Shooting of a peaceful demonstration in support of the founding assembly. Convening of the constituent assembly Opened on January 5, the constituent assembly

In films about the revolution made during the Soviet period, opponents of the Bolsheviks periodically shouted “All power to the Constituent Assembly!” The Soviet youth had difficulty understanding what they were talking about, but considering who was shouting, they guessed that it was something bad.

With the change in political guidelines, some Russian youth realize that the Constituent Assembly is, apparently, “something good, if against the Bolsheviks.” Although he still has difficulty understanding what is being said.

How to live after renunciation?

The Russian Constituent Assembly turned out to be a very strange phenomenon indeed. They talked and wrote a lot about it, but it held only one meeting, which did not become fateful for the country.

The question of convening the Constituent Assembly arose immediately after the abdication Emperor Nicholas II and his refusal brother Mikhail Alexandrovich accept the crown. Under these conditions, the Constituent Assembly, which is a council of deputies elected by the people, had to answer the main questions - about the state structure, about further participation in the war, about land, etc.

The Russian Provisional Government first had to prepare a regulation on elections, which was supposed to determine those who would be included in the electoral process.

Ballot with a list of members of the RSDLP(b). Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org

Very democratic elections

A special meeting to prepare the draft Regulations on the elections to the Constituent Assembly was convened only in May. Work on the Regulations was completed in August. The elections were declared universal, equal, and direct by secret ballot. There were no property qualifications; all persons over 20 years of age were admitted. Women also received voting rights, which was a revolutionary decision by the standards of the time.

Work on the documents was in full swing when the Provisional Government decided on the dates. Elections to the Constituent Assembly were to be held on September 17, and the first meeting was planned to be convened on September 30.

But the chaos in the country grew, the situation became more complicated, and it was impossible to resolve all organizational issues within the established time frame. On August 9, the Provisional Government changes its decision - now the new election date is announced as November 12, 1917, and the first meeting is scheduled for November 28.

A revolution is a revolution, and voting is on a schedule

On October 25, 1917, the October Revolution took place. The Bolsheviks who came to power, however, did not change anything. On October 27, 1917, the Council of People's Commissars adopted and published signed Lenin the decision to conduct it on the appointed date - November 12.

At the same time, it was technically impossible to hold elections simultaneously in all corners of the country. In a number of regions they were postponed to December and even January 1918.

The victory of the socialist parties was unconditional. At the same time, the preponderance of the Socialist Revolutionaries was explained by the fact that they focused, first of all, on the peasantry - we must not forget that Russia was an agrarian country. The worker-oriented Bolsheviks won in the major cities. It is worth noting that a split occurred in the Socialist Revolutionary Party - the left wing of the movement became allies of the Bolsheviks. The Left Socialist Revolutionaries received 40 mandates in the elections, which provided their coalition with the Bolsheviks with 215 seats in the Constituent Assembly. This moment will subsequently play a decisive role.

Lenin establishes quorum

The Bolsheviks, who took power, created the government and began to form new state bodies, did not intend to cede the levers of government to anyone. At first there was no final decision on how to act.

On November 26, the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, Lenin, signed the decree “For the opening of the Constituent Assembly,” which required a quorum of 400 people for its opening, and the Assembly should, according to the decree, be opened by a person authorized by the Council of People's Commissars, that is, a Bolshevik, or, theoretically, a left Socialist Revolutionary allied with the Bolsheviks.

The Provisional Government, as already mentioned, scheduled the convening of the Constituent Assembly for November 28, and a number of deputies from among the Right Socialist Revolutionaries tried to open it on that very day. By that time, only about 300 deputies had been elected, a little more than half of them were registered, and less than a hundred arrived in Petrograd. Some of the deputies, as well as former tsarist officials who joined them, tried to hold an action in support of the Constituent Assembly, which some of the participants considered as the first meeting. As a result, the participants in the unauthorized meeting were detained by representatives of the Military Revolutionary Committee.

“The interests of the revolution stand above the rights of the Constituent Assembly”

On the same day, the Council of People's Commissars issued a decree “On the arrest of the leaders of the civil war against the revolution,” which outlawed the most right-wing party among those that entered the Constituent Assembly - the Cadets. At the same time, “private meetings” of deputies of the Constituent Assembly were prohibited.

