Central Executive Committee, Dissolution of the Constituent Assembly. January 19, 1918
Original Source: Izvestiia, No. 5, 20 January 1918, p. 1.
From the very beginning of the Russian Revolution the Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’, and Peasants’ Deputies came to the front as a mass organization. It brought the tolling and exploited classes together and led them in the fight for full political and economic freedom. During the first period of the revolution the Soviets increased, developed, and grew strong. They learned by experience the futility of compromising with the bourgeoisie, the deception of the bourgeois democratic-parliamentarism, and came to the conclusion that it is riot possible to free the downtrodden classes without completely breaking with these forms and compromises. The November Revolution and the taking over of all power by the Soviets constituted such a break.
The Constituent Assembly which was elected on the lists made out before the November Revolution represents the old order when the compromisers and Cadets were in power.
At the time of voting for the Socialist-Revolutionists the people were not in a position to decide between the Right Wing-partisans of the bourgeoisie-and the Left Wing-partisans of socialism.. This accounts for the fact that the Constituent Assembly, the crown of the bourgeois-parliamentary republic, stands in the way of the November Revolution and the Soviet Government. Naturally enough the November Revolution, which gave the power to the Soviets and through them to the exploited classes, has called forth the opposition of the exploiters …
The laboring classes have learned by experience that the old bourgeois parliament has outlived its usefulness, that it is quite incompatible with the task of establishing socialism, and that the task of overcoming the propertied classes and of laying the basis of a socialistic society cannot be undertaken by a national institution but only by one representing a class such as the Soviet. To deny full power to the Soviets … in favor of a bourgeois parliamentarism or the Constituent Assembly would be a step backward and the deathblow of the November workers’-peasants’ revolution.
The Constituent Assembly which opened on January 18 has a majority of Socialist-Revolutionists of the Right, the party of Kerenskii, Avksentiev, and Chernov. It is natural that this party should refuse to consider the … recommendation of the sovereign organ of the Soviet Government and should refuse to recognize the “Declaration of the Rights of the Toiling and Exploited People,” the November Revolution, and the Government of the Soviet. By these very acts the Constituent -Assembly has cut every tie that bound it to the Soviet of the Russian public. Under the circumstances the Bolsheviks and Socialist-Revolutionists of the Left . had no choice but to withdraw from the Constituent Assembly.
The majority parties of the Constituent Assembly-the Socialist-Revolutionists and Mensheviks-are carrying on an open war against the Soviet, calling … for its overthrow, and in this way helping the exploiters in their efforts to block the transfer of the land and the factories to the toilers.
It is clear that this part of the Constituent Assembly can be of help to the bourgeois counter-revolution in its efforts to crush the power of the Soviets.
In view of the above the Central Executive Committee hereby decrees: The Constituent Assembly is dissolved.
Source: Decrees of the Soviet Government (Moscow: Institute of Marxism-Leninism, 1957), Vol. I, pp. 335-336.