Convening the constituent assembly. Dispersal of the constituent assembly is a lesson for the whole country

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.
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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 (former Minister of the Provisional
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 tal».

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.”
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Lenin's fears were confirmed by the subsequent history of the members of the Constituent Assembly.
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This is the history of the activities of that very Constituent Assembly, on which the anti-Bolsheviks in hindsight place such great hopes. Who use their myth of the Constituent Assembly only to fight the history of Soviet Russia, the world's first workers' state.

On the path to absolute power, the Bolsheviks faced one more obstacle - the Constituent Assembly. His elections were scheduled by the Provisional Government for the second half of November. Before setting this date, the government repeatedly postponed the elections. Its constituent political parties were either waiting for a more stable situation, or believed that they would later gather more votes. This delay gave the Bolsheviks a good reason to criticize the Provisional Government. They stated that only the transfer of power to the Soviets would allow elections to be held. Even for some time after the October Revolution, the Bolsheviks said that they took power in order to ensure the convening of the Constituent Assembly. The resolutions of the Second Congress of Soviets were temporary: the decrees on peace and land had to be approved by the Constituent Assembly.

Bolshevik criticism was a purely political move. Having seized power, the Bolsheviks no longer needed elections. They viewed their victory in October as a historical pattern, and, according to Marxist theory, the wheel of history has no reverse. This view made elections completely unnecessary.

But to ban elections, changing the party’s position 180°, meant pitting it against the people. This was risky for the fragile dictatorship of the proletariat. Apparently, the Bolsheviks did not exclude the possibility that they could win the elections thanks to decrees on peace and land and turn the Constituent Assembly into their puppet body.

The elections, held according to party lists, took place on time. The Socialist Revolutionaries won. They received 40% of the votes and, together with their allies, more than half the seats in the Constituent Assembly. The Bolsheviks took second place with 23% of the votes. Together with the Left Socialist Revolutionaries, they owned a quarter of the mandates. However, the Bolsheviks won in strategically important points - in the army, Petrograd, Moscow, and large industrial cities in the European part of the country. The majority of workers, soldiers and sailors voted for the Bolsheviks. The peasants and the outskirts followed the Social Revolutionaries.

The geographical distribution of political sympathies subsequently determined the front line in the civil war and became one of the reasons for the victory of the Reds.

So far, the result was different - the Bolsheviks lost the general elections. At first they were inclined to annul the election results. The opening of the Constituent Assembly, scheduled by the Provisional Government for November 28, was postponed indefinitely. Local councils were instructed to report any “irregularities” that occurred during voting. Finally, on November 28, by decree of the Council of People's Commissars, the Cadet Party was banned, its leaders, declared “enemies of the people,” were arrested. Among those arrested were deputies of the Constituent Assembly. Two of them, Shingarev and Kokoshkin, were killed by sailors, the rest were soon released, but they could no longer sit in the Constituent Assembly without risking their lives. The Cadets turned out to be the first party to be banned by the Soviet government. This was no accident. Although the Cadets received less than 5% of the votes in the elections, they took second place in the cities, second only to the Bolsheviks. Unlike the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries, the Cadets were not bound by “socialist solidarity” with the Bolsheviks. Therefore, the Bolsheviks saw their main competitor in the constitutional democratic party.

Probably, only the opposition of the only allies of the Bolsheviks - the left Socialist Revolutionaries - prevented Lenin from declaring the elections invalid. But since the Bolsheviks could not prevent the convening of parliament, they had only one way to maintain their power - to forcefully disperse the Constituent Assembly.

This did not contradict the Marxist tradition. The first Russian Marxist, Menshevik leader G. Plekhanov, at the Second Congress of the RSDLP in 1903, said: “... the success of the revolution is the highest law. And if for the sake of the success of the revolution it was necessary to temporarily limit the operation of one or another democratic principle, then it would be criminal to stop before such a limitation... If, in a fit of revolutionary enthusiasm, the people elected a very good parliament... then we should try to make it last parliament, and if the elections were unsuccessful, then we would need to try to disperse it not in two years, but, if possible, in two weeks” (p. 182).

In reality, this position only covered up the inability of the Socialist Revolutionary-Menshevik leaders to take risky and decisive actions. The policy of the Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks was to provide the Constituent Assembly with mass support that could save it from dispersal. The “Union for the Defense of the Constituent Assembly” they formed collected many signatures in factories and military units for petitions supporting parliament.

In terms of mass numbers, the Bolsheviks were much worse. Although workers, soldiers and sailors voted mainly for the Bolsheviks, they were unable to force a single factory or military unit to adopt anti-parliamentary resolutions. The military superiority of the Bolsheviks was also questionable. The Preobrazhensky and Semenovsky regiments, the armored car division of the Izmailovsky regiment were ready to defend the parliament with arms in hand.

Among the Socialist Revolutionaries there were people who understood that there was simply no other way. F. Onipko, a member of the Military Commission of the Union for the Defense of the Constituent Assembly, having found out through his agents the daily routine and routes of Lenin and Trotsky, proposed to kidnap them or kill them. He also proposed holding an armed demonstration of units loyal to the Social Revolutionaries on January 5, 1918, the opening day of the Constituent Assembly, in front of the Tauride Palace - the place of its meetings. The Central Committee of the Socialist Revolutionaries rejected even that. and another, scheduling a peaceful demonstration for January 5th. By the way, on the night of January 5, pro-Bolshevik workers at car repair shops disabled Socialist Revolutionary armored cars.

