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Oni elektis al prezidanto de la Asembleo [[Victor Ĉernov]], gvidanton de la Socialista Revolucia Partio kontraŭ la bolŝevik-apogita [[Maria Spiridonova]]. La bolŝevikoj kaj la Maldekstraj Socialistaj Revoluciuloj kunsidis aparte en [[Sovnarkom]] kaj decidis dissolvi la Asembleon. Post kiam [[Fjodor Raskolnikov]] laxutlegis la preparitan deklaron, la du frakcioj forlasis la Asembleon.
Ĉernov rapide akceptigis la SR-planitan radikalan agraran reformon, leĝon pri demokratia federacia respubliko kaj peton al la entento al demokratia paco. La Asembleo akceptis kunsidon je 5 posttagmeze, la 6-an de januaro. La reprezentantoj trovis la konstruaĵon '''malfermita''' je la anoncita tempo. la bolŝevika registaro deklaris la Asembleon dissolvita samtempe.
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==Between Petrograd and Samara (January-June 1918)==
Barred from the Tauride Palace, Constituent Assembly deputies met at the Gurevich High School and held a number of secret meetings, but found that the conditions were increasingly dangerous. Some tried to relocate to the [[Tsentral'na Rada]]-controlled [[Kiev]], but on [[January 15]] [[1918]] Rada forces had to abandon the city, which effectively terminated the Constituent Assembly as a cohesive body<ref name="kiev">See Nikolai N. Smirnov "Constituent Assembly" in ''Critical Companion to the Russian Revolution 1914-1921'', op. cit., p.332</ref>
The Socialist Revolutionary Central Committee met in January and decided against armed resistance since:
:Bolshevism, unlike the Tsarist autocracy, is based on workers and soldiers who are still blinded, have not lost faith in it, and do not see that it is fatal to the cause of the working class<ref name="sr">See "Tsentral'nyi komitet PS.-R. Tezisy dlia partiinykh agitatorov i propagandistov. No. 1", in ''Partiia sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov posle oktiabr'skogo perevorota 1917 goda. Dokumenty iz arkhiva PS.-R.'', Amsterdam, Stichting Beheer IISG, 1989, p55. Quoted in Scott Smith. "The Socialists-Revolutionaries and the Dilemma of Civil War" in ''The Bolsheviks In Russian Society: The Revolution and the Civil War Years'' ed. Vladimir N. Brovkin, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1997, 83-104. Available [http://euphrates.wpunj.edu/courses/hist429-60/Supplementary%20Material/HTML/Smith1.html online]</ref>
Instead the socialists (Socialist Revolutionaries and their Menshevik allies) decided to work within the Soviet system and returned to the Soviet All-Russian Central Executive Committee (VTsIK), the Petrograd Soviet and other Soviet bodies that they had walked out of during the Bolshevik uprising in October 1917. They hoped that Soviet re-elections would go their way once the Bolsheviks proved unable to solve pressing social and economic problems. They would then achieve a majority within local Soviets and, eventually, the Soviet government, at which point they would be able to re-convene the Constituent Assembly.
The socialists' plan was partially successful in that Soviet re-elections in the winter and especially spring of 1918 often returned pro-SR and anti-Bolshevik majorities, but their plan was frustrated by the Soviet government's refusal to accept election results and its repeated dissolution of anti-Bolshevik Soviets. As one of the leaders of [[Tula, Russia|Tula]] Bolsheviks N. V. Kopulov wrote to the Bolshevik Central Committee in early 1918:
:After the transfer of power to the soviet, a rapid about-face began in the mood of the workers. The Bolshevik deputies began to be recalled one after another, and soon the general situation took on a rather unhappy appearance. Despite the fact that there was a schism among the SRs, and the Left SRs were with us, our situation became shakier with each passing day. We were forced to block new elections to the soviet and even not to recognize them where they had taken place not in our favor.<ref name="spring1918">See Scott Smith, [http://euphrates.wpunj.edu/courses/hist429-60/Supplementary%20Material/HTML/Smith1.html op. cit.] on the Bolshevik non-recognition of anti-Bolshevik deputies in Petrograd, [[Astrakhan]], [[Tula, Russia|Tula]], etc.</ref>
In response, Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks started Assemblies of Workers' Plenipotentiaries which ran in parallel with the Bolshevik-dominated Soviets. The idea proved popular with the workers, but had little effect on the Bolshevik government.