By mid-December 1917, the Bolsheviks had decided on their position. Lenin wrote: “The Constituent Assembly, convened according to the lists of parties that existed before the proletarian-peasant revolution, in an environment of bourgeois rule, inevitably comes into conflict with the will and interests of the working and exploited classes, which began the socialist revolution against the bourgeoisie on October 25. Naturally, the interests of this revolution are higher than the formal rights of the Constituent Assembly, even if these formal rights were not undermined by the absence in the law on the Constituent Assembly of recognizing the right of the people to re-elect their deputies at any time.”

The Bolsheviks and Left Socialist-Revolutionaries did not intend to transfer any power to the Constituent Assembly, and intended to deprive it of its legitimacy.

Shooting demonstrations

At the same time, on December 20, the Council of People's Commissars decided to open the work of the Constituent Assembly on January 5.

The Bolsheviks knew that their opponents were preparing to take political revenge. The Central Committee of the Socialist Revolutionary Party considered the option of an armed uprising in early January 1918. Few believed that the matter could end peacefully.

At the same time, some deputies believed that the main thing was to open the meeting of the Constituent Assembly, after which the support of the international community would force the Bolsheviks to retreat.

Leon Trotsky He spoke rather caustically on this score: “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.”

On the eve of the opening of the Constituent Assembly, the Socialist Revolutionaries and other oppositionists planned demonstrations in Petrograd and Moscow in support of it. It was clear that the actions would not be peaceful, since the opponents of the Bolsheviks had enough weapons in both capitals.

Demonstrations took place on January 3 in Petrograd and January 5 in Moscow. Both there and there they ended in shooting and casualties. About 20 people died in Petrograd, about 50 in Moscow, and there were victims on both sides.

"Declaration" of discord

Despite this, on January 5, 1918, the Constituent Assembly began its work in the Tauride Palace in Petrograd. There were 410 deputies present, so there was a quorum for making decisions. Of those who were at the meeting, 155 people represented the Bolsheviks and Left Socialist Revolutionaries.

Opened the meeting on behalf of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee Bolshevik Yakov Sverdlov. In his speech, he expressed hope for “full recognition by the Constituent Assembly of all decrees and resolutions of the Council of People's Commissars.” The draft “Declaration of the Rights of Working and Exploited People” was submitted to the Constituent Assembly for approval.

Photo of the only meeting. V.I. Lenin in the box of the Tauride Palace at a meeting of the Constituent Assembly. 1918, January 5 (18). Petrograd. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org

This document was a constitutional act that proclaimed the basic principles of a socialist state according to the Bolsheviks. The “Declaration” had already been approved by the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and its adoption by the Constituent Assembly would mean recognition of the October Revolution and all subsequent steps of the Bolsheviks.

He was elected Chairman of the All-Russian Constituent Assembly Social Revolutionary Victor Chernov, for which 244 votes were cast.

"We are leaving"

But in fact, this was already just a formality - the Bolsheviks, after refusing to consider the “Declaration of the Rights of the Working and Exploited People,” moved on to a different form of action.

Deputy Fyodor Raskolnikov announced that the Bolshevik faction was leaving the meeting in protest against the non-acceptance of the “Declaration”: “Not wanting 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 parts of the Constituent Assembly."

After about half an hour Deputy from the Left Socialist Revolutionaries Vladimir Karelin announced that his faction was leaving following the allies: “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 in order to bring our strength, our energy to Soviet institutions, to the Central Executive Committee."

The term “dispersal of the Constituent Assembly”, given the departure of the Bolsheviks and Left Socialist Revolutionaries, is inaccurate. There were 255 deputies left in the hall, that is, 35.7 percent of the total number of the Constituent Assembly. Due to the lack of a quorum, the meeting lost its legitimacy, as did all the documents it adopted.

Anatoly Zheleznyakov. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org

“The guard is tired and wants to sleep...”