The Bolsheviks met the demonstration with machine gun fire. About twenty people were killed. Only after making sure that the demonstration was suppressed and his troops were in control of Petrograd did Lenin allow the parliament to open. According to the recollections of the manager of the Council of People's Commissars, V. Bonch-Bruevich, Lenin that day “was worried and was deathly pale... as never before” (p. 248). This is understandable. His power hung by a thread and was saved by the indecisiveness of the Socialist Revolutionary leaders.

The first and only meeting of the Constituent Assembly took place amid the hubbub of drunken Red Guards, soldiers and sailors, banging their butts, clanking their bolts, and aiming at the speakers. A little more than four hundred deputies took part in the meeting. The Social Revolutionaries had the majority. They managed to elect their leader V. Chernov as chairman of the meeting. The candidacy of M. Spiridonova, Chairman of the Central Committee of the Left Socialist Revolutionaries, supported by the Bolsheviks, was rejected.

The Bolsheviks proposed that the Constituent Assembly adopt the “Declaration of the Rights of the Working and Exploited People.”

It said that power should belong only to the Soviets, that the Constituent Assembly should limit itself to developing “the foundations for the socialist reorganization of society,” ratify the decrees of the Council of People’s Commissars and disperse. Only the Bolsheviks voted for the “Declaration...”, and it did not pass. Then, according to the prepared scenario, the Bolsheviks left the meeting room, and at night the Left Socialist Revolutionaries followed their example.

At four o’clock in the morning, the chief of the guard, sailor A. Zheleznyakov, having received the appropriate instructions, demanded that Chernov close the meeting, saying that “the guard was tired.” At the same time, armed Red Guards entered the hall. Having hastily adopted resolutions declaring Russia a republic, the land the national property, and calling for the start of negotiations on universal peace, the deputies dispersed. The next day, by order of Lenin, and formally by a resolution of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets, the Constituent Assembly was dissolved. The Tauride Palace was blocked by Bolshevik troops.

Externally, the country did not react in any way to the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly. People are tired of war and revolution. But now it became clear to everyone, even the Socialist Revolutionaries, that the Bolsheviks would not leave peacefully. Many deputies left Petrograd, went to the provinces and led the armed struggle against Soviet power. The dispersal of the Constituent Assembly added fuel to the fire of the flaring civil war.

At the same time, it was an important milestone in consolidating the power of the Bolshevik Party. It is after this that the strike of civil servants ends. They considered that a strike would not achieve anything from the Bolsheviks, since they were able to disperse the popularly elected parliament.

The military coup and Lenin's indomitable desire for power led the Bolsheviks to victory in Petrograd. But by March 1918, Soviet power was established throughout almost the entire country. Thus, the communist revolution rested on a broad social base. It consisted of millions of soldiers, sailors, workers and peasants, embittered by war and poverty. However, the support for democracy was no less broad. In the elections to the Constituent Assembly, the majority voted not only for socialism, but also for democracy. The victory of the Bolsheviks was not fatally predetermined. Chances to prevent it were given by the arrest of Lenin after the July revolt, Russia's exit from the war, the transfer of landowners' land to the peasants, and the armed defense of the Constituent Assembly.

In times of turmoil, the most organized and purposeful force seizes power. The Bolshevik Party led by Lenin turned out to be such a force.

The convening and dispersal of the Constituent Assembly on January 5-6 (18-19), 1918 is one of the turning points in the development of the Great Russian Revolution. The violent actions of supporters of the Soviet regime thwarted the possibility of forming parliamentary democracy in Russia and carrying out social reforms based on the will of the majority of voters. The dispersal of the meeting was another step towards large-scale civil war.
All participants in the February Revolution, including the Bolsheviks, recognized the Constituent Assembly as the final judge of party disputes. Millions of Russian citizens also believed in this, who believed that it was the will of the national “gathering”, the people’s representatives, that could guarantee both the right to the Earth and the rules of political life by which the country would live. A forceful revision of the decisions of the Assembly at this moment was considered blasphemy, and that is why the subordination of all party leaders to the will of the Assembly could eliminate civil war and guarantee the democratic completion of the revolution and the peaceful multi-party future of the country. However, preparations for the elections to the Constituent Assembly were delayed. A special meeting to prepare the draft Regulations on the elections to the Constituent Assembly began work only on May 25. Work on the draft Regulations on elections to the Constituent Assembly was completed in August 1917. It was decided that it would be elected in general, equal, direct elections by secret ballot according to party lists nominated in territorial constituencies.
On June 14, the Provisional Government scheduled elections for September 17, and the convening of the Constituent Assembly for September 30. However, due to the late preparation of the election regulations and voter lists, on August 9, the Provisional Government decided to schedule elections for November 12, and the convening of the Constituent Assembly for November 28, 1917.

But by this time power was already in the hands of the Bolsheviks. The Bolsheviks promised that they would submit to the will of the Assembly, and hoped to win by convincing the majority that they were right with the help of the first populist measures of the Council of People's Commissars. Elections to the Constituent Assembly, officially held on November 12 (individual deputies were elected in October-February) brought disappointment to the Bolsheviks - they gained 23.5% of the votes and 180 deputy mandates out of 767. And the parties of supporters of democratic socialism (Socialist Revolutionaries, Social Democrats, Mensheviks and etc.) received 58.1%. The peasantry gave their votes to the Social Revolutionaries, and they formed the largest faction of 352 deputies. Another 128 seats were won by other socialist parties. In large cities and at the front, the Bolsheviks achieved great success, but Russia was predominantly a peasant country. The allies of the Bolsheviks, the Left Socialist Revolutionaries, who broke away from the Socialist Revolutionary Party and were on the AKP lists, received only about 40 mandates, that is, about 5%, and could not change the situation. In those districts where the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries decided to go on their own, they were defeated in most cases.

