The All Russian Constituent Assembly () was a constituent assembly convened in Russia after the October Revolution of 1917. It met for 13 hours, from 4 p.m. to 5 a.m., , whereupon it was dissolved by the Bolshevik-led All-Russian Central Executive Committee, proclaiming the Third All-Russian Congress of Soviets the new governing body of Russia.
The 1917 Russian Constituent Assembly election did not produce a democratically elected government, as the Bolsheviks, who were in power since the October Revolution which occurred prior to the election, subsequently disbanded the Constituent Assembly and proceeded to rule the country as a one-party state with all opposition parties outlawed. Some scholars have had a differing view and attributed the establishment of the one-party system in the Soviet Union to the wartime conditions imposed on the Bolshevik government and others have highlighted the initial attempts to form a coalition government with the Left Socialist Revolutionaries.
Origins A democratically elected Constituent Assembly to create a Russian constitution was one of the main demands of all Russian revolutionary parties prior to the Russian Revolution of 1905. In 1906, the Tsar decided to grant basic civil liberties and hold elections for a newly created legislative body, the State Duma. However, the Duma was never authorized to write a new constitution, much less abolish the monarchy. Moreover, the Duma's powers were falling into the hands of the Constitutional Democrats and not the Socialists. The government dissolved the Duma, as was their legal agreement, in July 1906 and, after a new election, in June 1907. The final election law written by the government after the second dissolution on favored the landed and ruling classes. The Duma was therefore widely seen as unrepresentative of the poorer peasants and working classes. Demands for a Constituent Assembly that would be elected on the basis of universal suffrage continued unabated. But what little the Duma could do after 1907 was often vetoed by the Emperor or the appointed upper house of the Russian parliament.
Background
The Provisional Government (February–October 1917)
With the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II in the February Revolution of 1917, power in Russia passed to a Provisional Government formed by the liberal leadership of the Duma.
The Provisional Government was so named because it was made up of parliamentary figures, last elected (as the Fourth Duma) in 1912, who claimed provisional authority for managing the revolutionary situation in the midst of the First World War until a more permanent form of government could be established by an elected Constituent Assembly.
Grand Duke Michael had refused to ascend to his older brother Nicholas II's throne without the consent of an elected Constituent Assembly, and it was broadly assumed that an elected Constituent Assembly was the only body with the authority to change Russia's form of government. The Provisional Government claimed that it would organize elections once the First World War had concluded, but in spite of the initial agreement in July 1917, they declared Russia a republic and began preparations for elections in the "Preparliament", later named the Council of the Russian Republic.See Six Red Months in Russia by Louise Bryant, Chapter VII, available online These actions triggered criticism from both left and right. Monarchists saw the declaration of a republican form of government in Russia as unacceptable, while the left considered the declaration a power grab intended to weaken the influence of the Soviets.
The Bolsheviks and the Constituent Assembly The Bolsheviks' position on the Constituent Assembly evolved during 1917. At first, like all the other socialist parties, the Bolsheviks supported the election of a Constituent Assembly. Vladimir Lenin himself later argued: 'The demand for the convocation of a Constituent Assembly was a perfectly legitimate part of the programme of revolutionary Social-Democracy, because in a bourgeois republic the Constituent Assembly represents the highest form of democracy'.V. I. Lenin, Theses on the Constituent Assembly (1917), Lenin Internet Archive.
But there was a potential contradiction in Bolshevik policy. Since Lenin's return from Switzerland in April 1917, the Bolsheviks had distinguished themselves from other socialists by calling for "All Power to the Soviets". The Bolsheviks thus opposed "bourgeois" parliamentary bodies, like the Provisional Government and the Constituent Assembly, in favour of the Soviets (directly elected revolutionary councils of workers, soldiers and peasants) which had arisen after the February Revolution.Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, The Tasks of the Proletariat in the Present Revolution (a.k.a. The April Theses) (1917), Lenin Internet Archive.
On , the Bolsheviks acted on this policy by leading the October Revolution against the Provisional Government. The uprising in Petrograd coincided with the convocation of the Second All-Russian Congress of Workers' and Soldiers' Soviets. The Soviet deputies of the more moderate socialist parties, the Mensheviks and the Right SRs, walked out of the Congress in protest at what they argued was a premature overthrow of the "bourgeois" government in which they had participated.
Over the next few weeks, the Bolsheviks established control in urban areas and in almost all of Great Russia, but had less success in the countryside and in ethnically non-Russian areas. Although the new Soviet government limited the freedom of the pressFor an account of the closure of the non-socialist newspapers in Petrograd by the Military Revolutionary Committee on 26 October see Nikolai Sukhanov, The Russian Revolution, 1917, Oxford: Oxford University Press (1955), pp. 649-650. For the first Sovnarkom decree on press censorship see Rex A. Wade, The Russian Revolution, 1917, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2005), p.276. For the second Sovnarkom decree that established more extensive government control of the press see V. I. Lenin. Collected Works, Progress Publishers, Moscow, Volume 26, 1972, pp. 283-284, available online. (by sporadically banning non-socialist press) and persecuted the liberal Constitutional Democratic party for its undeclared but widespread support of General Kornilov's affair, it allowed elections for the Constituent Assembly to go ahead on , as scheduled by the Provisional Government.
