Constituent Assembly of Russia

“ The Germans could have advanced at will at any time. An armistice with Germany was unavoidable no matter who constituted the government. The Constituent Assembly, Russia’s parliamentary democracy, which was bayoneted out of existence at its first session by the Bolsheviks, would in all likelihood have converted Russia into a constitutional republic on the model of France and England. The preponderance of Socialist sentiment guaranteed a highly advanced system of social legislation. ”

“ Ever since the constituent assembly established an unity of administration in France, our system of government has no longer cause to dread that, in a homogeneous whole, one province or one district will be opposed to another; their strength has been blended in a manner very convenient to those in power. But it is far otherwise in Russia: the cabinet of St. Petersburg has to command thousands of different races—Tartars, Mahometans, Poles, and Cossacks ”

“ It is better that we should all perish, we workmen and all Russia. Then good luck to the capitalists and exploiters of the poor, the corrupt officials and robbers of the Russian people! "‘Throw down the wall that separates you from your people. Russia is too great and her needs are too various for officials to rule. National representation is essential, for the people alone know their own needs. Direct that elections for a constituent assembly be held by general secret ballot. ”

“ M. Aladin has, as I have said, a great contempt for the methods of the Russian revolutionaries, and he expressed something of it on this occasion. He said that only people without any stuff in them would demand a Constituent Assembly. “You don’t demand a Constituent Assembly, you constitute it,” he said. “It was humiliating,” he continued, “that citizens of a big country like Russia should be obliged to come to Finland in order to speak their minds freely. It was time to cease being a people of slaves, and time to be a revolutionary people. ”

“ We ought to declare ourselves a Constituent Assembly. The people of St. Petersburg are like ducks who have been fired at. They are afraid of the sight of blood. But the Government needn’t think they have got the best of us, not those silly little gramophones (this to his interlocutor) who repeat what the Cadets say, but us, the representatives of the people; we shall have a nice surprise for them. We have got terrible means at our disposal without even appealing to the people. That’s the worst of us Russians: we know how to talk, how to write ”

“ Here you sit in the Winter Palace, unwilling to leave, too jealous to hand over the power to some one else. Although I knew the Tsar well, your distrust of me and belief that I am in favour of Tsarism now is utterly unfounded. How can I be in favour of a Tsar when I love my country and the moujik? My whole aspiration is to build up a strong democratic nation, by means of a Constituent Assembly and a chosen leader. I want Russia to be powerful and progressive. Give me a free hand in the army and our Motherland will be saved.”
Kerensky heatedly rejected Kornilov’s request. ”

“ The Constituent Assembly firmly believes that the attempts of the peoples of Russia to end the disastrous war will meet with a unanimous response on the part of the peoples and the governments of the Allied countries, and that by common efforts a speedy peace will be attained, which will safeguard the well-being and dignity of all the belligerent countries. ”

“ The fact is that the Poles, like the Liberals here, are in a great hurry. They wish everything to be done at once, and changes which have taken some centuries to elaborate in other and calmer countries to be brought about here in a few days. The Liberals are now crying loudly that nothing will satisfy them but a Constituent Assembly based on universal suffrage. They are unwilling to wait a few months until order can be restored, and until the Duma can meet and vote on the adoption or the non-adoption of such an assembly. ”

“ Even supposing that Admiral Koltchak wins the most brilliant of victories, much time will pass before tranquillity returns to the country, before he succeeds in re-establishing the administrative machinery, and a Constituent Assembly is elected in which the “Russian people will be in a position to make its will known freely.” ”

“ M. Terestchenko further expresses the view that the role of the Preliminary Parliament would be a great one, that up to a certain moment it would take the place of a Constituent Assembly, and that, even though in its composition the Socialists should be in a majority the Moderate parties would succeed in holding their own against the Extreme Left, as the Moderate Socialists would act in accord with the Liberal parties. ”

“ In their later declarations they are as far from their romantic anarchist left wing as they are from their romantic reactionary extreme right. They stand, as they have always stood, for a Constituent Assembly, but they have thrown over the idea of instituting a Constituent Assembly by force. ”

“ The new government was recognized by the United States, Great Britain, France, and Italy. It looked as if the revolution had established a free government for Russia and that thenceforth, as a democratic nation, she would fight better than ever by the side of her allies. In all the Russian provinces, elections were called for choosing delegates to an assembly that should make a new constitution for Russia. ”

“ Striving at the same time to organize a free and voluntary, and thereby also a complete and strong, union among the toiling classes of all the Russian nations, the Constituent Assembly limits itself to outlining the basis of the federation of Russian Soviet Republics, leaving to the people, to the workers and soldiers, to decide for themselves, in their own Soviet meetings, if they are willing, and on what conditions they prefer, to join the federated government and other federations of Soviet enterprise. ”

“ The great majority of the Russian people see their only salvation in the constituent assembly and are working for it with great ardor. Others say that the country can be saved without the constituent assembly, believing it to be dangerous and premature for the Russian people who are but little advanced in culture. ”

“ Moved by the thought, which is in the minds of the entire people, that the good of the country is paramount, I have adopted the firm resolution to accept the supreme power only if this be the will of our great people, who, by a plebiscite organized by their representatives in a Constituent Assembly, shall establish a form of government and new fundamental laws for the Russian state. ”

“ Every work- man, every peasant in Russia has the right to vote in the elec- tion of deputies to his local Soviet, which is made up of a number of deputies corresponding to the number of electors. The local Soviets choose their delegates to an All-Russian Assembly of Soviets. ”