Composition of the Constituent Assembly following the elections of 1917

In large cities, the irreconcilable opponents of the Bolsheviks, the Cadets, also achieved success, winning 14 seats. Another 95 seats were received by national parties (except socialists) and Cossacks. By the time the meeting opened, 715 deputies had been elected.
On November 26, the Council of People's Commissars decided that in order to open the Constituent Assembly, it was necessary for 400 deputies to arrive in Petrograd, and before that the convening of the Assembly was postponed.

The Bolsheviks and the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries together had approximately a third of the votes; the Socialist-Revolutionaries were to become the leadership center of the Assembly. The meeting could remove the Bolsheviks and Left Socialist Revolutionaries from power.
The Union for the Defense of the Constituent Assembly held mass demonstrations in support of the early convening of parliament, which was postponed by the Council of People's Commissars.
On November 28, the Council of People's Commissars issued a decree on the arrest of the leaders of the civil war (meaning anti-Bolshevik uprisings), on the basis of which several cadet deputies were arrested because their party supported the fight against Bolshevism. Along with the cadets, some Socialist Revolutionary deputies were also arrested. The principle of parliamentary immunity did not apply. The arrival of deputies opposed to the Bolsheviks in the capital was difficult.
On December 20, the Council of People's Commissars decided 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. But in opposition to the Constituent Assembly, the Bolsheviks and Left Social Revolutionaries were preparing to convene the Third Congress of Soviets.
After consultations with the Left Social Revolutionaries, the Bolshevik leadership decided to disperse the Constituent Assembly shortly after its convocation. The military advantage in Petrograd was on the side of the Bolsheviks, although many units were rather neutral. The Social Revolutionaries tried to organize military support for the Assembly, but, according to the convincing conclusion of the historian L.G. Protasov, “the Socialist Revolutionary conspiracies were clearly not enough to organize an armed counter-coup - they did not go beyond the necessary defense of the Constituent Assembly.” But if this work had been carried out better, the Assembly could have been defended. However, the Bolsheviks again showed that in the matter of military conspiracies they were more businesslike and inventive. The armored cars prepared by the Social Revolutionaries were disabled. The Social Revolutionaries were afraid to mar the celebration of democracy with shooting, and abandoned the idea of an armed demonstration in support of the Assembly. His supporters had to take to the streets unarmed.
On January 5, the opening day of the Assembly, Bolshevik troops shot a demonstration of workers and intellectuals in its support. More than 20 people died.
For the opening of the meeting, 410 deputies arrived at the Tauride Palace. Quorum has been reached. The Bolsheviks and Left Socialist Revolutionaries had 155 votes.
At the beginning of the meeting, there was a clash at the podium - the Socialist Revolutionaries and Bolsheviks claimed the right to open the meeting, the Socialist Revolutionaries insisted that this should be done by the oldest deputy (he was a Socialist Revolutionary). Bolshevik representative Ya. Sverdlov made his way to the podium and read out a draft declaration written by Lenin, which said: “Supporting Soviet power and the decrees of the Council of People’s Commissars, the Constituent Assembly believes that its task is limited to establishing the fundamental foundations of the socialist reorganization of society.” Essentially these were the terms of capitulation, which would turn the Assembly into an appendage of the Soviet regime. Not surprisingly, the Constituent Assembly refused to even discuss such a declaration.
The leader of the Socialist Revolutionaries, V. Chernov, who was elected chairman of the parliament, made a conceptual speech in which he outlined the Socialist Revolutionaries’ vision of the most important problems of the country. Chernov considered it necessary to formalize the transfer of land to the peasants “into a concrete reality precisely formalized by law.” The chaotic land redistribution started by the Bolsheviks and the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries is not capable of providing the peasants with a lasting right to land: “a general shift in land use... is not done with one stroke of the pen... The labor village does not want the lease of state-owned property, it wants labor’s access to the land on its own was not subject to any tribute..."
Agrarian reform was to become the foundation for gradual socialist construction through trade unions, cooperatives and strong local government.
The Bolshevik policy was criticized by most speakers. Bolshevik supporters responded not only from the podium, but also from the gallery, which was packed with their supporters. Democrats were not allowed into the building. The crowd gathered above shouted and hooted. Armed men were aiming from the gallery at the speakers. It took great courage to work in such conditions. Seeing that the majority of the Assembly was not going to give up, the Bolsheviks, and then the Left Socialist Revolutionaries, left parliament. Formally, the quorum disappeared along with them. However, parliament continued to work. In most of the world's parliaments, a quorum is required for the opening of parliament, not for its ongoing work. Deputies from the outback were expected to arrive in the coming days.
The remaining deputies discussed and adopted 10 points of the Basic Law on Land, which corresponded to the ideas of the Socialist Revolutionary Party. Without repurchase, having abolished the ownership of land, the law transferred it to the disposal of local authorities.
The debate ended early in the morning on January 6. The head of the guard, anarchist V. Zheleznyakov, citing member of the Council of People's Commissars P. Dybenko, told Chernov that “the guard is tired” and it was time to end the meeting. There was nothing special about this, but the speaker reacted irritably: we will disperse only if they disperse us by force. In the end, they decided that the deputies would continue to work today until they at least quickly adopted the main bills. Zheleznyakov no longer interfered with the work of the Assembly.
The deputies adopted the basis of the law on land, a resolution declaring Russia a democratic federal republic and a declaration of peace, which condemned the separate negotiations of the Bolsheviks and demanded a general democratic peace. Then, at twenty minutes to five in the morning, the chairman of the meeting, V. Chernov, closed the meeting, scheduling the next one for five in the evening. When, having slept a little, the deputies again gathered at the Tauride Palace, they found the doors closed - the Bolsheviks announced the dissolution of the Assembly and took away the premises from the supreme body of power. This was the act of dispersing the Constituent Assembly.
Outraged by yesterday's shooting of a peaceful demonstration, the workers of the Semyannikovsky plant supported the elected representatives of Russia and invited the deputies to sit on the territory of their enterprise. The strike grew in the city, soon covering more than 50 enterprises.
Despite the fact that V. Chernov proposed to accept the workers’ proposal, the majority of socialist deputies opposed the continuation of the meetings, fearing that the Bolsheviks might fire at the plant from ships. It is unknown what would have happened if the Bolsheviks had ordered the sailors to shoot at the plant - in 1921, the very fact of a strike in Petrograd caused the Kronstadt sailors to rebel against the Bolsheviks. But in January 1918, the leaders of the Socialist Revolutionaries stopped before the specter of civil war. Deputies left the capital, fearing arrests. On January 10, 1918, the III Congress of Workers, Soldiers, Peasants and Cossacks Deputies met, which proclaimed itself the supreme authority in the country.
Russia's first freely elected parliament was dissolved. Democracy has failed. Now the contradictions between various social strata of Russia could no longer be resolved through peaceful discussions in parliament. The Bolsheviks took another step towards civil war.