Nevertheless, the Constituent Assembly continued its work. Lenin gave orders not to interfere with the remaining deputies. But at five o'clock in the morning my patience ran out Head of Security of the Tauride Palace Anatoly Zheleznyakov, better known as “Sailor Zheleznyak”.

There are several versions of the birth of a historical phrase known to everyone today. According to one of them, Zheleznyakov went to the chairman Chernov and said: “Please stop the meeting! The guard is tired and wants to sleep..."

The confused Chernov tried to object, and cries were heard from the audience: “We don’t need a guard!”

Zheleznyakov snapped: “The working people don’t need your chatter. I repeat: the guard is tired!”

However, there were no major disputes. The deputies themselves were tired, so they gradually began to disperse.

The palace is closed, there will be no meeting

The next meeting was scheduled for 17:00 on January 6. However, the deputies, approaching the Tauride Palace, found armed guards near it, who announced that the meeting would not take place.

On January 9, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee issued a decree dissolving the Constituent Assembly. By decision of the Council of People's Commissars, references to the Constituent Assembly were removed from all decrees and other official documents. On January 10, in the same Tauride Palace in Petrograd, the III All-Russian Congress of Soviets began its work, which became a Bolshevik alternative to the Constituent Assembly. At the Congress of Soviets, a decree was approved to dissolve the Constituent Assembly.

The situation in the Tauride Palace after the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly. Photo: RIA Novosti / Steinberg

A short history of Komuch: the second time the members of the Constituent Assembly were dispersed by Kolchak

For some participants in the White movement, including those who were not elected to the Constituent Assembly, the demand for the resumption of its work became the slogan of armed struggle.

On June 8, 1918, Komuch (Committee of Members of the All-Russian Constituent Assembly) was formed in Samara, declaring itself the All-Russian government in defiance of the Bolsheviks. The People's Army of Komuch was formed, one of whose commanders was the notorious General Vladimir Kappel.

Komuch managed to take control of a significant territory of the country. On September 23, 1918, Komuch united with the Provisional Siberian Government. This happened at the State Meeting in Ufa, as a result of which the so-called “Ufa Directory” was created.

It was difficult to call this government stable. The politicians who created Komuch were Social Revolutionaries, while the military, who made up the main force of the “Directory,” professed much more right-wing views.

This alliance was put to an end by a military coup on the night of November 17-18, 1918, during which the Socialist Revolutionaries who were part of the government were arrested, and Admiral Kolchak came to power.

In November, approximately 25 former deputies of the Constituent Assembly, on Kolchak's orders, were court-martialed "for attempting to raise an uprising and conduct destructive agitation among the troops." They were imprisoned, and later some of them were killed by Black Hundred officers.

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).

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.

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, offered 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 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)

ELECTIONS TO THE CONSTITUENT BOARD

The convening of the Constituent Assembly as the body of the supreme democratic power was the demand of all socialist parties in pre-revolutionary Russia - from the people's socialists to the Bolsheviks. Elections to the Constituent Assembly took place at the end of 1917. The overwhelming majority of voters participating in the elections, about 90%, voted for socialist parties, socialists made up 90% of all deputies (the Bolsheviks received only 24% of the votes). But the Bolsheviks came to power under the slogan “All power to the Soviets!” They could maintain their autocracy, obtained at the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets, only by relying on the Soviets, opposing them to the Constituent Assembly. At the Second Congress of Soviets, the Bolsheviks promised to convene a Constituent Assembly and recognize it as the authority on which “the solution of all major issues depends,” but they were not going to fulfill this promise. On December 3, at the Congress of Soviets of Peasant Deputies, Lenin, despite the protest of a number of delegates, declared: “The Soviets are superior to all parliaments, all Constituent Assemblies. The Bolshevik Party has always said that the highest body is the Soviets.” The Bolsheviks considered the Constituent Assembly their main rival in the struggle for power. Immediately after the elections, Lenin warned that the Constituent Assembly would “doom itself to political death” if it opposed Soviet power.

Lenin took advantage of the fierce struggle within the Socialist Revolutionary Party and formed a political bloc with the Left Socialist Revolutionaries. Despite differences with them on issues of a multi-party system and the dictatorship of the proletariat, a separate world, and freedom of the press, the Bolsheviks received the support they needed to stay in power. The Central Committee of the Socialist Revolutionaries, believing in the unconditional prestige and invulnerability of the Constituent Assembly, did not take real steps to protect it.

