The Bolsheviki and the Constituent Assembly

At the time of the accomplishment of their coup d’etat, the Bolsheviki cried aloud that the ministry of Kerensky put off a long time the convocation of the Constituante (which was a patent lie), that they would never call the Assembly, and that they alone, the Bolsheviki, would do it.  But according as the results of the elections became known their opinions changed.

In the beginning they boasted of their electoral victories at Petrograd and Moscow.  Then they kept silent, as if the elections had no existence whatever.  But the Pravda and the Izvestya of the Soviet of Workmen’s and Soldiers’ Delegates continued to treat as caluminators those who exposed the danger that was threatening the Constituent Assembly at the hands of the Bolsheviki.  They did not yet dare to assert themselves openly.  They had to gain time to strengthen their power.  They hastily followed up peace pourparlers, to place Russia and the Constituent Assembly, if this met, before an accomplished fact.

They hastened to attract the peasants to themselves.  That was the reason which motived the “decree” of Lenine on the socialization of the soil, which decree appeared immediately after the coup d’etat.  This decree was simply a reproduction of a Revolutionary Socialists’ resolution adopted at a Peasants’ Congress.  What could the socialization of the soil be to Lenine and all the Bolsheviki in general?  They had been, but a short time before, profoundly indifferent with regard to this Socialist-Revolutionist “Utopia.”  It had been for them an object of raillery.  But they knew that without this “Utopia” they would have no peasants.  And they threw them this mouthful, this “decree,” which astonished the peasants.  “Is it a law?  Is it not a law?  Nobody knows,” they said.

It is the same desire to have, cost what it may, the sympathy of the peasants that explains the union of the Bolsheviki with those who are called the “Socialist-Revolutionists of the Left” (for the name Socialist-Revolutionist spoke to the heart of the peasant), who played the stupid and shameful role of followers of the Bolsheviki, with a blind weapon between their hands.

A part of the “peasants in uniform” followed the Bolsheviki to Smolny.  The Germans honored the Bolsheviki by continuing with them the pourparlers for peace.  The Bolshevist government had at its disposal the Red Guards, well paid, created suddenly in the presence of the crumbling of the army for fear of remaining without the help of bayonets.  These Red Guards, who later fled in shameful fashion before the German patrols, advanced into the interior of the country and gained victories over the unarmed populace.  The Bolsheviki felt the ground firm under their feet and threw off the mask.  A campaign against the Constituent Assembly commenced.  At first in Pravda and in Izvestya were only questions.  What