The constituent assembly was dispersed. Dispersal of the All-Russian Constituent Assembly by the Bolsheviks. Lenin establishes quorum

He relied on those rebellious anarchist elements who, being in principle against any state power, were especially hostile to the Assembly, which clearly carried within itself the foundations of statehood and law and order.

The sailor detachment also belonged to these anarchic elements. Zheleznyakova, to whom the Uritskys were tasked with dispersing the Constituent Assembly. Threatening with weapons “by order of the people’s commissar,” Zheleznyakov on January 6 at 5 o’clock in the morning drove the people’s representatives out of the Tauride Palace, where they were meeting.

Anatoly Zhelyaznyakov (“sailor Zheleznyak”)

Lenin ordered the doors of the Tauride Palace to be sealed and field guns and machine guns to be placed in front of it. Workers from the Semyannikovsky plant suggested that the majority of the Constituent Assembly continue their meetings in one of the plant’s workshops. But there were disagreements in the Socialist Revolutionary faction and this proposal, unfortunately, was not accepted. There was another proposal - to continue work on the Don under the cover of the Don Cossack Circle. This proposal was rejected because the Socialist Revolutionary majority had a Cossack ataman Kaledin seemed insufficiently democratic. At the same time, it is well known that General Kaledin accepted the February Revolution and was one of those generals who were ready to completely submit to the government formed on the basis of the Constituent Assembly. As subsequent events in the Urals showed, a significant part of the right Socialist Revolutionaries preferred an agreement with the Bolsheviks to accepting help from the moderately liberal part of the military.

“The guard is tired!” Dispersal of the Constituent Assembly by sailors

Immediately after the dispersal of the Assembly A. I. Shingarev And F. F. Kokoshkin, two of his cadet deputies, transferred due to illness to the hospital from the Peter and Paul Fortress, where they were sitting along with many others, were brutally killed by a group of sailors(7 (20) January 1918).

The dispersal of the Constituent Assembly is the last act of the Bolshevik coup. The violence against popular representation in January 1918 made the very power of the Soviets illegal and served as the basis for all those who did not want to reconcile with the Bolsheviks, a small minority represented in the Constituent Assembly, to fight them by force of arms. Lenin and the Bolsheviks predetermined the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly civil war. Moreover, the act of dispersing the Constituent Assembly historically predetermined in the history of Russia a new revolution for freedom, law and democracy. A new liberation revolution has become historically inevitable. The fear of this revolution has been psychologically hanging over the Bolshevik leadership since 1918. This fear and awareness of the inevitability of revolution, in particular, were expressed in the fact that the Bolsheviks, starting from that time, did not distinguish between their opponents and gradually included more and more people in the “counter-revolutionaries” more people- peasants, workers, youth, everyone who has ever opposed them - true counter-revolutionaries who dispersed the only democratic representation in the history of Russia.

On the night of January 6 (19), 1918, the armed guard of the Tauride Palace, on the orders of the Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin, interrupted the work of the All-Russian Constituent Assembly. According to senior IMR expert Vladimir Kara-Murza, the illegitimacy of power inherent in the Bolshevik usurpation still determines political life Russia.

Convening a Constituent Assembly to determine the future government structure Russia was one of the main slogans of the February Revolution, and the Provisional Government (whose “temporary” character was precisely determined by its work before the convening of the Constituents) immediately began preparing for the vote. Initially, the elections were scheduled for September 17 (30), 1917, but the government decided to postpone them to November 12 (25). Without this transfer, the entire course Russian history The 20th century would probably have been completely different. However, even the Bolsheviks, who seized power during the October Revolution, did not dare to cancel the vote: the support for the idea of ​​a Constituent Assembly in Russian society was too great.

More than 44 million people took part in the elections, which were held on the basis of universal, equal and direct suffrage by secret ballot. The electoral legislation approved by the Provisional Government was one of the most democratic in Europe: all Russian citizens over 20 years of age could participate in voting without distinction of gender, religion or nationality. As a result of the elections, the Bolsheviks suffered a crushing defeat, gaining only 22% of the votes. The undisputed winner was the Socialist Revolutionary Party (SR), which received the support of about 40% of voters. Other socialist parties (14%), national groups (10%), the Constitutional Democratic Party - Cadets (5%) and the Mensheviks (3%) also had their representatives in the Assembly. Taking into account the support of the left wing that broke away from the Socialist Revolutionary Party, Lenin could count on about a third of the votes in the Constituent Assembly: 175 Bolsheviks and 40 left Socialist Revolutionaries. The Right Socialist Revolutionary faction numbered 370 deputies, the factions of various national parties - 86, and the Cadets faction - 17 people.

