Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/331

 proclamation regarding land, peace and control of working conditions, and above all, that it should recognize the Soviet Government. Fulfilling this demand of the great majority of Russian working classes, the All-Russian Executive Committee has proposed to the Constituent Assembly that it should recognize this demand as binding. The majority of the Constituent Assembly has, however, in accordance with the demands of the bourgeoisie, refused to approve this proposition, thereby throwing a challenge of battle to all of toiling Russia. The Social-Revolutionary right wing, the party of Kerensky, Avksentyev and Chernov, has obtained the majority in the Constituent Assembly. This party, which calls itself a Social Revolutionary Party, is directing the fight of bourgeois elements against the workers' revolution and in reality is a bourgeois counter-revolutionary party. The Constituent Assembly in its present state is a result of the relative party power in force before the great November Revolution. The present counter-revolutionary majority of the Constituent Assembly, elected on the basis of the obsolete party lists, is trying to resist the movement of the workers and peasants. The day's discussions have clearly shown that the Social-Revolutionary Party of the Right Wing, as in the time of Kerensky, makes concessions to the people, promising them everything, but in reality has decided to fight against the Soviet Government, against the Socialistic measures to give the land and all its appurtenances to the peasants without compensation, to nationalize the banks and to annul the debts of the nation.

"Without wishing for a moment to conceal the crimes of the enemies of the people, we announce that we are withrawing from the Constituent Assembly in order to let the Soviet power finally decide the question of its relation toward the counter-revolutionary part of the Constituent Assembly."

The very same day the Constituent Assembly was dispersed by the bayonets of the Red Guard; and on January 19 the Soviet Government issued a decree officially dissolving the Assembly. The Revolution, declared the decree of dissolution, created the Workers' and Soldiers' Soviet—the only organization able to direct the struggle of the exploited classes for complete political and economic liberation; this Soviet constituted a revolutionary government through the November Revolution, after perceiving the illusion of an understanding with the bourgeoisie and its deceptive parliamentary organization; the Constituent Assembly, being elected from the old election lists, and intended to be the crown of the bourgeois