Encyclopedia "Around the World"

FIRST AND LAST MEETING

The positions have been decided. Circumstances forced the Socialist-Revolutionary faction. play a leadership and leadership role. This was caused by the numerical superiority of the faction. This was also due to the fact that the more moderate members of the Constituent Assembly, elected among 64, did not dare, with a few exceptions, to appear at the meeting. The cadets were officially recognized as "enemies of the people" and some of them were imprisoned.

Our faction was also, in a sense, “decapitated.” Avksentyev was still in the Peter and Paul Fortress. Kerensky, on whom Bolshevik slander and rage was predominantly concentrated, was also absent. They looked for him everywhere, night and day. He was in Petrograd, and it took a lot of effort to convince him to abandon the crazy idea of ​​​​appearing at the Tauride Palace to declare that he was relinquishing power before a legally elected and authorized assembly. The recklessly brave Gotz nevertheless appeared at the meeting, despite the order of arrest for participation in the cadet uprising. Guarded by close friends, he was constrained even in movement and could not be active. Such was the position of Rudnev, who led Moscow’s broken resistance to the Bolshevik seizure of power. And V.M. Chernov, scheduled to be the chairman of the meeting, thereby also dropped out of the number of possible leaders of the faction. There was not a single person who could be trusted to lead. And the faction entrusted its political fate and honor to the team - the five: V.V. Rudnev, M.Ya. Gendelman, E.M. Timofeev, I.N. Kovarsky and A.B. Elyashevich.<...>

Chernov's candidacy for chairman was opposed by Spiridonova's candidacy. When voting, Chernov received 244 white balls against 151 black balls. After the results were announced, Chernov took the monumental chair of the chairman on the stage, overlooking the oratory. A large distance had formed between him and the hall. And the welcoming, fundamental speech of the chairman not only did not overcome the resulting “dead space” - it even increased the distance separating him from the meeting. In the most “shocky” parts of Chernov’s speech, an obvious chill ran through the right sector. The speech caused dissatisfaction among the leaders of the faction and a simple-minded misunderstanding of this dissatisfaction on the part of the speaker himself.<...>

Long and tedious hours passed before the assembly was freed from the hostile factions that were hindering its work. The electricity had been turned on a long time ago. The tense atmosphere of the military camp was growing and was definitely looking for a way out. From my secretary's chair on the podium, I saw how armed people, after the Bolsheviks left, increasingly began to raise their rifles and take aim at those on the podium or sitting in the hall. O.S. Minor’s gleaming bald head was an attractive target for soldiers and sailors while away the time. Shotguns and revolvers threatened every minute to discharge themselves, hand bombs and grenades to explode themselves.<...>

Having descended from the platform, I went to see what was happening in the choir. In the semicircular hall, grenades and cartridge bags are stacked in the corners, and guns are stacked. Not a hall, but a camp. The Constituent Assembly is not surrounded by enemies, it is in the enemy camp, in the very lair of the beast. Certain groups continue to “protest” and argue. Some of the deputies are trying to convince the soldiers of the rightness of the meeting and the criminality of the Bolsheviks. Rushes:

And Lenin will have a bullet if he deceives!

The room reserved for our faction has already been captured by sailors. The commandant's office helpfully reports that it does not guarantee the immunity of deputies - they can be shot at the meeting itself. Melancholy and grief are aggravated by the consciousness of complete powerlessness. Sacrificial readiness finds no way out. What they are doing, let them do it quickly!

In the meeting room, the sailors and Red Army soldiers had finally stopped feeling shy. They jump over the barriers of the boxes, click the bolts of their rifles as they go, and rush into the choir like a whirlwind. Of the Bolshevik faction, only the more prominent ones left the Tauride Palace. The less famous ones have only moved from the delegate chairs to the choirs and aisles of the hall and from there they observe and give their remarks. The audience in the choir is anxious, almost in panic. Deputies on the ground are motionless, tragically silent. We are isolated from the world, just as the Tauride Palace is isolated from Petrograd and Petrograd from Russia. There is noise all around, and we seem to be in the desert given over to the will of a triumphant enemy, so that we can drink a bitter cup for the people and for Russia.