“ New men in politics are commonly fresh, progressive, representative; it's the later statesmen that damp the enthusiasm and sober the idealism of legislators. In Russia all legislators, all, are young or new. It is as if we should elect in the United States a brand-new set of men to all offices, from the lowest county to the highest Federal position, and as if the election should occur in a great crisis, when all men are full of hope and faith. The new leaders of the local Soviets of Russia were, and they still are, of the people, really. ”

“ In the Moscow and Bucharest conferences could be glimpsed the rebirth of Bahá’í communities that had been nearly extinguished under the oppression of the Soviet regime and its collaborators. One of the last three surviving Hands of the Cause, ‘Alí-Akbar Furútan, who had lived in Russia, had the great joy of returning to Moscow, at the age of eighty-six, for the inaugural election of the National Assembly of that country. Local Spiritual Assemblies sprang up in all of the newly opened lands, and six new National Spiritual Assemblies were elected. ”

“ The highest authority in the state is the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, which consists of representatives of town Soviets, on the basis of one delegate for each 25,000 electors, and a provincial council of Soviets on a basis of one delegate for each 125,000 inhabitants. ”

“ He was succeeded by Prince Peter Sviatopolk-Mirsky, a man of comparatively liberal and progressive views.
This gave some encouragement to the zemstvos, the farthest step toward representative government yet taken in Russia. They date only from the czar’s ukase of January, 1864. Each of the districts in which Russia is divided is represented by an assembly, elected by the three estates, communes, municipalities, and landowners. Each district assembly in a province sends delegates to a general provincial assembly or zemstvo, which body controls the roads, primary schools, etc. ”

“ The second conclusion which forces itself upon us is, that Russia cannot be saved mainly by a centralized parliament superimposed upon a centralized bureaucracy. If a centralized parliamentary régimé without any root or support in local self-government was premature in France and doomed to failure, how much more certain must such failure be in Russia! ”

“ Americans who have not followed closely the sequence of events in Russia since October, 1905, may feel inclined to ask, "Why should Mr. Milyukov take such a pessimistic view of the future, when his country has not only a representative assembly, but an imperial guaranty of political freedom and 'real inviolability of personal rights'?" The answer is not far to seek. A representative assembly that has no power, and an imperial guaranty that affords no security, do not encourage hopeful anticipations. Russia has never had a representative assembly, in the Anglo-Saxon meaning of the words ”

“ A vast network of Committees and Soviets, which had flooded the country and the Army, claimed the right to participate in the work of the State. In April, therefore, a Congress was held of the delegates of Workmen and Soldiers’ Soviets. The Petrograd Soviet was reorganised on the basis of a more regular representation, and in June the All-Russian Congress of Representatives of the Soviets was opened. The composition of this fuller representation of Democracy is interesting:—
Thus, the overwhelming masses of Non-Socialist Russia were not represented at all ”

“ Through the channel of the Pre-Parliament, the political awareness of the masses was to be directed away from the soviets as ‘temporary” and dying institutions, to the Constituent Assembly as the crowning work of the democratic revolution. Meanwhile, the Bolsheviks were already in the majority in the Petrograd and Moscow soviets; our influence in the army grew, not from day to day, but from hour to hour. ”

“ It is important for all Russians, regardless of where they live, to have equal rights and equal opportunities. This is the foundation for a democratic system. We must rigorously observe these Constitutional principles, and to do this, we must build a clear system of state authority, striving to ensure that all its components function as a united whole, precisely and systemically; this should include increasing local authorities’ role as part of Russia’s overall government mechanism. ”

“ But, no matter how these majorities are obtained, the result is that when the Communist Party has made up its mind on any subject, it is so certain of being able to carry its point that the calling together of the All-Russian Executive Committee is merely a theatrical demonstration of the fact that it can do what it likes. ”

“ When they clamour for the necessity of a "popular," "all-national" Constituent Assembly, they do not consider the Soviets as all-national, because the Russian bourgeoisie is lacking to complete the full representation of the Russian people. ”

“ It is certainly not constitutional for a Government to distribute among the troops proclamations (I have seen them) inciting the Army against the Parliament, and attacking members of Parliament with every kind of gross insult and calumny. Nor is it constitutional for a Minister to request the correspondent of a large foreign newspaper to state that the Parliament is not a thing to be reckoned with, but merely a revolutionary body. The answer people made to these objections is that there is not, and there never has been, a constitution in Russia, and they are perfectly right. ”

“ It was a reactionary institution and resembled the Bolshevist soviets in that only certain sections of the community had a voice in elections to it.
According to the original idea, even as propounded at one time by the Bolsheviks, the political soviet or council should be a representative body for which all sections of the working community (whether of hand or brain) should have an equal right to vote. ”

“ While demanding the convocation of a Constituent Assembly, revolutionary Social-Democracy has ever since the beginning of the Revolution of 1917 repeatedly emphasised that a republic of Soviets is a higher form of democracy than the usual bourgeois republic with a Constituent Assembly. ”

“ If the Constitution, for example, were made as democratic as the Liberals and Socialists demand, the elections might possibly result in an overwhelming Conservative majority ready to re-establish the Autocratic Power! This is not at all so absurd as it sounds, for the peasants, apart from the land question, are thoroughly Conservative. The ordinary muzhik can hardly conceive that the Emperor's power can be limited by a law or an Assembly, and if the idea were suggested to him, he would certainly not approve. In his opinion the Tsar should be omnipotent. ”