However, the Cadet deputies were not able to take part in the work of the Assembly: on November 28 (December 11), 1917, the self-proclaimed Council of People's Commissars declared the constitutional democrats “a party of enemies of the people” and their leaders subject to “arrest and trial by revolutionary tribunals.” The tribunals, however, turned out to be conditional: on the night of January 7 (20), 1918, deputies from the Cadet Party Andrei Shingarev and Fyodor Kokoshkin were brutally killed by sailors in the Mariinsk prison hospital.

The first and only meeting of the Constituent Assembly opened in the Tauride Palace on January 5 (18), 1918. On this day, Bolshevik troops shot thousands of demonstrations in support of the Assembly in Petrograd and Moscow. According to official data, 21 people were killed in Petrograd, and more than 50 in Moscow. “As a participant in the procession on January 9, 1905, I must state the fact that I never saw such a brutal massacre there,” recalled Obukhov plant worker D.N. Bogdanov. “Everything that the Nikolaev satraps could not do, Lenin’s fellows have now done.”

“With one stroke of a pen, with one wave of your hand, you will shed as much blood as you want and anyone’s blood with a callousness and woodenness that any degenerate from the criminal world would envy,” wrote Viktor Chernov (left) to Vladimir Lenin in 1919. “You are an immoral person to the last depths of your being.”

The meeting lasted 13 hours. During this time, the deputies elected the right-wing Socialist-Revolutionary Viktor Chernov as their chairman (in fact, the head of state), refused to consider the Bolshevik declaration declaring Russia a “republic of Soviets,” adopted the first 10 points of the law on the socialization of the land, adopted an appeal to the warring powers with a call to begin peace negotiations, and also - in the last minutes of their work - they proclaimed the creation of the Russian Democratic Federative Republic. This was the last point of legitimacy Russian state. According to the draft Constitution, which was never adopted, the country was to be governed by a bicameral parliament (the upper house, the State Council, was elected by regional parliaments; the lower house, the State Duma, by direct universal suffrage) and a president who was elected by a majority in both houses of parliament.

The famous “The guard is tired” sounded at five o’clock in the morning on January 6 (19): the chief of the guard at the Tauride Palace, sailor Anatoly Zheleznyakov, was carrying out Lenin’s order to disperse the Constituent Assembly. “Vladimir Ilyich called me to his place. I had a bottle of good wine in my pocket, and we sat at the table for a long time,” Nikolai Bukharin recalled about this night. “Towards the morning, Ilyich asked to repeat something from what was said about the dispersal of the Institution and suddenly laughed. He laughed for a long time, repeated to himself the words of the narrator and laughed and laughed. Fun, infectious, to the point of tears. Laughed. We did not immediately understand that this was hysteria. That night we were afraid we were going to lose him."

Lenin later called the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly “the complete and outright liquidation of forms of democracy in the name of revolutionary dictatorship.” “We do not at all hide or obscure the fact that ... we violated formal law,” Leon Trotsky emphasized. “We also do not hide the fact that we used violence, but we did it in order to fight against all violence.” The country fully experienced this “struggle against violence” during the civil war, which actually began with the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly.

On January 6 (19), 1918, the Bolshevik Central Executive Committee issued a decree dissolving the All-Russian Constituent Assembly. Deputies who came to the Tauride Palace during the day saw locked doors, machine guns and artillery pieces. And although in fact the illegitimate regime was established on the day of the coup on October 25 (November 7), 1917, it was this January day that should be considered the day of the final – legal – loss of legitimacy of the Russian government.