It is reported that carriages and cars have been sent to the Tauride Palace to take away those arrested. There was even something reassuring about it - still some certainty. Some begin hastily destroying incriminating documents. We convey something to our loved ones - in the public and in the journalists' box. Among the documents, they handed over the “Report to the All-Russian Constituent Assembly of the members of the Provisional Government” who were at large. The prison carriages, however, do not arrive. New rumor - the electricity will be turned off. A few minutes later A.N. Sletova had already produced dozens of candles.

It was five o'clock in the morning. The prepared land law was announced and voted on. An unknown sailor rose to the podium - one of many who had been loitering all day and night in the corridors and passages. Approaching the chair of the chairman, who was busy with the voting procedure, the sailor stood for a while, as if in thought, and, seeing that they were not paying attention to him, decided that the time had come to “go down in history.” The owner of the now famous name, Zheleznyakov, touched the chairman by the sleeve and declared that, according to the instructions he received from the commissar (Dybenka), those present should leave the hall.

An argument began between V.M. Chernov, who insisted that “the Constituent Assembly can disperse only if force is used,” and the “citizen sailor,” who demanded that they “immediately leave the meeting room.” The real power, alas, was on the side of the anarchist-communist, and it was not Viktor Chernov, but Anatoly Zheleznyakov who prevailed.

We quickly hear a series of extraordinary statements and, in order of haste, we adopt the first ten articles of the basic law on land, an appeal to the allied powers rejecting separate negotiations with the central powers, and a resolution on the federal structure of the Russian democratic republic. At 4:40 a.m. In the morning the first meeting of the All-Russian Constituent Assembly closes.

M. Vishnyak. Convocation and dispersal of the Constituent Assembly // October Revolution. The revolution of 1917 through the eyes of its leaders. Memoirs of Russian politicians and commentary by a Western historian. M., 1991.

"THE GUARD IS TIRED"

Citizen sailor. I have received instructions to bring to your attention that all those present leave the meeting room because the guard is tired. (Voices: we don’t need a guard.)

Chairman. What instructions? From whom?

Citizen sailor. I am the head of security at the Tauride Palace and have instructions from Commissioner Dybenka.

Chairman. All members of the Constituent Assembly are also very tired, but no amount of fatigue can interrupt the announcement of the land law that Russia is waiting for. (Terrible noise. Shouts: enough! enough!) The Constituent Assembly can disperse only if force is used. (Noise. Voices: Down with Chernov.)

Citizen sailor. (Inaudible) ... I ask you to leave the courtroom immediately.

Chairman. On this issue that suddenly burst into our meeting, the Ukrainian faction asks for the floor for an extraordinary statement...

I.V. Streltsov. I have the honor to make an extraordinary statement from the group of the Left Socialist-Revolutionary Party. Ukrainians with the following content: standing from the point of view of resolving the question of peace and land, as it is resolved by the entire working peasantry, workers and soldiers, and as it is set out in the declaration of the Central Executive Committee, a group of left Socialist-Revolutionaries. Ukrainians, however, taking into account the current situation, joins the declaration of the Ukrainian Socialist-Revolutionary Party, with all the ensuing consequences. (Applause.)

Chairman. The following proposal has been made. Finish the meeting of this Assembly by adopting the read part of the basic law on land without debate, and transfer the rest to the commission for presentation within seven days. (Voting.) The proposal was accepted. A proposal was made to cancel the roll call vote due to the current situation and to conduct an open vote. (Voting.) Accepted. The announced main provisions of the land law are put to a vote. (Ballotment.) So, citizens, members of the Constituent Assembly, you have accepted the basic provisions announced by me on the land issue.

There is a proposal to elect a land commission, which would, within seven days, consider all the remaining undisclosed points of the land law. (Voting.) Accepted. (Inaudible... Noise.) Proposals were made to accept the announced statements: an appeal to the allies, to convene an international socialist peace conference, to accept peace negotiations with the warring powers by the Constituent Assembly, and to elect a plenipotentiary delegation. (Is reading.)

