The Dissolution of the Constituent Assembly in Soviet Russia

The constituent assembly was a parliamentary organ of the petty bourgeoisie and the bourgeoisie political parties. After the February Revolution in 1917, on the one hand, the petty bourgeoisie and the bourgeoisie political parties used the promise of convening a constituent assembly to induce the masses to give up the revolutionary struggle and asserted that the constitutional assembly could solve all economic and political problems through legislative means; on the other hand, the bourgeois provisional government was afraid that the deputies representing peasants who had a more left position than the Social Revolutionary Party would gain the majority in the constituent assembly, consequently the provisional government obstructed the normal convening of the constituent assembly. The Bolshevik Party, while not denying the idea of convening of the constituent assembly, called on the masses to carry out revolutionary struggle, and pointed out that under the condition that of the bourgeois-democratic revolution would inevitably evolve to socialist revolution, real life and revolution itself would push the constituent assembly to the backstage.

After the October Revolution, the Bolshevik Party adopted the policy of letting the petty bourgeois masses themselves conceive and overcome their illusions about bourgeois constitutionalism through their own experience. On October 27, 1917, the Council of People’s Commissariat approved the date for the Constituent Assembly elections. The elections were held between November to December in central provinces and in January 1918 in some remote regions. The Social Revolutionary Party won the majority of seats in the election, but this situation in the Constituent Assembly did not reflect the real balance of political power at that time.

The counter-revolutionary forces raised the slogan of “All Political Power to the Constituent Assembly!” which in fact targeted the Soviet power. Consequently, the Constituent Assembly became an obstacle in the forward progress of the October Revolution and the further consolidation of the Soviet power. Despite this, the Bolshevik Party decided to convene the Constituent Assembly. On January 5, 1918, the Constituent Assembly meeting opened at the Tauride Palace in Petrograd and the centrist wing of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, headed by V.M. Chernov, seemed to become a dominant figure at the Assembly session.

The counter-revolutionary majority in the Constituent Assembly refused to deliberate on the “Declaration of Rights of the Working and Exploited People” put forward by the Central Executive Committee of the All-Russian Congress of the Soviets, and rejected the decrees of the Soviet regime which were adopted by the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies. The Bolsheviks immediately withdrew from the Assembly session. Subsequently, deputies belonging to the left wing of the Social Revolutionary Party and a section of Muslim deputies also withdrew from the Assembly session. On January 6, 1918, the Central Executive Committee of the All-Russian Congress of the Soviets passed a decree to dissolve the Constituent Assembly.