Mikhailov: “I declare an intermission.”124
The Bolsheviks pursued a simple strategy. They would confront the Assembly with a resolution that would, in effect, delegitimize it: in the almost certain event that it failed, they would walk out, and without formally disbanding it, make further work by the Assembly impossible. Following this plan, F. F. Raskolnikov, the Bolshevik ensign from Kronshtadt, moved a motion. Although called “Declaration of the Rights of the Toiling and Exploited Masses,” unlike its 1789 prototype, it had more to say about duties than rights: it was here that the Bolsheviks introduced the universal labor obligation. Russia was proclaimed a “republic of soviets” and a number of measures which the Bolsheviks had previously passed were reconfirmed, among them the Land Decree, worker control over production, and the nationalization of banks. The critical article asked the Assembly to renounce its authority to legislate—the very authority for the sake of which it had been elected. “The Constituent Assembly concedes,” it read, “that its tasks are confined to working out in general the fundamental bases of reorganizing society on a socialist basis.” The Assembly was to ratify all the decrees previously issued by the Sovnarkom and then adjourn.125
Raskolnikov’s motion lost 237–136: the vote indicates that all the Bolshevik delegates, but only they, voted in favor; the Left SRs apparently abstained. At this point, the Bolshevik delegation declared the Assembly to be controlled by “counterrevolutionaries” and walked out. The Left SRs kept their seats for the time being.
Lenin stayed in his loge until 10 p.m., when he, too, departed: he had not addressed the Assembly, so as not to give it any semblance of legitimacy. The Bolshevik Central Committee now met in another part of the palace and adopted a resolution dissolving the Assembly. Out of deference to the Left SRs, however, Lenin instructed the Taurida Guard not to use violence: any deputy who wished to leave the building was to be let go, but no one was to be allowed back in.126 At 2 a.m., satisfied that the situation was under control, he returned to Smolnyi.
After the Bolsheviks had departed, Taurida resounded with interminable speeches, frequently disrupted by the guards who had descended from the balcony and filled the seats vacated by the Bolsheviks: many of them were drunk. Some soldiers amused themselves by aiming guns at the speakers. At 2:30 a.m. the Left SRs walked out, at which point commissar P. E. Dybenko, who was in charge of security, ordered the commander of the guard, a sailor, the anarchist A. G. Zhelezniakov, to close the meeting. Shortly after 4 a.m., as the chairman, Victor Chernov, was proclaiming the abolition of property in land, Zhelezniakov mounted the tribune and touched him on the back.* The following scene ensued, as recorded in the minutes:
Citizen Sailor: “I have been instructed to inform you that all those present should leave the Assembly Hall because the guard is tired.”
Chairman: “What instruction? From whom?”
Citizen Sailor: “I am the commander of the Taurida Guard. I have an instruction from the commissar.”
Chairman: “The members of the Constituent Assembly are also tired, but no fatigue can disrupt our proclaiming a law awaited by all of Russia.”
(Loud noise. Voices: “Enough, enough!”)
Chairman: “The Constituent Assembly can disperse only under the threat of force.”
(Noise.)
Chairman: “You declare it.”
(Voices: “Down with Chernov!”)
Citizen Sailor: “I request that the Assembly Hall be immediately vacated.”*
79. Victor Chernov.
While this exchange was taking place more Bolshevik troops crowded into the Assembly Hall, looking very menacing. Chernov managed to keep the meeting going for another twenty minutes, and then adjourned it until 5 p.m. that day (January 6). But the Assembly was not to reconvene, for in the morning Sverdlov had the CEC ratify the Bolshevik resolution dissolving it.127 Pravda on that day appeared with banner headlines:
THE HIRELINGS OF BANKERS, CAPITALISTS, AND LANDLORDS, THE ALLIES OF KALEDIN, DUTOV, THE SLAVES OF THE AMERICAN DOLLAR, THE BACKSTAB-BERS—THE RIGHT SR’S—DEMAND IN THE CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY ALL POWER FOR THEMSELVES AND THEIR MASTERS—ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE.
