On the appointed day and hour of the opening of the session of the Constituent Assembly ... the delegates to the Constituent Assembly who had arrived in Petrograd gathered at the Tavrichesky Palace.  The elected representatives of the people beheld innumerable banners and large crowds surrounding the palace.  This was Petrograd greeting the representatives of the people.  At the doors of the palace the picture changed.  There stood armed guards and at the orders of the usurpers, the Bolsheviki, they refused to let the delegates pass into the Tavrichesky Palace.  It appeared that, in order to enter the building, the delegates had first to pay respects to the Commissaire, a satellite of Lenine and Trotzky, and there receive special permission.  The delegates would not submit to that; elected by the people and equipped with formal authorization, they had the right to freely enter any public building assigned for their meeting.  The delegates decided to enter the Tavrichesky Palace without asking the new authorities, and they succeeded in doing so.  On the first day the guards did not dare to lift their arms against the people’s elected representatives and allowed them to enter the building without molestation.

    There was no struggle, no violence, no sacrifices; the delegates
    demanded that the guards respect their rights; they demanded to be
    admitted, and the guards yielded.

In the Tavrichesky Palace the delegates opened their meeting; V.M.  Chernov was elected chairman.  There were, altogether, about forty delegates present.  They realized that there were not enough present to start the work of the Constituent Assembly. It was decided that it would be advisable to await the arrival of the other delegates and start the work of the Constituent Assembly only when a sufficient number were present.  Those already there decided to meet daily at the Tavrichesky Palace in order to count all the delegates as they arrived, and on an appointed day to publicly announce the day and hour of the beginning of the activities of the Constituent Assembly.

When the delegates finished their session and adjourned, the old guards had been dismissed for their submissive attitude toward the delegates and replaced by armed civilian followers of Lenine and Trotzky.  The latter issued an order to disband the delegates, but there were none to be disbanded.

The following day the government of the Bolsheviki dishonestly and basely slandered the people’s representatives in their official announcement which appeared in Pravda.  That lying newspaper wrote that the representatives of the people had forced their way into the palace, accompanied by Junkers and the White Guards of the bourgeoisie, that the representatives wanted to take advantage of their small numbers and had begun the work of the Constituent Assembly.  Every one knows that this is slanderous as regards