This legitimacy was never restored. Despite the fact that in 1989–2000 alternative and relatively free elections were held in Russia, despite the fact that the Soviet system, at one time called upon to “cover up” the dispersal of the popularly elected Constituent Assembly, was finally dismantled in 1993, today’s Russia - at first formally , and after Vladimir Putin came to power, in fact, it remains the legal successor of the Bolshevik usurpers. Recognizing the “succession” of the new Russia from the RSFSR and the USSR is one of the most serious mistakes of the democratic authorities of the early 1990s.

“Almost 100 years - the lifetime of several generations - have passed on the basis of a complete break with law and law,” wrote Grigory Yavlinsky in his programmatic article “Lies and Legitimacy.” – Today’s political system in Russia, in historical terms, dates back to the tragic events of 1917–1920 – a coup d’etat, the seizure of power by a group of criminal elements and a bloody civil war. It is precisely the refusal to recognize this fact and the attempt to build a supposedly post-Soviet Russia on a sense of continuity and absorbing the lies of the previous 75 years that makes it in principle impossible to move forward and predetermines the degradation of public consciousness.” According to Yavlinsky, without restoring lost legitimacy in Russia, it is impossible to create either a functional state or a competitive economy. According to a well-known economist and politician, it is necessary to raise the question of “the restoration of Russian statehood, destroyed by the coup of 1917 and the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly on January 6, 1918, as a legal starting point,” and the convening of a new Constituent Assembly can become a tool for such restoration - for example, in form of the Constitutional Assembly, which is provided for by the current Basic Law.

It is possible to get out of this vicious circle only by restoring the legal basis of Russian statehood, drawing a line of succession not from the October usurpers, but from the democratic Russia of February. Obviously, this will become possible only after the current regime is changed. But we need to think about this today.

The weakness of the bourgeois parties and the demagoguery of the Bolsheviks are the reasons for the dispersal of the constituent assembly.

For the Russian people, especially for the intelligentsia, it was absolutely clear that the revolution, having overthrown the hated Romanov regime, would transfer power to the Constituent Assembly, which would decide the question of the future of Russia.
But the Assembly worked for a little less than a day. The delegates were going to work even after 4 am, but sailor Zheleznyakov (later legendary hero Civil War, who was such an original commander that he “went to Odessa and came out to Kherson,” simply dispersed the deputies, declaring that “the guard was tired.” The deputies decided to continue the meeting in the evening of the same day, but discovered the locked doors of the Tauride Palace and an armed detachment with machine guns and two light artillery pieces. The security guards said the meeting was cancelled.
Soon a decree was published stating that the Constituent Assembly was dissolved because its deputies were hired servants of world imperialism.
The Constituent Assembly was dispersed by the Bolsheviks so easily and practically bloodlessly because: - the Bolsheviks, having seized power, were not going to share it or give it a legitimate character;
-in the elections, the Bolsheviks received a little more than 20% of the seats, and could not hope that the Assembly would support them and recognize the results of the October Revolution;
-the popular masses were not ready to rise in defense of the Constituent Assembly, the demonstration in its support that was shot did not cause mass indignation;
- the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly and its declaration as counter-revolutionary did not cause a violent reaction from the masses;
-all parties, except the Bolshevik Party, were not ready to seize power and hoped for democratic methods of building a new society;
-the international community did not understand the essence of the events taking place in Russia and was preoccupied with the problems of the ongoing world war;
-weak, naive, good-natured politicians and leaders of bourgeois parties, the product of the weak and inexperienced Russian bourgeoisie, could not imagine such openly immoral and criminal actions of their political opponents, they were not ready for them;
-not a single party, except the Bolshevik party, had either the political will, determination, or strength and desire to fight for power using the methods that the Bolsheviks used;
-for the absolute majority of Russian parties, only parliamentary methods of struggle were acceptable, and, on the other hand, they had no experience of political activity;
-the demagoguery of the Bolsheviks, especially the promise of immediate peace, the end of the war “without annexations and indemnities” led to the fact that soldiers and sailors, the main force of the revolution, were against the Constituent Assembly, since many of the deputies were “defencists”, followers of the idea of ​​“war before victorious end";
-the reason for the liquidation of the Constituent Assembly was that the masses had not yet become disillusioned with the policies of the Bolsheviks, did not see their true essence;
- “Land for the peasants, factories for the workers, peace for the peoples” - these simple slogans were more understandable to the Bolsheviks by the masses than discussions about agrarian reform or the main provisions of the future Constitution;
Iron party discipline, readiness for uncivilized actions, completely unimaginable for the ordinary Russian intellectual and layman, allowed the Bolsheviks to eliminate even the very possibility that they would have to share power with someone, make the decisions they needed with an eye on some political factors.
The main, and, perhaps, the only goal of the Bolsheviks was the conquest of power, and the national, state interests of Russia, as well as the interests of the people, were not of interest to them. This was convincingly shown by all subsequent events, up to 1991, and even to this day.
The lack of unity of the parties represented in the Constituent Assembly, the absence of a clearly understood common goal, the illusion of the “inadmissibility” of certain methods of political struggle, and faith in the prudence of the common people led both to the collapse of the attempts of the Russian bourgeoisie to create a democratic society on the ruins of the empire, and to the defeat of the white movement in the Civil War.
Bukharin later recalled that Lenin laughed a lot when he told him about the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly. Naturally, the very idea of ​​a free choice of the path of the state by people invested with the trust of the people seemed to him a farce. Moreover, no serious attempts were made by the deputies to protect themselves and the people’s government.
The events surrounding the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly, especially the shooting of a peaceful demonstration of Petrograd residents in support of the Constituent Assembly, marked the transition of the victorious Bolshevik party to open struggle with their own people, including the workers and peasants, whose interests they swore to protect.

