of the people that they were not usurpers of power.
As an example, let us quote an excerpt from a lecture given by L. Trotsky on April 21, 1918:
“I return to this important consideration... There is a lot of talk about the Constituent Assembly... What is universal, direct, equal and secret voting in general? This is only a poll, a roll call [underlined by us]. If we try to make this roll call here? - One part would decide in one direction, and the other part - in the other direction. And if so, then it is obvious that these two parts would have diverged; one would be interested in one thing, and the other in another matter. And this is not suitable for revolutionary creative work ... And what would the Constituent Assembly be like if its corpse were revived, although there is no medicine in the world and no sorcerer who could do this. But suppose we have convened a Constituent Assembly, what does that mean? This means that in one corner, on the left, would sit the working class, its representatives, who would say: we would like the government to finally become an instrument of the rule of the working class... On the other side, representatives of the bourgeoisie would sit, who would demand so that power would continue to be handed over to the bourgeois class.
And in the middle would be politicians who turn left and right. These are representatives of the Mensheviks and Right Socialist-Revolutionaries; they would say: "it is necessary to divide the power in half."
Power is the instrument by which a certain class asserts its dominance. Either this tool serves the working class, or it serves against the working class, there is no choice ... After all, it cannot be that a rifle or a cannon served both one army and another at the same time.
In this public lecture, Trotsky consistently expounds Lenin's thoughts that the state is an apparatus of class violence (see Lenin's lecture on the state). By not answering the question of how the dictatorship of the Bolshevik Party is really the dictatorship of the working class, Trotsky thus denies the need for a bond between society and the state. For this, however, there are legal and democratic norms, the degree of implementation of which determines freedom in each state. These norms, in particular universal, direct, equal and secret suffrage, Trotsky cynically calls "roll call". There is no need to prove that a person or a party, referring in this way to the democratic rights of citizens, can only think about the usurpation of power, masking this usurpation with the doctrine of the class origin of power on the basis of the propositions of Engels's work, outdated and long refuted by historians.
Above all, the elections to the Constituent Assembly showed that the overwhelming majority of the Russian population did not share either the Bolshevik program or doctrine. Knowing this well, Trotsky and the Bolsheviks aimed at the majority of the people that rifle or cannon that Trotsky speaks of as a Marxist symbol of power. From this the hostility of the Bolsheviks clearly follows not only to the concepts of freedom and justice, but also to the essence of all democratic ideas.
Trotsky and Lenin, speaking as Marxists, on the example of the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly, clearly showed not only their anti-democratic nature, but also a complete disregard for the interests of the Russian nation, as an organic association of people who are aware of their unity not only on the basis of common culture and historical past, but also on the basis of common state and economic interests.
The Constituent Assembly was supposed to turn Russia into a democratic republic, the fate of which would be determined by the people. But the plan was not destined to come true. Why the Constituent Assembly failed and whether it could lead the country on a different path, our experts discussed.
Questions:
How did the Constituent Assembly come about?
Alexander Pyzhikov
This was the slogan voiced by the Kadet Party even before the revolution. She was, as it were, the bearer of this slogan, personified it. They said that a Constituent Assembly was needed, which meant the representation of the entire people. That is, everyone gathers and there they already choose the government.
Kirill Alexandrov
The idea of the All-Russian Constituent Assembly was quite old. This is by no means the idea of the 1917 revolution, this idea was voiced back in the 19th century. The idea was that there would be a certain forum elected on the basis of universal equal direct suffrage, and the delegates elected to this forum should decide all the grandiose, global issues of Russian reality. The idea took shape after the February Revolution.
To what extent did the Constituent Assembly correspond to democratic principles?
Alexander Pyzhikov
By the time the elections were over, a meeting should have immediately gathered, but this did not happen, since a revolution took place, which, in general, delayed everything. By the end of 1917 there was a very big discredit of the Constituent Assembly. It did not satisfy anyone, everyone believed that the provisional government was engaged in boltology, and the Constituent Assembly would increase this boltology even more and would not decide anything concrete. The most interesting thing is that the meeting of the Constituent Assembly was scheduled for January 5th. This is no coincidence, because the first meeting of the Congress of Trade Unions was scheduled for January 7th. The Bolsheviks played on this. They opposed the congress of trade unions to the Constituent Assembly. According to their plan, the real people should have been present at the congress of trade unions.
