V. I. Lenin

1.	The demand for the convocation of a Constituent
Assembly was a perfectly legitimate part of the programme of
revolutionary Social-Democracy, because in a bourgeois republic
the Constituent Assembly represents the highest form of
democracy and because, in setting up a Pre-parliament, the
imperialist republic headed by Kerensky was preparing to rig the
elections and violate democracy in a number of ways.

2.	While demanding the convocation of a Constituent
Assembly, revolutionary Social-Democracy has ever since the
beginning of the Revolution of 1917 repeatedly emphasised that a
republic of Soviets is a higher form of democracy than the usual
bourgeois republic with a Constituent Assembly.

3.	For the transition from the bourgeois to the socialist
system, for the dictatorship of the proletariat, the Republic of
Soviets (of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’
Deputies) is not only a higher type of democratic institution
(as compared with the usual bourgeois republic crowned by a
Constituent Assembly), but is the only form capable of securing
the most painless transition to socialism.

4.	The convocation of the Constituent Assembly in our
revolution on the basis of lists submitted in the middle of
October 1917 is taking place under conditions which preclude the
possibility of the elections to this Constituent Assembly
faithfully expressing the will of the people in general and of
the working people in particular.

5.	Firstly, proportional representation results in a
faithful expression of the will of the people only when the
party lists correspond to the real division of the people
according to the party groupings reflected in those lists. In
our case, however, as is well known, the party which from May to
October had the largest number of followers among the people,
and especially among the peasants—the
Socialist-Revolutionary Party—came out with united election
lists for the Constituent Assembly in the middle of October
1917, but split in November 1917, after the elections and before
the Assembly met.

For this reason, there is not, nor can there be, even a formal
correspondence between the will of the mass of the electors and
the composition of the elected Constituent Assembly.

6.	Secondly, a still more important, not a formal nor
legal, but a socio-economic, class source of the discrepancy
between the will of the people, and especially the will of the
working classes, on the one hand, and the composition of the
Constituent Assembly, on the other, is due to the elections to
the Constituent Assembly having taken place at a time when the
overwhelming majority of tile people could not yet know the full
scope and significance of the October, Soviet, proletarian-peasant revolution, which began on October 25, 1917,
i.e., after the lists of candidates for the Constituent Assembly
had been submitted.

7.	The October Revolution is passing through successive
stages of development before our very eyes, winning power for
the Soviets and wresting political rule from the bourgeoisie and
transferring it to the proletariat and poor peasantry.

8.	It began with the victory of October 24-25 in the
capital, when the Second All-Russia Congress of Soviets of
Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, the vanguard of the proletarians and of the most politically active section of the
peasants, gave a majority to the Bo!shevik Party and put it in
power.

9.	Then, in the course of November and December, the
revolution spread to the entire army and peasants, this being
expressed first of all in the deposition of the old leading
bodies (army committees, gubernia peasant committees, the Central Executive Committee of the All-Russia Soviet of
Peasants’ Deputies, etc.)—which expressed the superseded, compromising phase of the revolution, its bourgeois,
and not proletarian, phase, and which were therefore inevitably
bound to disappear under the pressure of the deeper and broader
masses of the people—and in the election of new leading
bodies in their place.

10.	This mighty movement of the exploited people for the
reconstruction of the leading bodies of their organisations has
not ended even now, in the middle of December 1917, and the
Railwaymen’s Congress, which is still in session, represents one of its stages.

11.	Consequently, the grouping of the class forces in
Russia in the course of their class struggle is in fact
assuming, in November and December 1917, a form differing in
principle from the one that the party lists of candidates for
the Constituent Assembly compiled in the middle of October 1917
could have reflected.

12.	Recent events in the Ukraine (partly also in Finland
and Byelorussia, as well as in the Caucasus) point similarly to
a regrouping of class forces which is taking place in the
process of the struggle between the bourgeois nationalism of the
Ukrainian Bada, the Finnish Diet, etc., on the one hand, and
Soviet power, the proletarian-peasant revolution in each of
these national republics, on the other.