Officially, the Bolshevik government at first considered itself a provisional government and claimed that it intended to submit to the will of the Constituent Assembly. As Lenin wrote on (emphasis added):
Election results (12/25 November 1917)
More than 60 percent of citizens with the right to vote actually voted for the Constituent Assembly.Encyclopedia of Russian history / James R. Millar, editor in chief, Thomson Gale, 2004, (v. 3), p. 1930 Due to the size of the country, the ongoing World War I and a deteriorating communications system, results were not fully available at the time. A partial count (54 constituencies out of 79) was published by N. V. Svyatitsky in A Year of the Russian Revolution. 1917–18, Moscow, Zemlya i Volya Publishers, 1918. Svyatitsky's data was generally accepted by all political parties, including the Bolsheviks,V. I. Lenin. The Constituent Assembly Elections and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, December 1919, Collected Works, Volume 30, pages 253–75 Progress Publishers, 1965. and was as follows: Party Votes %Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs) 17,943,000 40.4%Bolsheviks 10,661,000 24.0%Ukrainian SRs 3,433,000 7.7%Constitutional Democrats ("Kadets") 2,088,000 4.7%Mensheviks 1,144.000 2.6%Other Russian Liberal Parties 1,261,000 2.8%Georgian Menshevik Party 662,0001.5%Musavat (Azerbaijan) 616,000 1.4%Dashnaktsutiun (Armenia) 560,000 1.3%Left SRs 451,000 1.0%Other Socialists 401,000 0.9%Alash Orda (Kazakhstan)407,000 0.9%Other National Minority Parties 407,000 0.9%Total (counted votes) 40,034,000 90%Unaccounted 4,543,000 10%Total 44,577,000100%
The Bolsheviks received between 22% and 25% of the overall vote, but emerged the largest party in Russia's urban centers and among soldiers on the "Western Front" (two-thirds of those soldiers' votes). In the city of Moscow, the Bolsheviks won 47.9% of the votes, the Constitutional Democrats (Kadets) 35.7% and the SRs 8.1 percent.Timothy J. Colton. Moscow: Governing the Socialist Metropolis. Harvard University Press. p. 88 While losing the urban vote, the Socialist-Revolutionary Party received around 57–58% (62% with their social democratic allies), having won the massive support of the rural peasantry who constituted 80% of the Russian population.
However, scholars have argued that the vote had not properly represented the will of the peasantry. The ballots for the Assembly had not differentiated between the Right SRs, who opposed the Bolshevik government, and the Left SRs, who were coalition partners with the Bolsheviks. Thus many peasant votes intended for the Left SRs elected Right SR deputies.Sheila Fitzpatrick, The Russian Revolution, Oxford: Oxford University Press (2008), p. 66.E. H. Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution 1917–1923, London: Penguin (1966), p. 121. In his study of the Constituent Assembly election, O. H. Radkey argues:
From the election to the convocation of the Assembly (November 1917–January 1918) Lenin and the Bolsheviks began to cast doubt on the value of the Constituent Assembly as soon as it seemed likely that the Assembly would not contain a majority in favour of Soviet government. On , Lenin told the Extraordinary All-Russia Congress of Soviets of Peasants' Deputies that the Constituent Assembly should not distract the peasants from the fight against capital:
On , People's Commissar for Naval Affairs Pavel Dybenko ordered to keep 7,000 pro-Bolshevik Kronstadt sailors on "full alert" in case of a convocation of the Constituent Assembly on . A meeting of some 20,000 Kronstadt "soldiers, sailors, workers and peasants" resolved to only support a Constituent Assembly that was "so composed as to confirm the achievements of the October Revolution [and would be free of] Kaledinites and leaders of the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie".See Israel Getzler. Kronstadt 1917-1921: The Fate of a Soviet Democracy, Cambridge University Press, 1983, paperback edition 2002, p.180
With the split between the Right and Left Socialist Revolutionaries finalized in November, the Bolsheviks formed a coalition government with the latter. On , the Soviet government declared the Constitutional Democratic Party "a party of the enemies of the people", banned the party and ordered its leaders arrested.See Rex A. Wade. op. cit. p.277. See Lenin's decree published on 29 November in V. I. Lenin. Decree on the Arrest of the Leaders of the Civil War Against The Revolution, Collected Works, Progress Publishers, Moscow, Volume 28, 1972, pp.351, available online It also postponed the convocation of the Constituent Assembly until early January. At first the Soviet government blamed the delays on technical difficulties and machinations of their enemies.See V. I. Lenin. On The Opening of the Constituent Assembly, Collected Works, Progress Publishers, Moscow, Volume 26, 1972, pp. 367, available online.
On , Lenin's Theses on the Constituent Assembly were published anonymously in the Bolshevik newspaper Pravda. The theses argued that "revolutionary Social-Democracy has ever since the beginning of the Revolution of 1917 repeatedly emphasised that a republic of Soviets is a higher form of democracy than the usual bourgeois republic with a Constituent Assembly."
Lenin argued that the Constituent Assembly did not truly represent the Russian people because its ballots had not represented the split between the anti-Bolshevik Right SRs and the pro-Bolshevik Left SRs:
Lenin thus argued that: