Russian Constituent Assembly

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Russian Constituent Assembly ( Russian Всероссийское Учредительное собрание , Vserossiyskoye Utschreditelnoje sobranie), also Russian Constituent , was a democratically elected constituent body in Soviet Russia from the 5th of July 1917 after the October Revolution . / January 18, 1918 greg. 4 p.m. until 6 July / January 19, 1918 greg. 5 a.m. for 13 hours and was dissolved by the Bolshevik government .

Tauride palace before the October Revolution

prehistory

The formation of a democratically elected constituent assembly was one of the main goals of the Russian revolutionary parties before the 1905 Russian Revolution . The tsarist government ordered the introduction of basic civil rights and held elections for a new legislature , the Duma of 1906. However, this was neither authorized to adopt a new constitution nor to abolish tsarist rule . The majority were obtained here by the Cadets and not by the Marxist socialists . The government dissolved the Duma both in July 1906 and after the new election on June 3, 1907. As a result, a new electoral law was passed that included the poor and workers. The decisions of the Duma were often rejected by a veto of Tsar Nicholas II or the upper house of parliament, which is why it was viewed as ineffective and primarily representative of the lower classes and the wealthy classes continued to demand universal suffrage.

Provisional Government (February to October 1917)

With the abdication of the Tsar after the February Revolution in 1917 , a Provisional Government took power. It was formed by the liberal majority in the Duma and supported by the socialist-dominated Petrograd Soviet . According to the will of Grand Duke Michael II , who refused the throne after the abdication of his brother, the new government should hold a nationwide election for a constituent assembly, which would then determine the form of government. Parts of the Russian Empire were occupied by the Central Powers during the First World War . Between February and October 1917 there existed four governments, which were therefore 'provisional' until a final form of government was adopted by the desired constituent assembly.

According to the Grand Duke's original plan, a constituent assembly was the only body or authority empowered to change government in Russia. Alexander Kerensky and the Provisional Government said they would hold elections after the war ended. In contrast to the original agreement of July 1917, however, they declared the country a republic and began to make preparations for elections to a “pre-parliament”, later known as the “Council of the Russian Republic”. This approach generated criticism from both the right and the left. In the eyes of the monarchists, the republican form of government was unacceptable, while the left saw the influence of the Soviets curtailed. Shortly afterwards, Kornilov's military coup enabled the Bolsheviks to take power with the October Revolution , as Kerensky had armed the Red Guards to protect the republic .

Bolsheviks and the Constituent Assembly

The position of the Bolsheviks on the Constituent Assembly, which they initially advocated, changed during 1917. After his return from exile in Switzerland in April 1917, Lenin demanded “All power to the Soviets !” And by that meant the transfer of state power from the provisional Government to the socialist-dominated workers 'and soldiers' councils, the so-called Soviets, and not to the constituent assembly. So wrote Lenin on December 12-14. September to the Central Committee of the Bolsheviks:

“... We cannot 'wait' for the constituent assembly, which the surrendering Petrograders (Prime Minister) Kerensky and Co. can prevent at any time. Our party alone, once in power, can secure the convocation of the constituent assembly; she will then accuse the other parties of delay and be able to substantiate her charge. "

On October 25th, Jul. / 7th November 1917 greg. In the October Revolution , the Bolsheviks overthrew the Provisional Government with the help of the Petrograd Soviet and the “ military revolutionary tribunal ”. The uprising coincided with the 2nd Congress of the Workers 'and Soldiers' Soviets, at which the Bolsheviks provided 390 of the 649 delegates and transferred state power to the Sovnarkom . MPs from the more moderate socialist parties such as the Mensheviks and the SRs protested what they called the illegitimate takeover and left Congress.

Within a few weeks, the Bolsheviks established their control over most of the ethnically Russian areas, but less successfully in ethnically non-Russian areas. The new government sporadically banned non-socialist newspapers, but on the other hand allowed for the 12th and 25th. November 1917 the elections for the constituent assembly, which were still scheduled by the provisional government. Officially, the Soviet government declared itself to be provisional and subject to the will of the coming constituent assembly. Lenin wrote on November 5th:

"That is why the Soviets of Workers' Deputies , mainly the Ujesd - and then the Gubernia Soviets, are given full government authority in their districts from now on until the constituent assembly meets ."