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 the Constituent Assembly Elections; 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 received the largest number of votes in Petrograd, Moscow, large industrial cities, the Northern and Western fronts, and 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

The Bolsheviks did not hide their intentions, trying to intimidate the deputies. The Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries were ready to resist, but using non-violent methods. They argued that violence would play into the hands of the right and the Bolsheviks. In reality, this position only covered up the inability of the Socialist Revolutionary-Menshevik leaders to take risky and decisive actions. The policy of the Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks was to provide the Constituent Assembly with mass support that could save it from dispersal. The “Union for the Defense of the Constituent Assembly” they formed collected many signatures in factories and military units for petitions supporting parliament.

The Bolsheviks proposed that the Constituent Assembly adopt the “Declaration of the Rights of the Working and Exploited People.” It said that power should belong only to the Soviets, that the Constituent Assembly should limit itself to developing “the foundations for the socialist reorganization of society,” ratify the decrees of the Council of People’s Commissars and disperse. Only the Bolsheviks voted for the “Declaration...”, and it did not pass. Then, according to the prepared scenario, the Bolsheviks left the meeting room, and at night the Left Socialist Revolutionaries followed their example.

In times of turmoil, the most organized and purposeful force seizes power. The Bolshevik Party led by Lenin turned out to be such a force.

The severe crisis that Russia was experiencing, the promise of a speedy peace, which helped the Bolsheviks come to power, and the interest of the Central Powers in ending the war on two fronts led to peace negotiations between Soviet Russia, on the one hand, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, Turkey, on the one hand. another. Negotiations began in Brest-Litovsk (Now Brest) on December 3, 1917. A month later, Ukraine took part in them, proclaimed by a resolution of its highest authority - the Central Rada - an independent state. On December 15, a truce was signed.

The Soviet delegation proposed concluding peace without annexations and indemnities. This proposal was of a propaganda nature and was unacceptable to Germany simply because it occupied part of Russian territory. The German delegation put forward its peace conditions. Lithuania, part of Belarus, Latvia, Estonia, a total of 150 thousand sq. km, were torn away from Russia. These conditions were not too difficult: Russia could not hold the Baltic states in any case.

Lenin proposed to sign peace immediately. At the cost of space, he wanted to gain time to strengthen his regime. However, he faced strong resistance from the Bolshevik leadership. Making peace meant stabilizing the situation in Germany. Meanwhile, the socialist revolution was conceived as a world revolution. Russia turned out to be its first stage. The second was to be Germany, with its powerful communist opposition.

N. Bukharin and his supporters, called “left communists,” proposed starting a “revolutionary war” with Germany. They believed that if the revolution did not win in the West, it would fail in Russia. This position was shared by both the Left Social Revolutionaries and the German communists led by K. Liebknecht and R. Luxemburg.

Trotsky thought so too. But unlike the left communists, he, like Lenin, understood that Russia had nothing to fight with. And he put forward the slogan “no peace, no war, but disband the army.” Seeming, to put it mildly, strange to an ignorant person, this formula had a completely common sense, from the point of view of a revolutionary. Without signing peace with the German Kaiser and declaring the dissolution of the no longer existing Russian army, Trotsky appealed to the solidarity of the international proletariat, in particular the German one. Thus, this slogan was a call for world revolution. He also had another, secret plan - to refute rumors that the Bolsheviks had been bought by the Germans and were working out the script written in Berlin in Brest.

