Considering the Congress of October as incompetent, the Central Committee chosen at the first elections has decided to begin a preparatory work in view of the convocation of a new Congress of the Soviets of Workmen’s and Soldiers’ Delegates.

In the near future, while the Commissaires of the People, in the persons of Lenine and Trotzky, are going to fight against the sovereign power of the Constituent Assembly, we shall have to intervene with all our energy in the conflict artificially encited by the adventurers, between that Assembly and the Soviets. It will be our task to aid the Soviets in taking consciousness of their role, in defining their political lines, and in determining their functions and those of the Constituante.

Comrades!  The convocation of the Congress for the 8th of January is dictated by the desire to provoke a conflict between the Soviets and the Constituante, and thus botch this last.  Anxious for the fate of the country, the Executive Committee chosen at the first elections decides to convoke at Petrograd for the 8th of January an extraordinary assembly of all the Soviets, all the Committees of the Army and the Navy, all the fractions of the Soviets and military committees, all the organizations that cluster around the Soviets and the Committees that are standing upon the ground of the defense of the Constituante. The following are the Orders of the Day: 

1.  The power of the Constituent Assembly. 2.  The fight for the general democratic peace and the re-establishment of the International. 3.  The immediate problems of the policy of the Soviets.

Comrades!  Assure for this extraordinary assembly of Soviets the most complete representation of all the organizations of workmen and soldiers.  Establish at once election centers.  We have a fight to uphold.

    In the name of the Revolution, all the reason and all the energy
    ought to be thrown into the balance.

    THE CENTRAL EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE OF SOVIETS OF WORKMEN’S AND
    SOLDIERS’ DELEGATES CHOSEN AT THE FIRST ELECTIONS.

    25 December, 1917.

IX

The Manifestation of January 5th at Petrograd

From eleven o’clock in the morning corteges, composed principally of working-men bearing red flags and placards with inscriptions such as “Proletarians of All Countries, Unite!” “Land and Liberty!” “Long Live the Constituent Assembly!” etc., set out from different parts of the city.  The members of the Executive Committee of the Soviet of Peasants’ Delegates had agreed to meet at the Field, of Mars where a procession coming from the Petrogradsky quarter was due to arrive.  It was soon learned that a part of the participants, coming from the Viborg quarter, had been assailed at the Liteiny bridge by gunfire from the Red Guards and were