When he left, Chernov moved a resolution which rejected the Bolshevik claim that to acknowledge the authority of the Constituent Assembly was tantamount to rejecting the soviets:
The congress believes that the soviets of workers’, soldiers’, and peasants’ deputies, as the ideological and political guides of the masses, should be the strong combat points of the Revolution standing guard over the conquests of peasants and workers. With its legislative creativity, the Constituent Assembly must translate into life the aspirations of the masses, as expressed by the soviets. In consequence, the congress protests against the attempts of individual groups to pit the soviets and the Constituent Assembly against each other.†
The Bolsheviks and Left SRs introduced a counterresolution which called on the congress to approve the Bolshevik measures against the Kadets and some other deputies to the Constituent Assembly on the grounds that the Assembly did not enjoy parliamentary immunity.69
Chernov’s resolution carried, 360–321. The Bolsheviks persuaded Spiridonova to set this vote aside: on the following day she declared that it had not been a binding vote, but only the “basis” for one. Before this matter could be cleared up, Trotsky made an appearance and asked for the floor to report on the progress of the peace negotiations at Brest-Litovsk. The diversionary move was greeted with hoots, whereupon Trotsky departed, followed by the Bolshevik and Left SR delegates.
The following day, December 4, the Bolsheviks and the Left SRs returned to the Alexander Hall and renewed disruptive tactics. In the resulting bedlam no speaker could be heard, whereupon the SRs and their adherents, singing the “Marseillaise,” walked out. They resumed deliberations at the Agricultural Museum on the Fontanka, the seat of the Central Executive Committee of the Congress of Peasants’ Deputies. From this moment, the “right” and “left” wings of the congress met separately: attempts to reunite them failed due to the Bolshevik refusal to acknowledge the validity of the December 2 vote on the Constituent Assembly. On December 6, the Bolsheviks and Left SRs declared their sessions at the Municipal Duma to be the only legitimate spokesman for the peasant soviets, although in fact there were no representatives of peasant soviets present. They denied all authority to the Central Executive Committee of the Peasants’ Congress, divested it of its technical apparatus and personnel, and stopped the per diems which the peasants’ deputies were paid by the government. Finally, on December 8, the Bolshevik and Left SR rump Congress of Peasants’ Deputies fused with the Bolshevik-controlled AU-Russian Central Executive Committee.
Thus, the Bolsheviks took over the Peasants’ Congress, first by introducing into it deputies whom they, not the peasants, had chosen, and then by declaring these deputies to be the sole legitimate representatives of the peasantry. They could not have accomplished this without the collaboration of the Left SRs. As a reward for this service, and in anticipation of further services, the Bolsheviks made major concessions to the Left SRs to bring them into the government as junior partners.
The two parties reached agreement on the night of December 9–10, immediately after liquidating jointly the Peasants’ Congress.70 Its terms have never been published and have to be reconstructed from subsequent events. The Left SRs posed several conditions: lifting the Press Decree, inclusion of other socialist parties in the government, abolition of the Cheka, prompt convocation of the Constituent Assembly. On the first demand, the Bolsheviks yielded in effect by allowing all sorts of hostile newspapers to appear, without formally repealing the Press Decree. On the second issue, Lenin proved conciliatory: he merely asked that the other socialist parties follow the example of the Left SRs and acknowledge the October Revolution. Since no party was inclined to do that, this particular concession cost him nothing. On the Cheka, the Bolsheviks stood firm: they would neither do away with it nor formally circum-scribe its authority—the counterrevolution did not permit such luxury—but the Left SRs could have representatives in the Cheka Collegium to satisfy themselves there was no unnecessary terror. On the Constituent Assembly, the Bolsheviks reluctantly granted the Left SR demand. It is virtually certain that it is Left SR insistence that made the Bolsheviks give up the idea of annulling the elections and to allow it to meet, if only briefly. Trotsky recalls Lenin saying: “Of course, we must disperse the Constituent Assembly, but what is to be done about the Left SRs?”71
On the basis of these compromises, the Left SRs joined the Sovnarkom, where they were given five portfolios: Agriculture, Justice, Post and Telegraphs, Interior, and Local Self-Government. They were also admitted in subordinate capacities into other state institutions, including the Cheka, where the Left SR Petr Aleksandrovich Dmitrievskii (Aleksandrovich) took over as Dzerzhinskii’s deputy. The Left SRs found this arrangement satisfactory: they liked the Bolsheviks and approved of their objectives, even if they thought them a bit hotheaded. The Left SR V. A. Karelin defined his party as “a regulator moderating the excessive zeal of the Bolsheviks.”72
The disruption of the Second Peasants’ Congress by the joint action of Bolsheviks and Left SRs spelled the demise of independent peasant organizations in Russia. In the middle of January 1918, the Bolshevik–Left SR Executive Committee of the self-styled Peasants’ Congress convened a Third Congress of Peasants’ Deputies, fully under their control. It was scheduled to meet concurrently with the Third Congress of Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies: on this occasion, the two institutions, heretofore separate, “merged” and the Congress of Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies added “Peasants’ Deputies” to its designation. This event, according to one Bolshevik historian, “completed the process of creating a single supreme organ of Soviet authority” and “put an end to the Right SR policy of running the Peasants’ Congress apart from the Congress of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies.”73 It would be more accurate, however, to say that this shotgun marriage put an end to the peasantry’s self-government and completed the process of its disenfranchisement.
To free themselves completely from democratic control, they had one more hurdle to overcome: the Constituent Assembly, which, according to one contemporary, “stuck like a bone” in their throat.74
By early December, the Bolsheviks had succeeded in (1) shunting aside the legitimate All-Russian Congress of Soviets and unseating its Executive Committee, (2) depriving the executive organ of the soviets of control over legislation and senior appointments, and (3) splitting the legitimate Peasants’ Congress and replacing it with a handpicked body of soldiers and sailors. They could get away with such subversive acts because they involved manipulation of institutions in faraway Petrograd which the country at large could not easily either follow or understand. But the Constituent Assembly was another matter. This body, chosen by the entire nation, was to be the first truly representative gathering in Russian history. To prevent it from meeting or dispersing it would constitute the most audacious coup d’état of all, a direct challenge to the nation’s will, the disenfranchisement of tens of millions. And yet, until and unless this was done, the Bolsheviks could not feel secure because their legitimacy, grounded in the resolutions of the Second Congress of Soviets, was conditional on the approval of the Assembly—approval which it was certain to deny them.