All-Russian Constituent Assembly

The All-Russian Constituent Assembly, known for short as the Constituent, was the parliament that was to give Russia its constitution after the fall of tsarism. It was elected in the autumn of 1917 in the first universal elections in the country’s history, after the Bolshevik coup. It met only once, in January 1918, and after a dozen or so hours it was broken up by the Soviet government.

The promise of the February Revolution

The Russian opposition had demanded an assembly elected by the whole nation for decades. In March 1917 the Provisional Government took that name precisely because it was to hold power only until the assembly met. Grand Duke Michael declined the crown until the Constituent had pronounced on the form of government, and the government referred every great question to it, from land reform to borders. In its proclamation to the Poles, too, it announced that the changes to Russia’s territory needed to rebuild Poland would be approved by the assembly. The date of the elections was postponed, and when the Bolsheviks took power, the Council of People’s Commissars also called itself a provisional government, acting until the assembly was convened.

The elections and the only sitting

Voting began on 25 November 1917 (12 November in the Julian calendar) and in remote districts went on until January. All citizens aged 20 and over had the vote, women included. Complete results were never collected. According to a count from 70 of the 81 districts, the Socialist Revolutionaries won about 38 per cent of the vote, the Bolsheviks about 23–24 per cent and the Kadets less than 5 per cent. The Bolsheviks won in both capitals and in part of the army, while the countryside voted for the Socialist Revolutionaries. The opening date, 11 December (28 November Old Style), came to nothing: too few deputies were present, and that evening Lenin signed a decree declaring the Kadets a party of enemies of the people.

The Assembly met in the Tauride Palace in Petrograd on 18 January 1918 (5 January Old Style), on the day when fire was opened on a march of its supporters. The session was opened on behalf of Soviet power by Yakov Sverdlov, and the Socialist Revolutionary leader Viktor Chernov was elected chairman with 244 votes. When the majority refused to take up first the Bolshevik declaration recognising Soviet power, the Bolsheviks, and after them the Left Socialist Revolutionaries, walked out. Towards morning the commander of the guard declared that “the guard is tired”. The remaining deputies still managed to pass the land law and proclaim Russia a federal republic.

The dispersal and its consequences

On 19 January (6 January Old Style) the deputies found the doors locked, and that night the All-Russian Central Executive Committee adopted a decree dissolving the assembly. It argued that the electoral lists had been drawn up before the October Revolution, so voters could not tell the Right Socialist Revolutionaries from the Left, and that the rest of the assembly could now only serve as a screen for the counter-revolution. That same night sailors murdered two Kadet deputies, Shingarev and Kokoshkin, in a hospital. The Socialist Revolutionary Central Committee called on the peasants to demand the immediate convocation of the assembly, but no uprising followed, and the countryside received its end with indifference. A few days later the assembly’s place was taken by the Third All-Russian Congress of Soviets, and in February 1918 the Kadets judged the resumption of its work unnecessary and came out in favour of strong one-man rule.

The cause of the Constituent nevertheless lived on in the civil war. In the summer of 1918 its deputies formed Komuch, the Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly, in Samara, and Socialist Revolutionaries from the dissolved parliament later helped to create the Directory in Ufa, overthrown in November by Admiral Kolchak. Richard Pipes held that the Bolsheviks took full power in Russia only in January 1918, because that was when they showed that they did not intend to heed the will of the voters. The dispersal of the Constituent closed the democratic path of the Russian revolutions.