With the signing of the peace [[Treaty of Brest-Litovsk]] by the Bolsheviks on [[March 3]] [[1918]], the Socialist Revolutionary leadership increasingly viewed the Bolshevik government as a German proxy. They were willing to consider an alliance with the liberal Constitutional Democrats, which had been rejected as recently as December 1917 by their Fourth Party Congress. Socialists and liberals held talks on creating a united anti-Bolshevik front in Moscow in late March. However, the negotiations broke down since the SRs' insisted on re-convening the Constituent Assembly as elected in November 1917 while the Constitutional Democrats, who had done poorly in the November election, demanded new elections.<ref name="may1918">See Scott Smith, [http://euphrates.wpunj.edu/courses/hist429-60/Supplementary%20Material/HTML/Smith1.html op. cit.] on the evolution of the SRs' attitude towards the Bolshevik government\</ref>
==Samara Committee (June-September 1918)==
On [[May 7]] [[1918]] ([[New Style]] aka [[Gregorian Calendar]] from this point on) the Eighth Party Council of the Socialist Revolutionary Party convened in Moscow and decided to start an uprising against the Bolsheviks with the goal of reconvening the Constituent Assembly. While preparations were under way, the [[Czechoslovak Legions]] overthrew Bolshevik rule in [[Siberia]], [[Urals]] and the [[Volga]] region in late May-early June 1918 and the center of SR activity shifted there. On [[June 8]] [[1918]], five Constituent Assembly members formed an All-Russian Constituent Assembly Committee (''Komuch'') in [[Samara, Russia|Samara]] and declared it the new supreme authority in the country.<ref name="komuch">See Jonathan D. Smele. Op. cit., p.32</ref>
The Committee had the support of the Czechoslovak Legions and was able to spread its authority over much of the Volga-[[Kama]] region. However, most of the Siberia and Urals regions were controlled by a patchwork of ethnic, [[Cossack]], military and liberal-rightist local governments, which constantly clashed with the Committee. The Committee functioned until September 1918, eventually growing to about 90 Constituent Assembly members, when the so-called "State Conference" representing all the anti-Bolshevik local governments from the Volga to the Pacific Ocean formed a coalition "All-Russian Supreme Authority" (aka the "[[Ufa]] Directory") with the ultimate goal of re-convening the Constituent Assembly once the circumstances permitted:
:2. In its activities the government will be unswervingly guided by the indisputable supreme rights of the Constituent Assembly. It will tirelessly ensure that the actions of all organs subordinate to the Provisional Government do not in any way tend to infringe the rights of the Constituent Assembly or hinder its resumption of work.
:3. It will present an account of its activities to the Constituent Assembly as soon as the Constituent Assembly declares that it has resumed operation. It will subordinate itself unconditionally to the Constituent Assembly, as the only supreme authority in the country.<ref name="samara">Both quotes from the "Constitution of the Ufa Directory", first published in ''Narodovlastie'', No. 1, 1918, reprinted in ''Istoriya Rossii 1917 - 1940'', Ekaterinburg, 1993, pp. 102 - 105, English translation available [http://www.uea.ac.uk/his/webcours/russia/documents/ufimtsy.shtml online]</ref>
The All-Russian Constituent Assembly Committee continued functioning as "Congress of Members of the Constituent Assembly" but had no real power, although the Directory pledged to support it:
:All possible assistance to the Congress of Members of the Constituent Assembly, operating as a legal state organ, in its independent work of ensuring the relocation of members of the Constituent Assembly, hastening and preparing the resumption of activity by the Constituent Assembly in its present composition<ref name="samara" />
Initially, the agreement had the support of the Socialist Revolutionary Central Committee which delegated two of its right-wing members, [[Nikolai Avksentiev]] and [[Vladimir Zenzinov]], to the five member Ufa Directory. However, when Victor Chernov arrived in Samara on [[September 19]] [[1918]], he was able to persuade the Central Committee to withdraw support from the Directory because he viewed it as too conservative and the SR presence there as insufficient.<ref name="ufa">See Michael Melancon. "Chernov", in ''Critical Companion to the Russian Revolution 1914-1921'', op.cit., p.137</ref> This put the Directory in a political vacuum and two months later, on [[November 18]] [[1918]], it was overthrown by rightwing officers who made Admiral [[Alexander Kolchak]] the new "supreme ruler".