Kirill Alexandrov
It was all conceived as best form democracy. Although what kind of democracy can we talk about in a country where half of the population still cannot read and write. The average literacy in Russia was probably around 40%. It may even be an overestimate. Nevertheless, there was a regulation on the elections to the Constituent Assembly, which stated that all Russian citizens who had reached 20 years of age by the day of elections, with the exception of criminals and deserters, had the right to vote. The euphoria was great.
Why did the Bolsheviks fail to gain a majority in the Constituent Assembly?
Alexander Pyzhikov
There was a split in the Bolshevik party: either create a socialist government, or take power, not paying attention to anyone - Lenin adhered to such a position while in Finland. This was the stumbling block. The idea of the participation of the Bolsheviks in the Constituent Assembly must be viewed through the prism of the struggle within the party.
Kirill Alexandrov
The fact is that the Bolsheviks just did not enjoy absolute support and absolute sympathy even from the masses to which they appealed. The Right SRs won the elections. Their vision of the future of the country was completely different from that of the Bolsheviks. The Right Social Revolutionaries were more known to the peasant masses than the Bolsheviks, and if the Bolsheviks were voted for mainly in the army - the Northern Front, Western Front, - then in the country they voted mainly for the Socialist-Revolutionaries. At the same time, colossal material and technical resources were on the side of Lenin and Trotsky.
How effective could the activities of the Constituent Assembly be?
Alexander Pyzhikov
Under those conditions, there could be no efficiency. The country was in complete disarray. When the country is in chaos, the economy is in chaos, the state power bears little resemblance to what is called state power, no procedures of the parliamentary type are workable, not effective by definition. They don't apply to that situation. The Bolsheviks were well aware that any idea with the introduction of parliamentary procedures would end in nothing. Failure, fiasco. Which, in fact, is what happened.
Kirill Alexandrov
From my point of view, the provisional government, of course, greatly delayed the convocation of the Constituent Assembly. If it had been convened in the summer of 1917, perhaps this event would have prevented the Bolshevik coup, the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks, the Leninist party, with all the ensuing consequences. It must be admitted that the very idea of convening the Constituent Assembly had a certain popularity and public support. Why? Because the Bolsheviks did not abandon this idea even after the October Revolution. They announced that they would hold elections, and even allowed them to be held.
The Constituent Assembly is an elected institution, formed in a manner similar to the Constituent Assembly in France after great revolution. It was to appoint the form of government of Russia and its constitution after the February Revolution.
The organization of the Constituent Assembly became the first task of the Provisional Government. However, it was in no hurry with her decision. In 1917, he was overthrown, and all parties made this issue paramount. The Bolsheviks were afraid of the discontent of the people, among whom the Constituent Assembly was very popular. On October 27, 1917, the Council of People's Commissars decided to speed up the elections and scheduled them for November 12. The provisional government did not exact amount its members. The Council of People's Commissars had to determine a quorum - more than 400 members. This is about half of all members of the Constituent Assembly.
Less than 50% of the population came to the polls. Of the 715 deputies elected, 370 were centrists and right SRs, 175 seats belonged to the Bolsheviks, 40 to the Left SRs, 17 and 15 to the Cadets and Mensheviks, respectively. The rest were deputies of national groups. The lists were compiled before the October Revolution, when the Left and Right SRs were united with the centrists. Until the end, it was not clear who the voters gave their votes to. In addition, different regions showed conflicting results.
The elections showed that the main composition of the Constituent Assembly would be Socialist-Revolutionaries. The nationalist Petlyura, atamans Dutov, Kaledin, Kerensky were on the lists.