The dispute within the Bolshevik leadership was, in essence, a conflict between statists and revolutionaries, realists and utopians. For Lenin, the most important thing was the bird in the hand - the existing Soviet state, for his opponents - the pie in the sky - the future world revolution. However, personal considerations were mixed into Lenin’s position. He didn't want to risk losing his own power. Perhaps at that moment he was not interested in the victory of the revolution in Germany: Liebknecht could lay claim to the role of the leader of world communism.

At first Lenin found himself in the minority. Trotsky, the head of the Soviet delegation, was instructed not to sign peace, but to stall for time. He delayed the negotiations as long as he could, and when the Germans’ patience was exhausted, he declared that Soviet Russia was withdrawing from the imperialist war, demobilizing the army and not signing the annexationist peace. Then the Germans broke the truce and went on the offensive on February 18. The Council of People's Commissars issued a decree “The Socialist Fatherland is in Danger!”, the formation of the Red Army began, but it was a shock. Small German detachments occupied Minsk, Kyiv, Pskov, Tallinn, Narva and other cities without a fight. The German proletariat did not show any special signs of solidarity with the dictatorship of the proletariat in Russia these days.

By threatening his own resignation, Lenin forced the majority of the Central Committee of the RSDLP (b) to agree to German conditions. This time Trotsky joined Lenin, declaring that with a split in the party it was impossible to wage a revolutionary war. The Bolsheviks' decision was also supported by the Central Committee of the Left Social Revolutionaries (PLSR). On the radio, the Soviet government informed the Germans that it was ready to sign peace.

In response, they put forward much more stringent demands. Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia were torn away from Russia. Part of the Russian and Belarusian lands went to these states. Ukraine found itself under German occupation. The cities of Kars, Ardagan, Batum and surrounding lands passed to Turkey. Russia had to demobilize its army and navy, which, however, practically did not exist, and pay an indemnity of six billion marks. In total, Russia lost a territory of 780 thousand square kilometers, where 56 million people lived - a third of its population and where 32% of agricultural and 23% of industrial products were produced. On these conditions, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed by the new head of the Soviet delegation, G. Sokolnikov, on March 3, 1918.

The VII Congress of the RSDLP (b), held on March 7-8, 1918, approved the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty by a majority of votes. This congress also adopted a new name for the party: Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks). On the contrary, pressure from the lower ranks of the party forced the Central Committee of the PLSR to reconsider its position and oppose peace. Nevertheless, it was ratified by the IV Extraordinary Congress of Soviets on March 14, 1918. The Congress was held in Moscow, where, due to the approach of the Germans to Petrograd and the strikes of Petrograd workers, the Soviet government moved. Communists - supporters of Lenin and Trotsky - voted for the treaty, left Socialist-Revolutionaries, anarchists, Socialist-Revolutionaries, Mensheviks voted against, left communists abstained. Protesting against ratification, the Left Socialist Revolutionaries left the Council of People's Commissars, although they did not stop collaborating with the Bolsheviks. The left communist faction gradually disintegrated. Trotsky in April 1918 left the post of People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs and became People's Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs, and then Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic. G. Chicherin was appointed People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs.

The actual surrender of Russia allowed the Germans to transfer troops to the Western Front and reach almost the French capital. The units remaining in the east continued, in violation of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty, to move deeper into Russian territory and reached the Don. Lenin was losing authority, including in his own party. But in the summer of 1918, on the Marne River and near the city of Amiens, a hundred kilometers from Paris, the French, British, Americans and their allies inflicted decisive defeats on the German army, predetermining their victory in the war and giving rise to the myth of Lenin’s brilliant gift of foresight. In reality, he was betting on Germany to win. At the end of August, the Soviet and German governments agreed on joint operations against the British, who occupied Murmansk, and Denikin’s troops. In September, Russia paid Germany part of the indemnity.

The Bolsheviks, however, took full advantage of the Entente victory. When the countries of the German bloc capitulated in November 1918, and revolutions took place in Germany and Austria-Hungary, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee annulled the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty. Soviet troops occupied Ukraine and Belarus. Baltic states. Now Lenin considered the moment favorable to bring communism and his power to the European peoples with the bayonets of the Red Army. Only the defeat of the communist uprisings in Germany and the outbreak of civil war in Russia prevented the campaign in Europe.

1.9. Civil War (1917-1922)

The Bolsheviks' desire for absolute power, demonstrated by the October Revolution, the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly, and the elimination of all civil rights and freedoms, including the right to private property, led to a civil war, the second after the Troubles of 1601-1618. in the history of Russia.

The Don became the Russian Vendee*. On the very day of the October Revolution, the ataman of the Don Cossacks, General L. Kaledin, dispersed the local Soviets. On the Don, General Alekseev formed a Volunteer Army of 3.5 thousand people. Its backbone consisted of officers of the Russian army. After escaping from the Bykhov prison, this army was led by Kornilov. Differences between the Cossacks and the volunteers immediately emerged: the former wanted autonomy for the Don. the second - “a united and indivisible Russia”. No general command was created.

___________________________

* The province of Vendée became the first center of resistance to the new government during the Great French Revolution of 1789-1794.