Election results from 12./25. November 1917

The election for the constituent assembly produced the following results:

Political party be right Number of MPs
Social Revolutionaries 17,100,000 380
Bolsheviks 9,800,000 168
Mensheviks 1,360,000 18th
Constitutional Democrats 2,000,000 17th
Minorities 77
Left Social Revolutionaries 39
People's Socialists (Liberals) 4th
Total: 41,700,000 703

Due to the size of the country, the ongoing First World War and an inadequate communication system, the election results were not immediately complete. A partial census (54 out of 79 constituencies) was made by NW Swiatitski in A Year of the Russian Revolution. 1917-18 , Moscow, Zemlya i Volya Verlag, 1918, published. These data were accepted by all political parties, including the Bolsheviks, and revealed:

Political party ideology be right
Russian Social Revolutionaries Socialists 16,500,000
Bolsheviks Communists 9,023,963
Ukrainians , Muslims , other non-Russian Social Revolutionaries Socialists 4,400,000
Constitutional Democrats liberal 1,856,639
Mensheviks Socialists 668,064
Muslims Religious 576,000
Jewish Federation Socialists 550,000
Ukrainian socialists Social democrats 507,000
People's Socialists Social democrats 312,000
Other right-wing groups right 292,000
Association of rural entrepreneurs and owners right 215,000
Bashkirs Ethnicity 195,000
Poland Ethnicity 155,000
German Ethnicity 130,000
Ukrainian Social Democrats Social democrats 95,000
Cossacks Ethnicity 79,000
Old Believers Religious 73,000
Latvians Ethnicity 67,000
Co-operators Social democrats 51,000
German socialists Social democrats 44,000
Anywhere Social democrats 25,000
Finnish socialists Social democrats 14,000
Belarusians Ethnicity 12,000
Total: 35,333,666

The result was that the Bolsheviks received 22-25% of the vote and were clear winners in Russian cities and among soldiers on the Western Front, 2/3 of whom voted. They advocated an immediate end to the war. The Social Revolutionaries received 57 to 58% of the vote (with their allied social democratic parties 62%), particularly from the rural population. However, the Ukrainian Social Revolutionaries did not take part in the election. Through a split, the left Social Revolutionaries also now supported the Bolsheviks.

Between election and constituency (November 1917 to January 1918)

The Bolsheviks began to wonder whether they should convene the constituent assembly immediately after the election, since a possible defeat could not be ruled out. On November 14, 1917, Lenin declared at the Extraordinary Congress of Soviets of Workers' Deputies:

"With regard to the Constituent Assembly spokesman said that their work is dependent on the mood of the country, adding: Familiar mood, but your guns do not forget!" .

On November 21, Naval People's Commissar Dybenko ordered 7,000 pro- Bolshevik sailors from Kronstadt to be “fully operational” for the day of the November 26th meeting of the constituent groups. A gathering of 20,000 Kronstadt "soldiers, sailors, workers and peasants" declared that they would only support a constituent assembly that:

"Is composed in such a way that it confirms the achievements of the October Revolution, <free from> Caledinites and leaders of the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie"

With the split-off Left Social Revolutionaries, the Bolsheviks formed a coalition government. On November 28, they declared the Cadet Party a “party of the enemies of the people”, banned it and Lenin decreed the arrest of its leaders. They postponed the constitution of the assembly to the beginning of January 1918. They initially blamed the technical problems and machinations of their enemies, but Lenin published his theses on the constituent assembly on December 26, 1917 , in which he argued that the Soviets were a higher form of Democracy is said to be the ordinary bourgeois republic with an assembly. In addition, the party with the most voters (Social Revolutionaries) would have presented a unified list in the election, but split in November and would therefore no longer be representative. The interests of the revolution are higher than the formal rights of the assembly.

"... 17. Any attempt, direct or indirect, to look at the constituent assembly question from a formal legal standpoint, within the framework of an ordinary bourgeois democracy and without taking into account the class struggle and civil war, would be a betrayal of the proletarian cause and the acceptance of a bourgeois standpoint. "

Assembly of the Constituent Assembly on 5./18. January 1918

Meeting room of the Duma in the Tauride Palace

On the morning of January 5, 1918, a large demonstration in support of the Constituent Assembly was shelled and dispersed by troops loyal to the Bolshevik government.

