By what forces have the Bolsheviki thus killed our country?  Twelve days before the organization of the autonomous administration was achieved and the elections to the Constituent Assembly begun, at the time when there had been organized all the autonomous administrations of volosts, districts, governments, and cities, chosen by equal, direct, and secret universal suffrage, thus assuring the realization of the will of the people and justifying the confidence of the population—­even then they seized the power and established a regime which subjects all the institutions of the country to the unlicensed power of the Commissaries of the People. And these Commissaries rely upon the Soviets, which were chosen at elections that were carried out according to rank, with open balloting and inequality of vote, for therein the peasants count only as many representatives as the workmen of the cities, although in Russia their number is sixty times greater.

Absence of control permits every abuse of power; absence of secret voting permits that into these Soviets at these suspicious elections some enter who are attracted by the political role of these institutions; the defeat of inequality in the suffrage restrains the expression of the will of the peasants, and, accordingly, these cannot have confidence in this system of government.  The tyranny that presided at these elections was such that the Bolsheviki themselves pay no attention to the results, and declare that the Soviets that are opposed to themselves are bourgeoisie and capitalists.  We, representing the peasant workers, must declare in the name of our constituents:  if anything can save Russia, it can only be the re-establishment of the organs of local autonomous administration, chosen by equal, direct, and secret universal suffrage and the resumption, without delay, of the work of the Constituent Assembly.

The Constituent Assembly alone can express the exact will of the working-people, for the system of election which governs it includes every measure of precaution against violence, corruption, and other abuses, and assures the election of deputies chosen by the majority; now, in the country, the majority is composed of the working class.

Millions of peasants delegated us to defend the Constituante, but this was dissolved as soon as it began to work for the good of the people.  The work of the Constituante was interrupted at the time that it was discussing the law concerning land, when a new agricultural regime was being elaborated for the country.  For this reason, and for this alone, the Constituante adopted only the first articles of this law, articles which established the definite transfer of all the land to the hands of the workers, without any ransom.  The other articles of this law, which concerned the order of the apportionment of lots, its forms, its methods of possession, etc., could not be adopted, although