Clashes of late 1917 - early 1918 were fought in small detachments along the railway tracks and were called “echelon warfare”. Regular hostilities began in the spring of 1918. They proceeded with varying degrees of success. Under the pressure of superior forces of the Reds (the traditional color of revolutionaries), supported by the workers of the Donetsk cities, the Whites (the traditional color of conservatives - supporters of the old order) left the Don. Kaledin shot himself; General Krasnov was elected ataman of the Don Army. The volunteer army retreated to Kuban, making the so-called Ice, or 1st Kuban campaign, and then to the North Caucasus. When the Whites tried to take Yekaterinodar (Krasnodar), Kornilov died, Alekseev soon died, and General A. Denikin (1872-1947) became commander of the Volunteer Army. The food dictatorship established by the Bolsheviks tipped the scales in favor of their opponents. By January 1919, the Whites controlled the Kuban and the North Caucasus. Denikin was proclaimed commander-in-chief of the “Armed Forces of the South of Russia”; Krasnov's Cossacks finally submitted to him. But Krasnov failed to take Tsaritsyn, which prevented the white armies advancing from the south and east from uniting.

It was from the east that the main threat to the communist regime came in 1918. An insignificant event led to the mutiny of the 35,000-strong Czechoslovak corps. Czechoslovakia was then part of Austria-Hungary, and this corps was formed from captured Czechs and Slovaks who wanted to fight for the independence of their country. In January 1918, France took command of the corps, and its transfer to the Western Front through the Far East began. In mid-May, in Chelyabinsk there was a fight between Czechs and Hungarian prisoners of war returning to their homeland. The local Soviet arrested several Czechs, but was forced to release them at the request of others who had seized the arsenal. Wanting to demonstrate his firmness and power, Trotsky ordered the corps to be disarmed. This inadequate response had far-reaching consequences. The Bolsheviks did not have the means to carry out this order. The Red Army then consisted of several battalions of Latvian riflemen. Convinced that the Bolsheviks wanted to hand them over to the Germans, and deciding to make their way to the Pacific Ocean, the Czechs and Slovaks rebelled. They captured the railway from Penza to Vladivostok, along which their trains stretched. Immediately, Soviet power collapsed in the territory from the Volga to the Pacific Ocean. It was replaced by anti-Bolshevik governments. In particular, the Middle Volga region came under the rule of the Socialist Revolutionary Komuch (Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly), located in Samara.

A quarter of the country’s territory remained under the control of the Reds, although its most populated and industrially developed central European part. But here too it was uneasy. On July 6, the very day when the first Socialist Revolutionaries shot Mirbach, an uprising broke out in Yaroslavl, the next day in Rybinsk, and the next day in Murom. They were organized by the “Union for the Defense of the Motherland and Freedom,” headed by B. Savinkov. On July 10, the commander of the Eastern Front, the left Socialist Revolutionary M. Muravyov, rebelled. These riots did not receive outside support and were suppressed, although the latter allowed the Czechoslovaks to occupy Simbirsk and Yekaterinburg. Now they were moving to the West - on the orders of the Entente, which decided to overthrow the Soviet government with their hands and then send them against the Germans.

In the spring, the Bolsheviks transported the royal family from Tobolsk to Yekaterinburg. Here, on the night of July 16-17, 1918, a week before the fall of the city, in the house of businessman Ipatiev, requisitioned by the Bolsheviks, Nicholas II, the Empress, their children and servants were shot. The execution was commanded by Y. Yurovsky, head of the Yekaterinburg Cheka.

The message from the All-Russian Central Executive Committee stated that the Ural Regional Council had decided to execute the tsar. Soviet officials denied the execution of his wife and children until the mid-twenties, when a book by N. Sokolov, who investigated this case on behalf of Kolchak, appeared in Paris. The documents now published irrefutably prove that the decision to execute the royal family was made by Lenin and Sverdlov. The fact that it was accepted at the Center is evidenced by a series of murders in June-July 1918 of all the Romanovs who fell into the hands of the Bolsheviks, and by the hierarchical structure of communist power itself, which deprived local authorities of any independence.

Quite rational motives underlay this decision. The regicide showed the whites that the reds would fight to the end. It tied up the entire party and demonstrated to the communists that the path to retreat was cut off. It was in line with the revolutionary tradition. The Decembrists discussed plans for the extermination of the royal family. Alexander II “the Liberator” was killed by the Narodnaya Volya. Pushkin wrote in his ode “Liberty”:

Autocratic villain!

I hate you, your throne.

Your death, the death of children

I see it with cruel joy.

However, the country reacted indifferently to the execution of the Tsar: death became an everyday occurrence, and people got used to it.

The Czechoslovak revolt served as a good lesson for the Bolsheviks. Not trusting the peasants and officers, at first they tried to create a voluntary proletarian army. Now they began to form a regular army. The first Soviet Constitution, adopted by the V Congress of Soviets in July 1918, introduced universal military service for workers and peasants. “Non-labor elements” were to “perform other military duties.” Having overcome the resistance of the “military opposition”, which consisted of former “left communists”, Trotsky recruited “military specialists” - former tsarist officers - to serve in the Red Army. To control them, an institute of commissars was created, selected from reliable communists. Treason by an officer was punishable by execution of his family and the commissar responsible for him. In total, about half of the Russian officers served in the Red Army.