A constituent assembly with a quorum took place on July 5th . / January 18, 1918 greg. between 4 p.m. and 6 jul. / January 19, 1918 greg. 4.40 a.m. together in the Tauride Palace . In a speech prepared by Lenin, the prominent Bolshevik Ivan Skworzow-Stepanov explained why his party would not submit to the elected constituent assembly:

“How can you think that such a concept expresses the will of the whole people? For a Marxist , 'the people' is an intangible idea, the people do not act as a unit. The people as a whole is a fiction, and this fiction is required by the ruling classes. " .

A proposal by the Bolsheviks to recognize their government and thus disempower the assembly did not find a majority. Viktor Chernov , leader of the Social Revolutionaries, was elected chairman with 244 votes against the left Social Revolutionary Maria Spiridonova, who was supported by the Bolsheviks, with 153 votes. The Bolsheviks and left SRs now met in a special assembly, the Council of People's Commissars , and decided to dissolve the Constituent Assembly. After reading out a prepared statement by the Naval People's Commissar Fyodor Raskolnikov , the two factions left the meeting room. Lenin left the building with the order:

"There is no need to disperse the constituent assembly: just let them chatter for as long as they want and end it and tomorrow we won't let anyone in."

At 4 o'clock in the morning the head of the AG Schelesniakow security team said to Chernov: “The guards are tired. I suggest they end the session and let everyone go home. "

Chernov reread the main points of the radical land reform introduced by the Socialist Revolutionaries, a law converting Russia into a democratic federal republic (ratification of a decision of the Provisional Government of November 1917) and an appeal to the Entente for a democratic peace. The meeting approved the submissions, Chernov ended the meeting at 4:40 a.m. and scheduled the next meeting at 5 p.m. In the evening, the MPs found the building locked. The government of the Bolsheviks declared the constituent assembly dissolved and the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (GZEK, VTsIK) passed it on the same day, 6/19. January, a decree.

From Petrograd to Samara (January to June 1918)

Locked out of the Tauride Palace, the members of the Constituent Assembly held several secret meetings in the Gurevich High School, but found that the circumstances were becoming increasingly dangerous. Some tried to evade to Kiev , which is controlled by the Central Rada , but which itself was forced to leave the city on January 15, 1918. Ultimately, this dissolved the Constituent Assembly as a coherent body.

The Social Revolutionaries' Central Committee met in January and decided against armed resistance:

"Bolshevism, unlike tsarist autocracy, is based on workers and soldiers who are still blind, have not yet lost their trust and do not see how fatal this thing is for the working class."

Instead, the socialists (SRs and their Menshevik allies) decided to collaborate in the Soviet system and returned to the GZEK, Petrograd Soviet and other Soviet bodies they had left during the October 1917 Revolution. Linked to this was the hope that the Bolsheviks would lose the next elections in view of the social and economic problems, which would bring them a majority in the Soviet and perhaps the Soviet government to reinstate the Constituent Assembly.

By winning elections in the winter and especially in the spring of 1918, they succeeded in gaining pro-SR and anti-Bolshevik majorities in various Soviets, but the Soviet government refused to accept the election results and simply dissolved the corresponding territorial Soviets. One of the Bolshevik leaders in Tula , NW Kopulow wrote to the Bolshevik Central Committee in early 1918:

“After the transfer of power to the Soviets, there was a rapid change in attitudes among the workers. The Bolshevik MPs were voted out one by one and the overall situation soon turned out to be rather unpleasant. Apart from the fact that the SRs were divided and their left was with us, our situation became more and more uncertain every day. We were forced to hold new elections and not recognize them where they did not take place as we wished. "

In response, the SR and Mensheviks began holding meetings of workers' débées in parallel with the Bolshevik Soviets. The idea was popular among the workers, but had little effect on the Bolshevik government.