THEY PAY LIP SERVICE TO POPULAR DEMANDS FOR LAND, PEACE, AND [WORKER] CONTROL, BUT IN REALITY THEY TRY TO FASTEN A NOOSE AROUND THE NECK OF SOCIALIST AUTHORITY AND REVOLUTION.
BUT THE WORKERS, PEASANTS, AND SOLDIERS WILL NOT FALL FOR THE BAIT OF LIES OF THE MOST EVIL ENEMIES OF SOCIALISM. IN THE NAME OF THE SOCIALIST REVOLUTION AND THE SOCIALIST SOVIET REPUBLIC THEY WILL SWEEP AWAY ITS OPEN AND HIDDEN KILLERS.128
The Bolsheviks had previously linked Russian democratic forces with “capitalists,” “landlords,” and “counterrevolutionaries,” but in this headline they for the first time connected them also with foreign capital.
Two days later (January 8) the Bolsheviks opened their counter-Assembly, labeled “Third Congress of Soviets.” Here no one could obstruct them because they had reserved for themselves and the Left SRs 94 percent of the seats,129 more than three times what they were entitled to, judging by the results of the elections to the Constituent Assembly. The little left over they allocated to the opposition socialists—just enough to have a target for abuse and ridicule. The congress duly passed all the measures submitted to it by government spokesmen, including the “Declaration of Rights.” Russia became a “Federation of Soviet Republics,” to be known as the “Russian Soviet Socialist Republic,” which name she retained until 1924, when she was renamed “Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.” The congress acknowledged the Sovnarkom as the country’s legitimate governhient, removing from its name the adjective “provisional.” It also approved the principle of universal labor obligation.
The dissolution of the Assembly met with surprising indifference: there was none of the fury which in 1789 had greeted rumors that Louis XVI intended to dissolve the National Assembly, precipitating the assault on the Bastille. After a year of anarchy, Russians were exhausted: they yearned for peace and order, no matter how purchased. The Bolsheviks had gambled on that mood and won. After January 5, no one could any longer believe that Lenin’s men could be talked into abandoning power. And since there was no effective armed opposition to them in the central regions of Russia, and what there was the socialist intelligentsia refused to use, common sense dictated that the Bolshevik dictatorship was here to stay.
An immediate result was the collapse of the strike of white-collar personnel in the ministries and private enterprises, who drifted back to work after January 5, some driven by personal need, others in the belief that they would be better able to influence events from the inside. The psychology of the opposition now suffered a fatal break: it is as if brutality and the disregard of the nation’s will legitimized the Bolshevik dictatorship. The country at large felt that after a year of chaos, it at last had a “real” government. This certainly held true of the peasant and worker masses but, paradoxically, also of the well-to-do and conservative elements, Pravda’s “hyenas of capital” and “enemies of the people,” who despised the socialist intelligentsia and street mobs even more than they did the Bolsheviks.* In a sense the Bolsheviks may be said to have become the government of Russia not so much in October 1917 as in January 1918. In the words of one contemporary, “authentic, genuine Bolshevism, the Bolshevism of the broad masses, came only after January 5.”130
Indeed, the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly was in many respects more important for the future of Russia than the October coup which had been carried out behind the smoke screen of “All Power to the Soviets.” If the purpose of October remained concealed from nearly everyone, including rank-and-file Bolsheviks, there could be no doubt about Bolshevik intentions after January 5, when they had made it unmistakably clear they intended to pay no heed to popular opinion. They did not have to listen to the voice of the people because, in the literal sense of the word, they were the “people.”** In the words of Lenin, “The dispersal of the Constituent Assembly by Soviet authority [was] the complete and open liquidation of formal democracy in the name of the revolutionary dictatorship.”131