Planned radical changes were under threat. The Social Revolutionaries wanted to wage war until victory. Doubting soldiers and sailors were intent on dispersing the assembly. The Bolsheviks and Left SRs called it counter-revolutionary. Lenin immediately turned against him. Already after his emigration, he called it a "liberal undertaking." Volodarsky said that the Russian masses are not characterized by "parliamentary cretinism." Mistakes with the ballot can lead to a gun.
Narkomnats Stalin suggested postponing the convening of the Assembly. Trotsky and Natanson proposed to convene a "revolutionary convention" consisting of a faction of Bolsheviks and Left Socialist-Revolutionaries.
The Commission for Elections was headed by Commissioner M.S. Uritsky appointed by Stalin and Petrovsky. On November 26, Lenin signed a decree on the opening of the Constituent Assembly. The conditions for its opening were: 400 people, and the representative of the Council of People's Commissars, a Bolshevik, should open it. Gathering the required number of people delayed the start of the first meeting.
On November 28, only 60 delegates arrived in Petrograd. They failed to open the Assembly on their own. Simultaneously Predsovnarkom Lenin issued a decree on the illegality of the party of the Cadets. The Bolsheviks decided to finish off the Cadets so that they would not harm the power of the Bolsheviks. The Left Socialist-Revolutionaries supported such a decree, but expressed their dissatisfaction with the fact that the decision was taken by the Bolsheviks alone without consultation with other parties. The Cadet newspaper Rech was closed down, but two weeks later it was published under a different title, Our Century.
On November 29, the Council of People's Commissars banned private meetings of the Constituent Assembly. The right SRs formed the Union for the Defense of the US.
The turning point was on December 11, when Lenin secured new elections for the Bolshevik faction in the US, which protested against the dispersal of the Assembly. On December 12, 1917, a thesis on the Constituent Assembly was drawn up, which forbade trying to consider any attempt to convene a Constituent Assembly: legal, democratic, civil, etc. “All the power of the US” was declared the slogan of the Kaledints, and later it was seen as a call for the overthrow of the Soviets. To counterbalance, the III Congress of Soviets was organized. On December 23 martial law was introduced in Petrograd.
On January 1, 1918, an assassination attempt was organized on Lenin, which ended in failure.
On January 5, the Pravda newspaper published a decree banning rallies near the Tauride Palace. The threat was military force. Bolshevik agitators tried to get the support of the working class in large factories, but it did not work out. military strength Bolsheviks surrounded the Tauride Palace. Supporters of the US went to the demonstration. Up to 100 thousand people gathered. All workers, intellectuals and employees, directing to the palace without any weapons, were shot by machine-gun fire from ambushes, fences and cracks. They were buried at the Transfiguration Cemetery.
On January 9, already in Moscow, a demonstration was held in support of the US. There were also executions of civilians.
The first and last meeting was held on 5 January. It brought together 410 deputies: the Centrist Socialist-Revolutionaries, the Bolsheviks and the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries. Ya. Sverdlov opened it. The declaration written by Lenin was rejected by the Right SRs, many Bolsheviks, Left SRs and representatives of the national party left the meeting room. The rest of the deputies continued their work. Lenin did not disperse the meeting immediately, but only after it ended - in the morning next day. In the evening, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee approved a decree on the dissolution of the US.
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 brief life"Constituent Assembly".
V. Karpets."Ucheredilka": truth and lies.
Today not only means mass media, but also Russian authorities actively raise 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 Russia. But is it?
The very idea of the Constituent Assembly as a form of government similar to Zemsky Cathedral(who elected February 21, 1613 as king Mikhail Romanov), put forward in 1825 by the Decembrists, then, in the 1860s, it was supported by the organizations "Land and Freedom" and " People's Will”, and in 1903 included the requirement to convene a Constituent Assembly in its program RSDLP. But during the First Russian Revolution of 1905-07. the masses offered more high form Democracy - 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 February Revolution 1917, the Provisional Government, which overthrew the tsar, did not resolve a single sore 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 Soviet Republic 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 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 of the Constituent Assembly from among the Right Social 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 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.