==Final Collapse==
After the fall of the Ufa Directory, Chernov formulated what he called the "third path" against both the Bolsheviks and the liberal-rightist [[White Movement]], but the SRs' attempts to assert themselves as an independent force were unsuccessful and the party, always fractious, began to disintegrate. On the Right, Avksentiev and Zenzinov went abroad with Kolchak's permission. On the Left, some SRs became reconciled with the Bolsheviks. Chernov tried to stage an uprising against Kolchak in December 1918, but it was put down and its participants executed. In February 1919 the SR Central Committee decided that the Bolsheviks were the lesser of two evils and gave up armed struggle against them. The Bolsheviks let the SR Central Committee re-establish itself in Moscow and start publishing a party newspaper in March 1919, but they were soon arrested and spent the rest of the [[Russian Civil War]] in prison.<ref name="ref1919">See Ronald Grigor Suny. ''The Soviet Experiment: Russia, the USSR, and the Successor States'', Oxford University Press, 1998, ISBN 0-19-508105-6 p.80</ref> Chernov went undercover and eventually was forced to flee Russia while the imprisoned Central Committee members were put on trial in 1922 and their leaders sentenced to death, although their sentences were suspended.<ref name="ref1922">See Elizabeth A. Wood. ''Performing Justice: Agitation Trials in Early Soviet Russia'', Cornell University Press, 2005, ISBN 0-8014-4257-5, p.83</ref>
With the main pro-Constituent Assembly party effectively out of the picture, the only remaining force that supported its re-convocation was the Entente Allies. On [[May 26]] [[1919]], the Allies offered Kolchak their support predicated on a number of conditions, including free elections at all levels of government and reinstating the Constituent Assembly. On [[June 4]] [[1919]] Kolchak accepted most of the conditions, but he refused to reconvene the Assembly elected in November 1917 since, he claimed, it had been elected under Bolshevik rule and the elections were not fully free. On [[June 12]] [[1919]], the Allies deemed the response satisfactory and the demand for a reconvocation of the original Constituent Assembly was abandoned.<ref name="allies">See Georg Schild. ''Between Ideology and Realpolitik: Woodrow Wilson and the Russian Revolution, 1917-1921'', ''Contributions to the Study of World History'', ISSN 0885-9159, no. 51, Greenwood Press, Westport, CT, 1995, ISBN 0-313-29570-0 p.111</ref>
Both Kolchak and the leader of the White Movement in the South of Russia, General [[Anton Denikin]], officially subscribed to the principle of "non-predetermination", ''i.e.'' they refused to determine what kind of social or political system Russia would have until after Bolshevism was defeated. Kolchak and Denikin made general promises to the effect that there would be no return to the past and that there would be some form of popular representation put in place. However, as one Russian journalist observed at the time:
:in [[Omsk]] itself ... could be seen a political grouping who were prepared to promise anything that the Allies wanted whilst saying that "When we reach Moscow we can talk to them in a different tone".<ref name="omsk">See Arnol'dov. ''Zhizn' i revoliutsiia'', p. 158, quoted in Jonathan D. Smele, op.cit., p.254</ref>
Numerous memoirs published by the leaders of the White Movement after their defeat are inconclusive on the subject. There doesn't appear to be enough evidence to tell which group in the White Movement would have prevailed in case of a White victory and whether new Constituent Assembly elections would have been held, much less how restrictive they would have been.
After the Bolshevik victory in the Civil War in late 1920, 38 members of the Constituent Assembly met in [[Paris]] in 1921 and formed an executive committee, which consisted of the Constitutional Democrats leader [[Pavel Milyukov]], one of the Progressist leaders [[Alexander Konovalov]], a Ufa Directory member Avksentiev and the head of the Provisional Government Kerensky. Like other emigre organizations, it proved ineffective.<ref name="paris">See Nikolai N. Smirnov, "The Constituent Assembly" in ''Critical Companion to the Russian Revolution 1914-1921'', op. cit., p. 332</ref>
==Historical disputes==
According to a 1975 book, ''Leninism under Lenin'' by [[Marcel Liebman]], the Bolsheviks and their allies had a majority in the Soviets due to its different electoral system. Per the 1918 Soviet Constitution, each urban (and usually pro-Bolshevik) Soviet had 1 delegate per 25,000 voters. Each rural (usually pro-SR) Soviet was only allowed 1 delegate per 125,000 voters. The Bolsheviks justified closing down the Assembly by pointing out that the election did not take into account the split in the SR Party. A few weeks later the Left SR and Right SR got roughly equal votes in the Peasant Soviets. The Bolsheviks also argued that the Soviets were more democratic as delegates could be removed by their electors instantly rather than the parliamentary style of the Assembly where the elected members could only be removed after several years at the next election. The book states that all the elections to the Peasant and Urban Soviets were free and these Soviets then elected the All-Russian Congress of Soviets which chose the Soviet Government, the Second Congress taking place before the Assembly, the Third Congress just after.
Two more recent book using material from the opened Soviet achieves, ''The Russian Revolution 1899-1919'' by [[Richard Pipes]] and ''A People's Tragedy'' by [[Orlando Figes]], give a different version. Pipes argues that the elections to the Second Congress were not fair, for example one Soviet with 1,500 members sent 5 delegates which was more than Kiev. He states that both the SRs and the Mensheviks declared this election illegal and unrepresentative. The books states that the Bolsheviks, two days after the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, created a counter-assembly, the Third Congress of Soviets. They gave themselves and the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries 94% of the seats, far more than the results from the only nationwide parliamentary democratic election in Russia during this time.
[[Kategorio:Historio de Rusio]]
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