With the signing of the Brest-Litovsk peace treaty on March 3, 1918, the social revolutionary party leadership increasingly saw the Bolsheviks as offshoots of Germany. She was now willing to enter into an alliance with the liberal Cadet Party, which she had rejected at its 4th party congress in December 1917. Socialists and liberals held talks in Moscow in March 1918 to form an anti-Bolshevik front, but the negotiations broke up on the question of the Constituent Assembly, which the SR, as it had been elected in December 1917, intended to set up, while the Liberals, the therefore would only have 17 MPs, would like new elections.

The Samara Committee (June to September 1918)

On May 7, 1918 (from here on according to the Gregorian calendar), the eight-party council in Moscow decided to re-establish the Constituent Assembly for the uprising of the Social Revolutionaries against the Bolsheviks. During the preparations, the Czechoslovak legions overpowered the Bolsheviks in Siberia , the Urals and the Volga region between May and the beginning of June, and the center of SR activities relocated there. On June 8, 1918 five members of the Constituent Assembly formed an All-Russian Committee of the Constituent Assembly ( Komutsch ) in Samara and declared it to be the highest authority in the country. The committee had the support of the legions and was able to expand its sphere of influence to the Volga- Kama region, but Siberia and the Urals were controlled by ethnic groups, Cossacks and liberal-right local governments who were in constant dispute with the committee. The committee worked until September 1918 and possibly grew to 90 members of the Constituent Assembly, when the so-called "State Conference", which brought together all anti-Bolshevik provincial governments from the Volga to the Pacific, formed a coalition of the All-Russian Supreme State (also Ufa Directorate) . The main objective was to restore the constituent assembly and recognize its decisions as soon as circumstances permitted.

The agreement was supported by the Social Revolutionary Central Committee, which two of its right-wing members, Nikolai Avksentjew and Vladimir Sensinov , delegated to the five-member directorate. The cadets provided the members Vinogradov and Volgogodsky. However, when Viktor Chernov arrived in Samara on September 19, 1918, he convinced the Central Committee of the conservative orientation of the Directory and the insufficient SR presence, so that support for the SR was withdrawn. The decision left the Directory in a political vacuum and it was overruled on November 18, 1918, when right-wing officers declared Kolchak their "supreme leader".

Decay

After the fall of the Ufa board of directors, Chernov formulated a “third way” against both the Bolsheviks and the whites , but the formation of an independent army was unsuccessful and the party, already fragmented, began to fall apart. On the right wing, Avksentiev and Zentsinov left the country with Kolchak's permission, while the left went with the Bolsheviks. Chernov attempted an uprising against Kolchak, but this was suppressed and his participants executed. In February 1919, the SR Central Committee decided that the Bolsheviks were the lesser evil and gave up the fight against them. The Bolsheviks allowed the Social Revolutionaries to re-establish their Central Committee in Moscow, which from March 1919 also published a party newspaper. However, they were soon arrested and spent the remainder of the Russian Civil War in jail. Chernov himself went illegally and left Russia while the imprisoned Central Committee members were sentenced to death in 1922. The sentences were later overturned.

With the disappearance of the constituent assembly's largest party, the Entente remained the only force supporting its re-establishment. On May 26, 1919, she offered her support to Kolchak under the condition of free elections at all levels and the reopening of the Constituent Assembly. The latter refused on the grounds that the elections had taken place under the Bolshevik government and were not really free. On June 12, 1919, the Allies accepted this decision.

Both Kolchak and Denikin in southern Russia refused to commit to a political and social system after a victory over the Bolsheviks, but declared that they would not return to the old form of government and find a form of public representation. A Russian journalist of the time noted:

"In Omsk itself ... you can find a political group that is prepared to promise the Allies everything they want, but say 'when we reach Moscow, we can speak to them in a different tone.'"

After the victory of the Bolsheviks in the civil war at the end of 1920, 38 members of the constituent assembly met in Paris in 1921 and formed an, albeit ineffective, executive committee. The Constitutional Democrats under Pavel Miliukov , one of the leaders of the progressive Alexander Ivanovich Konovalov , the Ufa board member Avksentiev and the former Prime Minister Kerensky were involved.

Historical research

According to Marcel Liebman ( Leninism under Lenin , 1975), the Bolsheviks had a majority in the Soviets thanks to a differentiated electoral system. Under the Soviet constitution of 1918, an urban Soviet (usually pro-Bolshevik) had one delegate per 25,000 votes, while a rural Soviet (mostly pro-social revolutionary) could send 1 delegate per 125,000 votes.