“In the name of the peoples of the Russian Republic, the All-Russian Constituent Assembly, expressing the inflexible will of the people to immediately end the war and conclude a just universal peace, appeals to the powers allied with Russia with a proposal to begin to jointly determine the exact conditions of a democratic peace acceptable to all warring peoples, in order to present these conditions on behalf of the entire coalition to the states waging war with the Russian Republic and its allies.

The Constituent Assembly is filled with unshakable confidence that the desire of the peoples of Russia to end the disastrous war will meet with a unanimous response among the peoples and governments of the allied states and that through joint efforts a speedy peace will be achieved, ensuring the welfare and dignity of all warring peoples.

Expressing regret on behalf of the peoples of Russia that negotiations with Germany, begun without prior agreement with the allied democracies, have acquired the character of negotiations on a separate peace, the Constituent Assembly, in the name of the peoples of the Russian Federative Republic, continuing the established truce, takes upon itself further negotiations with the powers at war with us, so that, while protecting the interests of Russia, we achieve, in accordance with the will of the people, a universal democratic peace"

“The Constituent Assembly declares that it will provide every possible assistance to the initiatives of the socialist parties of the Russian Republic in the matter of immediately convening an international socialist conference in order to achieve universal democratic peace.”

“The Constituent Assembly decides to elect from among its members a plenipotentiary delegation to conduct negotiations with representatives of the Allied powers and to present them with an appeal to jointly clarify the conditions for an early end to the war, as well as to implement the decision of the Constituent Assembly on the issue of peace negotiations with the powers waging war against us .

This delegation has the authority, under the leadership of the Constituent Assembly, to immediately begin to fulfill the duties assigned to it."

It is proposed to elect representatives of various factions to the delegation on a proportional basis.

(Voting.) So, all proposals have been accepted. A proposal was made to adopt the following resolution on the state structure of Russia:

“In the name of the peoples, the constituent Russian state, the All-Russian Constituent Assembly decides: the Russian state is proclaimed a Russian democratic federal republic, uniting in an inextricable union the peoples and regions within the limits established by the federal constitution, sovereign.”

(Voting.) Accepted. (It is proposed to schedule the next meeting of the Constituent Assembly for tomorrow at 12 noon. There is another proposal - to schedule the meeting not at 12 noon, but at 5 o’clock. (Voting.) For - 12, minority. So, Tomorrow the meeting is scheduled at 5 pm (Voices: today.) My attention is drawn to the fact that this will be today. So, today the meeting of the Constituent Assembly is declared closed, and the next meeting is scheduled for today at 5 pm.

From the transcript of the meeting of the Constituent Assembly

DECREE OF THE ALL-Russian Central Executive Committee ON THE DISSOLUTION OF THE CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY

The Constituent Assembly, elected from lists drawn up before the October Revolution, was an expression of the old balance of political forces, when the Compromisers and Cadets were in power.

The people could not then, when voting for candidates of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, make a choice between the right Socialist Revolutionaries, supporters of the bourgeoisie, and the left, supporters of socialism. Thus, this Constituent Assembly, which was supposed to be the crown of the bourgeois-parliamentary republic, could not help but stand across the path of the October Revolution and Soviet power. The October Revolution, having given power to the Soviets and through the Soviets to the working and exploited classes, aroused desperate resistance from the exploiters and in the suppression of this resistance fully revealed itself as the beginning of the socialist revolution.

The working classes had to learn from experience that the old bourgeois parliamentarism had outlived itself, that it was completely incompatible with the tasks of implementing socialism, that not national, but only class institutions (such as the Soviets) were able to defeat the resistance of the propertied classes and lay the foundations of a socialist society.

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: “By 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.

