To all the Soviets of Workmen’s and Soldiers’ Delegates, to all the Committees of the Army and of the Navy, to all the organizations associated with the Soviets and Committees, to all the members of the Socialist-Revolutionist and Menshevist Social Democratic fractions who left the Second Congress of Soviets: 

Comrades, workmen, and soldiers!  Our cry of alarm is addressed to all those to whom the work of the Soviets is dear.  Know that a traitorous blow threatens the revolutionary fatherland, the Constituent Assembly, and even the work of the Soviets.  Your duty is to prepare yourselves for their defense.

    The Central Executive Committee, nominated at the October
    Congress, calls together for the 8th of January a Congress of
    Soviets, destined to bungle the Constituent Assembly.

Comrades!  The Second Congress of Soviets assembled at the end of October, under conditions particularly unfavorable, at the time that the Bolshevik party, won over by its leaders to a policy of adventure, a plot unbecoming a class organization, executed at Petrograd a coup d’etat which gave it power; at a time when certain groups with the same viewpoint disorganized even the method of convocation of the Second Congress, thus openly aspiring to falsify the results; at this same Congress the regular representatives of the army were lacking (only two armies being represented), and the Soviets of the provinces were very insufficiently represented (only about 120 out of 900).  Under these conditions it is but natural that the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets chosen at the first election would not recognize the right of this Congress to decide the politics of the Soviets.

However, in spite of the protestations, and even of the departure of a great number of delegates (those of the Revolutionary Socialist fraction, Mensheviki, and Populist-Socialists), a new Executive Committee of the Soviets was elected.  To consider this last as the central director of all the Soviets of the country was absolutely impossible.  The delegates who remained in the Congress formed only an assembly of a group with a little fraction of the Revolutionary Socialists of the Left, who had given their adhesion to them.  Thus the Central Committee named by their Conference could not be considered except as representatives of these two groups only.

Bringing to the organization of Soviets an unheard-of disorder, establishing by their shameful methods of fighting its domination over the Soviets, some of which were taken by surprise, the others terrorized and broken in their personnel, deceiving the working class and the army by its short-sighted policy of adventure, the new Executive Committee during the two months that have since passed has attempted to subject all the Soviets of Russia to its influence.  It succeeded in part in this, in the measure in which the confidence of