Russian Constituent Assembly

The Russian Constituent Assembly (????????????? ????????????? ????????, Vserossiyskoye Uchreditelnoye Sobranie) was a democratic representative constitutional body envisaged in Russia after the February_Revolution in 1917. It was to be a democratically elected Constituent Assembly to which elections would be held at the end of 1917.

Historical Disputes

According to a 1975 book, Leninism under Lenin by Marcel Lieberman, the Bolsheviks and their allies had a majority in the Soviets due to its different electoral system. 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 parlimentary style of the Assembly were the elected members could only be remove after several years at the next election. The book states that all the elections to the Peasant and Urban Soviets were free (these Soviets then elected the All-Russian Congress of Soviets which choose the Soviet Government, the Second Congress taking place before the Assembly, the Third Congress just after).

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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 does not say however which Soviets he is comparing, which means he may be comparing a rural with an urban Soviet, or 2 Soviets with different populations. 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 dissolvment of the Constitution 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 democratic election in Russia during this time.

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