Oh, how they all, after the overthrow of Nicholas II, relied on the Constituent Assembly and sacredly believed in it! They thought that after general fair elections a real, fair government would be elected, meeting the aspirations of the people, and a new happy era would begin. And how naive they all were! They are naive, like children, and they were deceived, like children.

Demonstration in Petrograd in support of the Constituent Assembly.

At first, the Provisional Government of Kerensky deceived whose goal was to establish the most radical left group in power. Kerensky's provisional government was led by secret societies that worked for radical leftist forces. Previously, they contributed to the transportation of Bolsheviks and other revolutionaries from Europe and the USA to Russia. They worked hand in hand.

The provisional government deliberately delayed holding elections. Initially, the elections were scheduled for September 17, then postponed to November 12-14, and the convening of the Assembly to November 28... Then, under the Bolsheviks, to January 18 (5), 1918. It was as if they were deliberately delaying to make it possible for the Bolsheviks to come to power. .. (And how many opportunities did the Provisional Government have to liquidate the leaders of the Bolsheviks! In general, a conspiracy.)

Well, what elections under the Bolsheviks, who have already created an army for themselves! Your army. “A rifle gives birth to power,” as Mao Zedong would later say. Those. The Bolsheviks had that same rifle, and everyone else had promises and rantings.

When people took to the streets to support the Constituent Assembly, they started shooting at them! And what? This is the norm for the Bolsheviks.
"Day", January 19 (06), 1918:

The blood of peaceful demonstrators has been shed. The “workers’” government, from the windows of houses, from roofs and courtyards, in batches and single-handedly, shot the workers who came out to defend the Constituent Assembly. The bloody orgy of Bolshevism began; and death, which the Smolny authorities called to their aid on January 5, will dig a chasm between the Leninist dictatorship and the working class of Petrograd... (it won’t dig a chasm, this is only a modest beginning).

Zinaida Gippius writes:

They are calling from the Northern Hotel: there are huge demonstrations on Nevsky, but they are not allowed further than Liteinaya. One demonstration has already been shot at Liteinaya, at No. 19. The majority of the demonstrators are workers. One member of the Constituent Assembly, one Volyn soldier, several workers were killed, many were wounded. Machine-gun ambushes took place in Protopopov’s places, and they cooked from there. Somewhere near Kirochnaya or Furshtadtskaya, demonstrations of 6 Red Guards were shot. On the roofs... there were sailors sitting. A Red Guard stabbed one young lady in the throat with a bayonet, and when she fell, he finished her off.

The main competitor of the Bolsheviks is the Socialist Revolutionary Viktor Chernov, without weapons. Wants to win through persuasion and calls for fair play. Although he himself is also a decent bastard, leftist to the core, but of a different shade. After the communists seized power, he tried to cling to the new regime. He opposed Kolchak... Emigrated, died in New York in 1952...

