Central Executive Committee, Declaration of the Rights of the Laboring and Exploited People. January 16, 1918
According to Trotsky, Lenin was the author of the “Declaration,” adopted by the Central Executive Committee on January 16. Initially rejected by the Constituent Assembly, the Declaration was brought before the Third Congress of Soviets (January 23-31, 191
Original Source: Izvestiia, No. 2, January 17, 1918, p. 1.
The Central Executive Committee proclaims the following basic principles:
I. The Third All-Russian Congress of Soviets resolves:
1. Russia is declared to be a Republic of Soviets of Workmen’s, Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies. All the power in the center and in the provinces belongs to these Soviets.
2. The Russian Soviet Republic is formed on the basis of a free union of free nations, as a federation of national Soviet republics.
II. Taking as its fundamental task the abolition of any exploitation of man by men, the complete elimination of the division of society into classes, the ruthless suppression of exploiters, the establishment of a socialistic organization of society and the victory of Socialism in all countries, the Third All-Russian Congress of Soviets resolves, further:
1. To effect the socialization of the land, private ownership of land is abolished, and the whole land fund is declared common national property and transferred to the laborers without compensation, on the basis of equalized use of the soil. All forests, minerals, and waters of state-wide importance, as well as the whole inventory of animate and inanimate objects, all estates and agricultural enterprises are declared national property.
2. The Soviet law of labor control and the Supreme Board of National Economy are confirmed, with a view to securing the authority of the toilers over the exploiters, as the first step to the complete transfer of all factories, mills, mines, railroads, and other means of production and transportation to the ownership of the Workmen’s and Peasants’ Soviet Republic.
3. The transfer of all banks into the ownership of the Workers’ and Peasants’ state is confirmed, it being one of the conditions of the emancipation of the laboring masses from the yoke of capital.
4. With a view to- the destruction of the parasitic classes of society and the organization of the national economy, universal labor service is established.
III. In the interest of securing all the power for the laboring masses and the elimination of any possibility of the reestablishment of the power of the exploiters, the arming of the toilers, the formation of a socialistic red army of workmen and peasants, and the complete disarmament of the wealthy classes are decreed.
1. Expressing its inflexible determination to wrest humanity from the talons of financial capital and imperialism, which have drenched the earth with blood in this most criminal of wars, the Third All-Russian Congress of Soviets subscribes unanimously to the policy of abrogating secret treaties which has been adopted by the Soviet Government, the organization of the widest fraternization with the workmen and peasants of the armies now warring against each other, and the securing, at any cost and by revolutionary measures, of a democratic peace without annexations and indemnities, on the basis of free self-determination of peoples.
2. For these same purposes the Third All-Russian Congress of Soviets insists upon a complete break with the barbarous policy of bourgeois civilization which built the prosperity of the exploiters among the few chosen nations upon the enslavement of hundreds of millions of the laboring population in Asia, in the colonies in general, and in the small countries.
The Third All-Russian Congress of Soviets welcomes the policy of the Council of the People’s Commissaries which has proclaimed the complete independence of Finland, which has begun the removal of the troops from Persia, and which has declared the freedom of self-determination of Armenia.
The Third All-Russian Congress of Soviets views the Soviet law of the repudiation of the loans contracted by the Government of the Czar, the landowners and bourgeoisie, as the first blow to international banking, finance and capital, and expresses its confidence that the Soviet authority will continue to pursue that course until the complete victory of the rising of international labor against the yoke of capital is attained.
IV. Having been elected on the basis of party lists made up before the October revolution, when the people could not yet rise en masse against the exploiters and did not know the strength of the opposition when the latter defends its class privileges, and when the people had not yet practically undertaken the creation of a socialistic society, the Third All-Russian Congress of Soviets would deem it radically wrong, even from a formal point of view, to set itself in opposition to the Soviets.
1. In substance, the Third All-Russian Congress of Soviets considers that now, at the moment of the decisive battle of the people with their exploiters, there can be no place for the latter in any of the organs of government. The power must belong wholly and exclusively to the toiling masses and their plenipotentiaries, the Soviets of Workmen’s, Soldiers’, and Peasants’ Delegates.
2. Supporting the Soviet Government and the decrees of the Council of the People’s Commissaries, the Third All-Russian Congress of Soviets recognizes that its tasks are completed when it has framed a general statement of the fundamental bases of a socialistic reconstruction of society.
3. At the same time, aiming at the creation of a really free and voluntary and, consequently, a more complete and lasting union of the laboring classes of all the nations of Russia, the Third All-Russian Congress of Soviets confines itself to the establishment of the fundamental principles of federation of the Soviet Republic of Russia, leaving it to the workmen and peasants of each nation to decide independently, at their own representative Soviet Congress, whether they wish to participate in the Federal Government and in the other Soviet institutions, and on what basis …
Source: Decrees of the Soviet Government (Moscow: Institute of Marxism-Leninism, 1957), Vol. I, pp. 341-343.