APPENDIX II

HOW THE RUSSIAN PEASANTS FOUGHT FOR A CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY[91]

A report to the International Socialist Bureau by Inna Rakitnikov, Vice-President of the Executive Committee of the Soviet of Delegates, placing themselves upon the grounds of the defense of the Constituent Assembly.

With a letter-preface by the citizen, E. Roubanovitch, member of the International Socialist Bureau.

    To the Executive Committee of the International Socialist
    Bureau: 

DEAR COMRADES,—­The citizen Inna Rakitnikov has lately come from Petrograd to Paris for personal reasons that are peculiarly tragic.  At the time of her departure the Executive Committee of the Second Soviet of Peasant Delegates of All-Russia, of which she is one of the vice-presidents, requested her to make to the International Socialist Bureau a detailed report of the fights that this organization had to make against the Bolsheviki in order to realize the convocation of the Constituent Assembly.

This is the report under the title of a document that I present here, without commentary, asking you to communicate it without delay to all the sections of the International.  Two words of explanation, only:  First, I wish to draw your attention to the fact that this is the second time that the Executive Committee of the Soviet of the Peasants of All-Russia addresses itself publicly to the International.

At the time of my journey to Stockholm in the month of September, 1917, I made, at a session of the Holland, Scandinavian committee, presided over by Branting, a communication in the name of the Executive Committee of the Soviet of Peasants.  I handed over on this occasion to our secretary, Camille Huysmans, an appeal to the democrats of the entire world, in which the Executive Committee indicated clearly its position in the questions of the world war and of agrarian reform, and vindicated its place in the Workers’ and Socialist International family.

I must also present to you the author of this report.  The citizen Rakitnikov, a member of the Russian Revolutionary Socialist party, has worked for a long time in the ranks of this party as a publicist and organizer and propagandist, especially among the peasants.  She has known long years of prison, of Siberia, of exile.  Before and during the war until the beginning of the Revolution she lived as a political fugitive in Paris.  While being a partizan convinced of the necessity of national defense of invaded countries against the imperialistic aggression of German militarism—­in which she is in perfect accord with the members of our party such as Stepan Sletof, Iakovlef, and many other voluntary Russian republicans, all dead facing the enemy in the ranks of the French army—­the citizen Rakitnikov belonged to the international group.  I affirm that her