Viktor Chernov, leader of the Social Revolutionaries

Chernov writes:

Having gathered not far from the Tauride Palace, we go there, at the appointed noon hour, the main body of about two hundred people. The area in front of the palace is cluttered with light guns, machine guns and “ammunition” - for offensive operations or for withstanding a siege? One narrow side entrance is free: they let you in one at a time, after checking their tickets, and some are asked whether they have weapons with them?..

But inside, in the lobby and corridors, there are armed guards everywhere. A picture of a real military camp. We enter a large meeting room.

The oldest deputy among us: the old Narodnaya Volya member Shvetsov. He should open the meeting. “The meeting of the Constituent Assembly opens.” A new explosion of deafening noise. Shvetsov leaves the podium and returns to us. Sverdlov takes his place to open the meeting for the second time in the name of the Council of People's Commissars and offer us his “platform” with an ultimatum.

Lenin in the “government box” demonstrates his contempt for the “constituent body” by lying down at full length and taking on the appearance of a man asleep from boredom. I go so far as to threaten to “cleanse the public” of the raging choirs. Despite the absurdity of the threat, because the guards are only waiting for a signal to “clear” the hall of us, it works for a while.

But Bukharin gave a speech. If only you knew how your “gray overcoats” will shoot you:

"Bukharchik"

We, comrades, are now laying the foundation for the life of humanity for millennia. We are all, down to one person, mortal, and now each of us faces one question, which falls on us with all its weight, on the conscience of each: with whom will we be - with Kaledin, with the cadets, with the manufacturers, merchants , directors of accounting banks who support sabotage, who are strangling the working class, or we will be with gray overcoats, with workers, soldiers, sailors, we will be with them shoulder to shoulder, sharing all their fate, rejoicing in their victories, mourning their defeats, welded together by one by the will of socialism, welded together by a common desire to create a strong power of the great Russian Soviet republic, to crush world capital with an iron ring.

(Stalin was also nearby in 1918. In 1938, already from prison, Bukharin persuaded Stalin... to replace the execution with exile to some remote area, where he, under a different name and surname, would continue to work for the benefit of the working people. When he realized the futility of his request - begged to be given morphine for a quick death, so as to “fall asleep and not wake up.”)

Lenin, through the Bolshevik Skvortsov-Stepanov, invited the Assembly to sing “The Internationale,” which was done by all the socialists present, from the Bolsheviks to the right-wing Socialist Revolutionaries who sharply opposed them (such is the insignificant “opposition”)

Dybenko writes (he would also be shot in 1937):

At about one o'clock in the morning the Bolsheviks leave the Constituent Assembly. The Left Socialist-Revolutionaries still remain. Comrade Lenin is in one of the rooms far from the meeting hall of the Tauride Palace... Regarding the Constituent Assembly, a decision was made: the next day, none of the members of the founders should be allowed into the Tauride Palace, and thus to consider the Constituent Assembly dissolved.

Today's “monarchists” write:

On January 6, 1918, on the day of Epiphany, by decision of the Bolshevik government, the “Constituent Assembly” was dispersed, which, according to the plans of the organizers of the February Revolution, was authorized “by the will of the people” to resolve the issue of the form of government in Russia. It was to the will of this “Constituent Assembly” that Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich, the brother of the Sovereign, and other members of the Dynasty who joined (including Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich) illegally transferred the decision on the fate of the Russian monarchy.

Half the population then took part in the Assembly elections. The right-wing (monarchist) parties, defeated back in February, could not participate in them. However, the election results disappointed the Bolsheviks: they received only 23.9% of the vote, while the Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs) received 40%, the “bourgeois” parties - 29.1%, the Cadets 4.7%, the Mensheviks 2.3%.

The coalition of Bolsheviks and Left Socialist Revolutionaries decided to disperse the meeting as “counter-revolutionary.” Lenin was sharply opposed to the Assembly. Sukhanov (Himmer - arrested for half his life, shot in 1940) in his fundamental work “Notes on the Revolution” argued that Lenin, even after his arrival from exile in April 1917, considered the Constituent Assembly a “liberal undertaking.” The Commissioner of Propaganda, Press and Agitation of the Northern Region V. Volodarsky (Goldstein, will be killed in a few months) went even further and stated that “the masses in Russia have never suffered from parliamentary cretinism,” and “if the masses make a mistake with the ballot papers, they will have to take for another weapon."