Using draconian measures, shooting retreaters and deserters, Trotsky managed to impose firm discipline in the Red Army and maintain the front in the east. In August, the Red troops under the command of S. Kamenev, a former colonel of the Russian army, went on the offensive on the Eastern Front and drove the Whites back to the Urals. The striking force of this offensive were the same Latvian riflemen, thanks to whom the Bolsheviks survived in 1918. The power of Komuch was eliminated, the “State Meeting” held in Ufa formed the Provisional All-Russian Government (Ufa Directory). Soon it moved to Omsk, away from the front line. The Council of Ministers was formed as a “business body” under the Directory, and Admiral A. Kolchak (1873-1920) became Minister of Defense.

Two groups fought in these authorities: the left, mainly the Socialist Revolutionaries - supporters of socialism and democracy, and the right - cadets, officers, Cossacks - supporters of the military dictatorship. The failures of the Whites at the front led to a coup in their rear. On November 18, 1918, officers and Cossacks arrested Socialist Revolutionary leaders in Omsk. Some of them were shot, some were sent abroad. The Council of Ministers transferred all power to Admiral Kolchak, who was proclaimed the “Supreme Ruler of the Russian State” and the “Supreme Commander-in-Chief” of its armed forces. The Urals, Siberia, and the Far East came under Kolchak's rule. His supremacy was recognized by A. Denikin and N. Yudenich (1862-1933), commander of the North-Western Army, which, however, did not make the White operations more coordinated.

Since mid-1919, the Socialist-Revolutionaries abandoned the armed struggle against Soviet power - not out of sympathy for the Bolsheviks, but not wanting to contribute to the victory of the counter-revolution; After the defeat of the Whites, the Social Revolutionaries took part in anti-communist riots.

In 1918, foreign powers intervened in the Russian turmoil. German and Austrian troops occupied Ukraine; in violation of the Brest Peace Treaty, German units reached the Don. Partly to counter Germany, partly to fight the Bolsheviks, partly trying to expand their spheres of influence, the Entente countries (England, France, Italy, USA, Japan) landed military contingents in Arkhangelsk, Murmansk, Odessa, Crimea, Transcaucasia, and the Far East. two hundred thousand people. With the surrender of Germany, the Entente, primarily the USA and England, began to help the Whites with weapons and equipment.

The decisive battles of the Civil War took place in 1919. In the spring, Kolchak’s troops approached Vyatka and the Volga.

Earlier, in January, the Reds began a policy of “decossackization” - mass terror against the Cossacks. In March, an anti-Bolshevik Cossack uprising broke out on the Don. It created the conditions for Denikin’s army to go on the offensive. In the fall, she captured Kursk, Orel, Voronezh, approached Tula, the main arsenal of the Soviet Republic, and was going to take Moscow. This was the most dangerous moment for the Bolsheviks - they were preparing to flee, stocking up on confiscated jewelry, printing tsarist money and fake passports. In May-June and September, Yudenich tried to take Petrograd.

But the Reds managed to defeat their opponents one by one, taking advantage of their differences and each time concentrating their advantage on the main sector of the front. At the end of April, the troops of the Eastern Front under the command of S. Kamenev launched a counteroffensive. The supply of weapons to Kolchak was blocked by the Japanese protege Ataman G. Semenov, who controlled the Far East, where Japan wanted to create a Russian republic dependent on it. At the same time, Kolchak rejected the proposal of the Minister of Defense of Finland, Mannerheim, to throw a 100,000-strong corps into an attack on Petrograd in exchange for recognition of its independence. By the end of 1919, Kolchak’s units were defeated. Kolchak was forced to transfer command of the white troops in Siberia and the Far East to Semenov and come under the protection of the Czechoslovak corps. In exchange for free passage to Vladivostok, the Czechs, in agreement with the allied command, handed over the admiral, the prime minister of his government V. Pepelyaev and the white train with state gold to the Socialist-Revolutionary-Menshevik “Political Center” formed in Irkutsk. In January 1920, he ceded power in the city to the Reds. On February 7, on the secret order of Lenin, Kolchak and Pepelyaev were shot.

Having defeated Kolchak, the Reds attacked Denikin. His army of 100 thousand was too small. to hold the vast territories he conquered, his front was too extended. Having defeated Denikin's troops near Orel and Voronezh, the Reds attacked along the entire front. The most important role in their offensive was played by the 1st Red Army under the command of S. Budyonny. It was created in November 1919 on the initiative of Trotsky, who put forward the slogan “Proletariat, on horseback!” The raid on the Dsnikin rear areas of the cavalry of the anarchist N. Makhno was a great help to the Reds. Having suffered heavy losses, the Whites retreated to the Crimea. Denikin transferred command over them to P. Wrangel.

Yudsnich was no more fortunate. Like Kolchak, he refused to recognize the independence of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. Meanwhile, the Soviet government did this in September 1919. And the Baltic states refused to participate in a joint campaign with Yudenich against Petrograd. At the end of 1919, his troops were driven into Estonia and disarmed by its government.

The defeats of the armies of Kolchak and Denikin made the final victory of the Reds inevitable. Therefore, in 1919, almost all foreign powers withdrew their troops from Russia. France set an example. Her squadron left Odessa in April 1919, after French sailors rebelled under the influence of communist agitation.

However, the troops of those states that had territorial claims to Russia remained and took advantage of the unrest to take away the disputed lands. In 1918, Romania occupied Bessarabia, captured by Russia in 1812. Poland sought to return Ukraine and Belarus, lost in the 17th-18th centuries. In 1919, Polish troops occupied Minsk. But she was restrained by the fact that Denikin, who controlled Ukraine, was, like Poland, an ally of the Entente. With the defeat of Denikin, Polish troops went on the offensive and captured Right Bank Ukraine and Kyiv in April-May 1920.