The Bolsheviks dissolved the Constituent Assembly with reference to the split in the SR. A few weeks later, Left and Right Social Revolutionaries received roughly equal numbers of votes in the Workers' Soviets.

The Bolsheviks went on to argue that the Soviets were more democratic in that delegates could be dismissed immediately by their voters, while the parliamentary style of the Constituent Assembly allowed elected representatives to be dismissed only after a number of years in the next elections. The book notes that the elections to the peasant and city soviets were free and that these soviets then elected the all-Russian congress, which in turn elected the Soviet government: the second congress took place before the assembly of the constituent assembly, the third shortly after.

Two recent books referring to Soviet archives ( The Russian Revolution by Richard Pipes and Tragedy of a People. The Epoch of the Russian Revolution 1891-1924 by Orlando Figes) give a different perspective. Pipes argues that the 2nd Congress was not fair, since a Soviet of 1,500 members, for example, sent 5 delegates, which was more than the Kiev city ​​deputies . Both the Mensheviks and SR would have described this election as illegal and unrepresentative.

The book notes that two days after the constitutional dissolution, the Bolsheviks held a counter-assembly, the 3rd Congress of Workers and Soldiers' Councils. In doing so, they gave themselves and the left-wing Social Revolutionaries 94% of the seats, significantly more than they had won in the result of the only national democratic parliamentary election in Russia at that time.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Six Red Months in Russia by Louise Bryant, Chapter VII, online
  2. ^ WI Lenin: The Bolsheviks Must Assume Power: A Letter to the Central Committee and the Petrograd And Moscow Committees Of The RSDLP (B.) , Collected Works, Progress Publishers, Moscow, Volume 26, 1972, pp. 19-21, online
  3. ^ Number of the shutdown of non-socialist newspapers by the Revolutionary Military Tribunal in Petrograd on October 26 in Nikolai Sukhanov : The Russian Revolution, 1917 , Oxford University Press, 1955, pp.649–650. The first Sownarcoma decree on press censorship in Rex A. Wade. '' The Russian Revolution, 1917 '', Cambridge University Press, 2005, ISBN 0-521-84155-0 p.276. Second Sovnarkom Decree on Extended Government Control of the Press in VI Lenin. `` Collected Works '', Progress Publishers, Moscow, Volume 26, 1972, pp. 283–284, [1]
  4. ^ WI Lenin: Reply To Questions From Peasants , Collected Works, Progress Publishers, Moscow, Volume 26, 1972, pp. 300-301, online
  5. ↑ Oliver H. Radkey. Russia Goes to the Polls: The Election to the All-Russian Constituent Assembly, 1917 , Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1989, ISBN 0-8014-2360-0 , xxvi, 171 p.
  6. ^ VI Lenin. The Constituent Assembly Elections and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat , December 1919, Collected Works , Volume 30, pages 253-275 Progress Publishers, 1965. online
  7. ↑ The exact number of votes per party is still being discussed because of the large number of invalid ballot papers
  8. ^ VI Lenin. `` The Extraordinary All-Russia Congress Of Soviets Of Peasants' Deputies: Speech On The Agrarian Question '' November 14, Collected Works, Progress Publishers, Moscow, Volume 26, 1972, pp. 321-332, online
  9. ^ Israel Getzler. `` Kronstadt 1917–1921: The Fate of a Soviet Democracy '', Cambridge University Press, 1983, paperback edition 2002, ISBN 0-521-89442-5 p.180
  10. ^ Rex A. Wade. op. cit. p.277. Lenin's decree, published November 29 in VI Lenin. Decree On The Arrest Of The Leaders Of The Civil War Against The Revolution, Collected Works , Progress Publishers, Moscow, Volume 28, 1972, pp.351, online
  11. ^ VI Lenin. `` On The Opening Of The Constituent Assembly, Collected Works '', Progress Publishers, Moscow, Volume 26, 1972, pp. 367, available online
  12. ^ VI Lenin. `` Theses On The Constituent Assembly, Collected Works '', Progress Publishers, Moscow, Volume 26, 1972, pp. 379-383, online
  13. ↑ Nikolai N. Smirnov “Constituent Assembly” in “Critical Companion to the Russian Revolution” 1914–1921, eds. Edward Acton, Vladimir Iu. Cherniaev, William G. Rosenberg, Indiana University Press / Arnold, 1997, ISBN 0-253-33333-4 p.332
  14. ↑ a b c all quotations from the deputies of the Bolsheviks in FF Raskolnikow. Tales of Sub-Lieutenant Ilyin: The Tale of a Lost Day , Moscow, 1934, English translation London, New Park Publications Ltd, 1982, online
  15. ↑ Jonathan D. Smele. Civil War in Siberia: The Anti-Bolshevik Government of Admiral Kolchak, 1918-1920 , Cambridge University Press, 1996, ISBN 0-521-57335-1 , p. 34 on the violent opposition of Siberian landowners to the Constituent Assembly in relation to this decision
  16. ↑ Nikolai N. Smirnov "Constituent Assembly" in Critical Companion to the Russian Revolution 1914-1921, op. Cit., P.332
  17. ↑ "Tsentral'nyi komitet PS.-R. Tezisy dlia partiinykh agitatorov i propagandistov. No. 1", in Partiia sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov posle oktiabr'skogo perevorota 1917 goda. Documentation 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. online ( Memento of the original from September 2, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / euphrates.wpunj.edu
  18. ↑ Scott Smith, op. Cit. ( Memento of the original from September 2, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on the Bolshevik refusal to admit anti-Bolshevik MPs in Petrograd, Astrakhan , Tula etc. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / euphrates.wpunj.edu
  19. ↑ Scott Smith, op. Cit. ( Memento of the original from September 2, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on the development of the attitude of the SR towards the Bolshevik government. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / euphrates.wpunj.edu
  20. ↑ Jonathan D. Smele. Op. cit., p.32
  21. ^ "Constitution of the Ufa Directory", first published in Narodovlastie, No. 1, 1918, reprinted in Istoriya Rossii 1917–1940, Ekaterinburg, 1993, pp. 102–105, English online ( Memento of the original dated September 12, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.uea.ac.uk
  22. ↑ Michael Melancon. "Chernov", in "Critical Companion to the Russian Revolution 1914-1921", op.cit., P.137
  23. ↑ Ronald Grigor Suny. The Soviet Experiment: Russia, the USSR, and the Successor States , Oxford University Press, 1998, ISBN 0-19-508105-6 p.80
  24. ↑ Elizabeth A. Wood. Performing Justice: Agitation Trials in Early Soviet Russia , Cornell University Press, 2005, ISBN 0-8014-4257-5 , p.83
  25. ↑ 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
  26. ↑ Arnol'dov. `` Zhizn 'i revoliutsiia' ', p. 158, quoted in Jonathan D. Smele, op.cit., P.254
  27. ↑ Nikolai N. Smirnov, "The Constituent Assembly" in Critical Companion to the Russian Revolution 1914–1921 , op. Cit., P. 332

