constituent assembely

• held for legitamacy + illusion of demoncracy then a dissoloution to maintain power removes barrier to their authority
• Bolshevik majority unlikely due to SR popularity with peasantry
• Lenin arrested Kadet leaders to reduce anti-Bolshevik lobby
• Bols secured 175 seats, Left SRs 40, Right SRs gained 370 out 715
• Constituent Assembly's first meeting

  5 Jan. 1918
• Red Guards closed Assembly at gunpoint next day
• Lenin formally dissolved it, extinguishing Russia's brief democracy encounter
• Lenin viewed democracy as bourgeois construct to deceive masses
• Debate on Constituent Assembly results significance

  • Liberal historians: proof of Bolshevik unpopularity
  • Revisionists: SR vote crucial, no distinction on ballot paper between Right and Left SRs
• Peasant behavior pre-Oct 1917 indicated preference for Left SRs
• Left SRs supported October Revolution in 2nd All-Russian Congress of Soviets
• thus, consolidated power via violencfe
• • Bolsheviks expected towns and cities, centers of proletarian concentration, to vote overwhelmingly Bolshevik, justifying the revolution.
• pressure in the form of petitions and resolutions from factory committees, army units and provincial towns wanted co operation e.g. a petition from the 35th Army Division stated: ‘Among the soldiers there are no Bolsheviks, Mensheviks or Socialist Revolutionaries, only Democrats.’ - just wanted democracy