Answer from MAG[guru]
On January 5, 1918, the Bolsheviks dispersed the Constituent Assembly. This date marks the end of the legitimacy of the Russian state. In February 17th, after the bourgeois revolution, there was no gap in legitimacy. The abdication manifesto, signed by Nicholas II in favor of his brother Michael, stated that the new monarch must “rule state affairs in complete and inviolable unity with the representatives of the people in legislative institutions on the principles that will be established by them.” Mikhail directly stated that “he can only take responsibility for the country by decision of the Constituent Assembly.” That is, he obviously recognized the legality of another decision of the Constitutional Court.
The legitimacy of the US was not disputed by anyone, not even the Bolsheviks themselves. One of their justifications for the October coup was precisely the defense of the Constitution. The Bolsheviks lost the elections, but allowed the Council of Representatives to gather, hoping to slip it their “Declaration of the Working and Exploited People” for approval, thereby at least somehow legitimizing the power of the soviets. The idea failed, after which the US was dispersed. Immediately after this, the Bolsheviks took a course towards a complete rejection of the legitimation of their power by any generally recognized procedures. The Russian Federation established its legal succession in relation to the USSR, i.e. to a state created illegitimately through a coup and civil war. That is, Russia fully inherited the illegitimacy of the USSR. We live today in a state with clearly flawed legitimacy. The imperial coat of arms - the double-headed eagle - is only a surrogate for continuity, a meaningless prop. In such a state there will never be the rule of law. In the USSR there was no law in the strict sense of the word. At least there was much more “revolutionary expediency” than right. Today, perhaps, only the word “revolutionary” has lost its relevance. Expediency continues to dominate over law. The YUKOS case is the most recent example of this. Constituent assemblies (under different names) were a key element in the transition of legitimacy from monarchy to republic in many countries. In our country, this link was ripped out with meat by the Bolsheviks. And it has not yet been restored. A revision of the attitude towards the legal system should be the beginning of restoring the legitimacy of law in modern Russia. Otherwise, Lenin’s cause will continue to live and defeat Russia.

Answer from Natalia[guru]
exam tomorrow!...

Answer from GORь)N[guru]
5 days before the exam X_X

Answer from Albert Belkov[guru]
Excavator operators - dig and dig!..

Answer from Natalia Korobkova[guru]
Half the weekend is like crazy))

Answer from Black Ice[guru]
Pop Gapon!

Answer from Valentina Kiseleva[guru]
Thank you dear, I reminded you. So this is a historical date - the shooting of a peaceful demonstration on January 5, 1905 - if I'm not mistaken. People remember it as Bloody Sunday.

Answer from Yergey Kazantsev[guru]
On January 5, 1918, the Bolsheviks in Petrograd shot a workers' demonstration in support of the Constituent Assembly
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 I after that execution and the savagery that the Red Guards and sailors committed with 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. "..."

Answer from Alexei[guru]
1762 - Peter III ascended the Russian throne.
1905 - Surrender of the Port Arthur fortress during the Russo-Japanese War.

Answer from Inverter[guru]
So it depends on what style you look at.

Answer from Olga Kone[active]
Getting ready for Christmas

Answer from YETASYA[newbie]
This date doesn’t mean anything to me, it’s a day off, I’m going to spend the first half of the day doing household chores, and relax in the evening, for example, going to the cinema at Yolki.

Answer from Anatoly[guru]
Once upon a time there was: Radio Day!

Answer from < Потомок славян > [guru]
Like any other day in history, it always speaks volumes.
Nikolashka the second was informed in advance by his special forces. services about the upcoming procession of unarmed people towards the winter.
The whole city lived in anticipation of the development of events, as their prospect...
And already on January 9, with the tacit consent of the emperor, a 150,000-strong procession of workers in St. Petersburg, who were going to present the tsar with a petition signed by tens of thousands of St. Petersburg residents asking for reforms, was shot. According to official data, 96 people were killed and 330 wounded. , newspapers reported 1000-1200 killed.
The shooting sowed discord among the people. From that day on, not only the workers, but even the police began to count against the lancers and Cossacks: the bailiffs and policemen walked at the head of the peaceful procession, and came under fire and attack from the cavalry along with the demonstrators. On January 9, the first Russian revolution of 1905-1907 began.
On January 19, the emperor received a delegation of specially selected workers and told them that he would not speak to the “rebellious crowd,” but since the workers “were misled by traitors,” he “forgave them their guilt.”