literature

  • Oliver H. Radkey: Russia Goes to the Polls: The Election to the All-Russian Constituent Assembly, 1917. Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1989, ISBN 0-8014-2360-0 vi, 171 p.
  • Karl Kautsky : The Dictatorship of the Proletariat , chapter VI, Constituent Assembly and Soviet
  • Robert Browder / Alexander Kerensky (eds.): The Russian Provisional Governments. Stanford University Press, 1961, in 3 volumes, 1875p.
  • Ariadna Tyrkova-Williams : From Liberty to Brest-Litovsk, the First Year of the Russian Revolution. London, Macmillan, 1919, 526p. OCLC: 15796701 xii, 526p. See Chapter XIII on the Constituent Assembly (English)
  • Boris Sokoloff: The White Nights. New York, Devin-Adair, 1956. See the chapter on unsuccessful attempts to defend the Constituent Assembly
  • Frank Alfred Golder, James Bunyan / Harold Fisher (eds.): The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917–1918. Documents and Materials. Stanford University Press; H. Milford, Oxford University Press, 1934. (Chapter Constituent Assembly )
  • Tony Cliff, Lenin, 1917–1923, Revolution Besieged, Bookmarks, London 1987

Web links

Commons : Russian Constituent Assembly  - collection of images, videos and audio files