It was a temporary success. Having achieved superiority in manpower and weapons, the Red Army counterattacked with the forces of the Western Front (commander M. Tukhachevsky) and the Southwestern Front (commander A. Egorov, member of the Revolutionary Military Council I. Stalin). Expelling the invaders was a secondary objective of this campaign. His most important goal was world revolution. Tukhachesky’s order to attack ended with the words: “To Warsaw, to Berlin!”

Already in July, Soviet troops invaded Poland. However, having underestimated the enemy, they moved too quickly, which made it difficult to supply them, and, moreover, they went in diverging directions: the Western Front - to Warsaw, the Southwestern Front - to Lvov. The invasion of the Red Army caused a patriotic upsurge in Poland, which allowed for additional mobilization. France, interested in Poland as a counterweight to Russia and Germany, supplied the Poles with weapons. As a result, Polish troops defeated the armies of the Western Front near Warsaw. 130 thousand Red Army soldiers were captured. Tukhachevsky flew away by plane, leaving the army. The threat of encirclement forced the Southwestern Front to retreat. The war ended with the signing of the Soviet-Polish peace treaty in Riga in 1921, which left Western Ukraine and Western Belarus for Poland.

Then the Reds set about attacking Wrangel. While the war with Poland was going on, he managed to occupy the areas adjacent to the Crimea. When the fighting in the west ended, the 1st Cavalry Army and other units were transferred to the Southern Front (commander M. Frunze). The Red Army drove the enemy into Crimea, and in November 1920, through the Perekop Isthmus and Sivash Bay, invaded the peninsula. The only thing Wrangel was able to do was clearly organize the evacuation. 145 thousand people were taken out on ships of the Entente and the Black Sea Fleet. The Reds promised amnesty to the white soldiers and officers who remained in Crimea, provided that they register and hand over their weapons. Tens of thousands believed - and were shot. This operation was led by Bela Kun. in 1919, the leader of the Hungarian Soviet Republic that existed for four months, in 1920, a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Southern Front, chairman of the Crimean Regional Revolutionary Committee, and R. Zemlyachka (Zalkind), secretary of the Crimean Regional Bureau of the RCP (b).

In December, in the Crimea and near Kharkov, the Reds defeated Makhno’s units - they no longer needed this unreliable ally. Makhno himself fled to Romania. The evacuation of the Japanese and the expulsion of whites from the Far East at the end of 1922 ended the civil war.

The following circumstances brought victory to the Reds. Firstly, the Reds were united, while the White factions were constantly at odds with each other.

Secondly, the Reds controlled the central European regions of the country. The majority of the population lived here, most of the industrial potential was located, and there was a developed railway network. This made it difficult to coordinate the white armies and facilitated the formation, supply and maneuvers of the red troops.

Thirdly, the Reds outplayed the Whites politically. The Red camp was led by professional politicians who clearly understood the importance of political means in the struggle for power. The whites were led by generals who tried to gain the upper hand through purely military means.

Unlike the Reds, the Whites did not build a state. Their governments were little more than civilian appendages to the military command and had no subordinate local authorities. In particular, this made it difficult to carry out mobilizations in their army.

The Reds offered an attractive ideology. Many people had a purely religious belief that they were fighting for an earthly paradise - a commune.

The uncompromising adherence to the slogan of “united and indivisible Russia” was also fatal for the whites. They stubbornly refused to recognize the independence or autonomy of the national borderlands of Russia, depriving themselves of potential allies. The Reds very often provided this independence - taking it away later.

Finally, the Reds “bought” the peasantry, who made up 80% of the country’s population, by allowing the division of landowners’ land. The Whites never developed a political program acceptable to the peasants. White ideology was expressed by the term “non-decision.” This meant that they were fighting to overthrow the Bolshevik despotism, and only then the National Assembly or the Zemsky Sobor, elected by the people, would determine the political system. In other words, they did not provide guarantees that the land seized by the peasants would remain in their possession and that they would not have to answer for the robbery of the landowners' estates. (The exception was Wrangel, who transferred the land to the peasants for hereditary use, but the outcome of the struggle was already predetermined then). Therefore, the peasants preferred the Reds as the “lesser evil.” The support of the peasantry, although conditional, provided a numerical advantage for the Reds, which the Whites could not compensate for by superiority in professional military training. By the end of 1919, the Red Army numbered three million people, while the combined strength of the armies of Kolchak and Denikin. Yudenich did not exceed 600 thousand.

The civil war was fought with extreme bitterness on both sides. The Reds, during the policy of “de-Cossackization,” exterminated about a million Cossacks. The Jewish pogroms that accompanied the advance of the white armies claimed tens, if not hundreds of thousands of lives. White counterintelligence bodies, created in the image and likeness of the Cheka. They destroyed all the commissars and communists who fell into their hands. The Whites mercilessly shot captured officers serving in the Red Army; The Reds also did the same with the white officers. Population of Russia (excluding territories lost to the civil war) for 1918-1922. decreased by 14.3 million people. Taking into account natural growth, population decline from unnatural causes caused by unrest can be estimated at approximately 20 million. Of these, 2.5 million are victims of combat, 2.0 million are emigration, 3.0-5.0 million are victims of famine in the Volga region, the rest are victims of epidemics and terror (pp. 97-104).

1.10. War communism (1918-1921)