Trotsky (soon to be expelled from the USSR and then killed in Mexico) subsequently sarcastically remarked the following about the Socialist Revolutionary deputies:

But they carefully developed the ritual of the first meeting. They brought candles with them in case the Bolsheviks turned off the electricity, and a large number of sandwiches in case they were deprived of food.

So democracy came to fight dictatorship - fully armed with sandwiches and candles. And they were armed to the teeth:

During the second part of the meeting, at three o'clock in the morning, the representative of the Bolsheviks Fyodor Raskolnikov (fleeed from the USSR, died in Nice) announced that the Bolsheviks (in protest against the non-acceptance of the Declaration) were leaving the meeting. On behalf of the Bolsheviks, he declared that “not wanting to cover up the crimes of the enemies of the people for a minute, we declare that we are leaving the Constituent Assembly in order to transfer to the Soviet power of deputies the final decision on the issue of attitude towards the counter-revolutionary part of the Constituent Assembly.”
According to the Bolshevik Meshcheryakov, after the departure of the faction, many of the guard soldiers guarding the Assembly “took their rifles at the ready,” one even “took aim at the crowd of Socialist Revolutionary delegates,” and Lenin personally stated that the departure of the Bolshevik faction of the Assembly “will have such an effect on the soldiers and sailors holding guard, that they will immediately shoot all the remaining Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks.” One of his contemporaries, M. Vishnyak, comments on the situation in the meeting room as follows:

Having descended from the platform, I went to see what was happening in the choirs... Separate groups continued to “rally” and argue. Some of the deputies are trying to convince the soldiers of the rightness of the meeting and the criminality of the Bolsheviks. It flashes: “And a bullet for Lenin if he deceives!”

Lenin ordered not to disperse the meeting immediately, but to wait for the meeting to end and then close the Tauride Palace and not allow anyone there the next day. The meeting, however, dragged on until late at night, and then until the morning. At 5 o’clock in the morning on January 6 (19), having informed the presiding Socialist Revolutionary Chernov that “the guard is tired” (“I have received instructions to bring to your attention that all those present leave the meeting room because the guard is tired”), the head of security anarchist A. Zheleznyakov closed the meeting, inviting the deputies to disperse...


Dispersal of the meeting in the Tauride Palace.

Servants of bankers, capitalists and landowners, allies of Kaledin, Dutov, slaves of the American dollar, killers from around the corner, the right-wing Socialist Revolutionaries demand the establishment. the assembly of all power for themselves and their masters - the enemies of the people.

In words they seem to join the people's demands: land, peace and control, but in reality they are trying to tighten the noose around the neck of socialist power and revolution.

But workers, peasants and soldiers will not fall for the bait of the false words of the worst enemies of socialism; in the name of the socialist revolution and the socialist Soviet republic, they will sweep away all its obvious and hidden killers. (and what a disgusting style! And familiar!)

Bukharin recalled: “On the night of the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly, Vladimir Ilyich called me to his place... In the morning, Ilyich asked me to repeat something from what was told about the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly and suddenly laughed. He laughed for a long time, repeated to himself the words of the narrator and laughed and laughed. Fun, infectious, to the point of tears. Laughed." (Imagine this laughter of Ilyich. This is the laughter of the devil.)

What happened has not gone away, it continues to exist in other forms, to mimic, but its essence is the same - gangster.

In 2015, activist Vladimir Shpitalev wrote a statement addressed to the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation Yuri Chaika demanding to check the legality of the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly in 1918. In June of the same year, Shpitalev went out on a one-man picket on Red Square with a poster “Bring back the Constituent Assembly.” He was detained and taken to the police station. The trial was scheduled for September, but already in August Shpitalev left Russia due to persecution by the Center for Combating Extremism for an Internet post in which he advocated the release of Oleg Sentsov and the transfer of Crimea to Ukraine. In 2016, Shtalev received political asylum in the Czech Republic.