13.	Lastly, the civil war which was started by the
Cadet-Kaledin counter-revolutionary revolt against the Soviet
authorities, against the workers’ and peasants’ government, has finally brought the class struggle to a head and
has destroyed every chance of setting in a formally democratic
way the very acute problems with which history has confronted
the peoples of Russia, and in the first place her working class
and peasants.

14.	Only the complete victory of the workers and peasants
over the bourgeois and landowner revolt (as expressed in the
Cadet-Kaledin movement), only the ruthless military suppression
of this revolt of the slave-owners can really safeguard the
proletarian-peasant revolution. The course of events and the
development of the class struggle in the revolution have
resulted in the slogan "All Power to the Constituent
Assembly!"—which disregards the gains of the workers’ and peasants’ revolution, which disregards Soviet power,
which disregards the decisions of the Second All-Russia Congress
of Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, of the
Second All-Russia Congress of Peasants’ Deputies, etc.— becoming in fact the slogan of the Cadets and
the Kaledinites and of their helpers. The entire people are now
fully aware that the Constituent Assembly, if it parted ways
with Soviet power, would inevitably be doomed to political
extinction.

15.	One of the particularly acute problems of national
life is the problem of peace. A really revolutionary struggle
for peace began in Russia only after the victory of the October
25 Revolution, and the first fruits of this victory were the
publication of the secret treaties, the conclusion of an
armistice, and the beginning of open negotiations for a general
peace without annexations and indemnities.

Only now are the broad sections of the people actually receiving
a chance fully and openly to observe the policy of revolutionary
struggle for peace and to study its results.

At the time of the elections to the Constituent Assembly the
mass of the people had no such chance.

It is clear that the discrepancy between the composition of the
elected Constituent Assembly and the actual will of the people
on the question of terminating the war is inevitable from this
point of view too.

16.	The result of all the above-mentioned circumstances
taken together is that the Constituent Assembly, summoned on the
basis of the election lists of the parties existing prior to the
proletarian-peasant revolution under the rule of the bourgeoisie, must inevitably clash with the will and interests
of the working and exploited classes which on October 25 began
the socialist revolution against the bourgeoisie. Naturally, the
interests of this revolution stand higher than the formal rights
of the Constituent Assembly, even if those formal rights were
not undermined by the absence in the law on the Constituent
Assembly of a provision recognising the right of the people to
recall their deputies and hold new elections at any moment.

17.	Every direct or indirect attempt to consider the
question of the Constituent Assembly from a formal, legal point
of view, within the framework of ordinary bourgeois democracy
and disregarding the class struggle and civil war, would be a
betrayal of the proletariat’s cause, and the adoption of
the bourgeois standpoint. The revolutionary Social-Democrats are
duty bound to warn all and sundry against this error, into which
a few Bolshevik leaders, who have been unable to appreciate the
significance of the October uprising and the tasks of the
dictatorship of the proletariat, have strayed.

18.	The only chance of securing a painless solution to the
crisis which has arisen owing to the divergence between the
elections to the Constituent Assembly, on the one hand, and the
will of the people and the interests of the working and
exploited classes, on the other, is for the people to exercise
as broadly and as rapidly as possible the right to elect the
members of the Constituent Assembly anew, and for the
Constituent Assembly to accept the law of the Central Executive
Committee on these new elections, to proclaim that it unreservedly recognises Soviet power, the Soviet revolution, and
its policy on the questions of peace, the land and workers’
control, and to resolutely join the camp of the enemies of the
Cadet-Kaledin counter-revolution.

19.	Unless these conditions are fulfilled, the crisis in
connection with the Constituent Assembly can be settled only in
a revolutionary way, by Soviet power adopting the most energetic, speedy, firm and determined revolutionary measures
against the Cadet-Kaledin counter-revolution, no matter behind
what slogans and institutions (even participation in the
Constituent Assembly) this counter-revolution may hide. Any
attempt to tie the hands of Soviet power in this struggle would
be tantamount to aiding counterrevolution.