The question of the Constituent Assembly and its dispersal by the Bolsheviks—this is the very crux of Kautsky's entire pamphlet. He returns to this question constantly. The whole work of the intellectual leader of the Second International is filled with allusions to how the Bolsheviks "destroyed democracy" (see the quotation from Kautsky cited above). This question is indeed interesting and important, because the relation between bourgeois and proletarian democracy presented itself before the revolution here in practical terms. Let us see, then, how our "Marxist theoretician" approaches this question.

He cites the "Theses on the Constituent Assembly," which were written by me and published in *Pravda* on December 26, 1917.[14] One might expect no better proof of a serious approach to the matter on Kautsky's part, armed with documents. But look at how Kautsky cites them. He does not say that there were 19 theses; he does not say that they posed the question both of the relation of the ordinary bourgeois republic with a Constituent Assembly to the republic of Soviets, and of the history of the divergence in our revolution between the Constituent Assembly and the dictatorship of the proletariat. Kautsky passes over all this and simply informs the reader that "two of them are especially important" (from these theses): one—that the Socialist Revolutionaries split after the elections to the Constituent Assembly but before its convocation (Kautsky is silent on the fact that this is the fifth thesis), another—that the Soviet republic generally represents a higher form of democracy than the Constituent Assembly (Kautsky is silent on the fact that this is the third thesis).

And so, only from this third thesis does Kautsky cite in full a portion of it, namely, the following proposition:

"The Soviet Republic is not only a form of a higher type of democratic institutions (in comparison with the ordinary, bourgeois republic with a Constituent Assembly as its crown), but also the only form capable of ensuring the most painless[15] transition to socialism" (Kautsky omits the word "ordinary" and the introductory words of the thesis: "for the transition from the bourgeois order to the socialist order, for the dictatorship of the proletariat").

Having cited these words, Kautsky exclaims with magnificent irony:

"It is only regrettable that this conclusion was reached only after it turned out they were in the minority in the Constituent Assembly. Before that, no one demanded it more vehemently than Lenin."

This is stated literally on page 31 of Kautsky's book!

But this is a gem! Only a sycophant of the bourgeoisie could represent the matter so mendaciously that the reader would gain the impression that all the Bolsheviks' talk about a higher type of state is an invention that appeared after the Bolsheviks found themselves in the minority in the Constituent Assembly!! Only a scoundrel sold out to the bourgeoisie, or—which is precisely the same thing—one who has placed his trust in P. Axelrod and conceals the names of his informants, could utter such vile lies.

For it is known to all that on the very first day of my arrival in Russia, April 4, 1917, I publicly read out theses in which I declared the superiority of a state of the Commune type over the bourgeois parliamentary republic. I made this declaration repeatedly thereafter in print—for example, in the pamphlet on political parties, which was translated into English and appeared in America in January 1918 in the New York newspaper *Evening Post*{120}. Moreover, the conference of the Bolshevik Party at the end of April 1917 adopted a resolution stating that a workers' and peasants' republic stands higher than a bourgeois parliamentary republic, that our party would not be satisfied with the latter, that the party program should be changed accordingly{121}.

How is one to characterize Kautsky's action after this, when he assures German readers that I vehemently demanded the convocation of the Constituent Assembly and only after the Bolsheviks found themselves in the minority in it began to "belittle" the honor and dignity of the Constituent Assembly? How can such action be excused?[16] By the fact that Kautsky was unaware of the facts? But then why did he undertake to write about them? Or why not declare honestly that I, Kautsky, am writing on the basis of information from the Mensheviks Stein and P. Axelrod and Company? Kautsky wishes to cloak his role as the servant of Mensheviks angered by their defeat with pretensions to objectivity.

However, this is only the appetizer. The main course is yet to come.

Let us suppose that Kautsky was unwilling or unable (??) to obtain from his informants a translation of the Bolshevik resolutions and declarations on the question of whether they are satisfied with a bourgeois parliamentary democratic republic. Let us even suppose this, although it is incredible. But after all, my theses of December 26, 1917, are mentioned directly by Kautsky on page 30 of his book.

Does Kautsky know these theses in full, or does he know from them only what the Steins, Axelrods, and Company translated for him? Kautsky cites the third thesis on the fundamental question of whether the Bolsheviks were aware before the elections to the Constituent Assembly and told the people that the Soviet republic stood higher than the bourgeois republic. But Kautsky passes over the second thesis in silence.

And the second thesis states:

"In putting forward the demand for the convocation of the Constituent Assembly, revolutionary social democracy from the very beginning of the 1917 revolution repeatedly emphasized that the Soviet republic is a higher form of democracy than the ordinary, bourgeois republic with the Constituent Assembly" (emphasis mine).

In order to represent the Bolsheviks as unprincipled people, as "revolutionary opportunists" (this expression, I do not recall in what connection, Kautsky uses somewhere in his book), Mr. Kautsky concealed from German readers that in the theses there is a direct reference to "repeated" declarations!

Such are the petty, miserable, and contemptible methods with which Mr. Kautsky operates. In this way he has evaded the theoretical question.

Is it true or not that the bourgeois-democratic parliamentary republic stands lower than a republic of the Commune type or of the Soviet type? This is the crux, and Kautsky has sidestepped it. Everything that Marx gave in his analysis of the Paris Commune, Kautsky has "forgotten." He has also "forgotten" Engels's letter to Bebel of March 28, 1875, in which the same thought of Marx is expressed with particular clarity and instructiveness: "The Commune was no longer a state in the proper sense of the word"{122}.

Here you have the most outstanding theoretician of the Second International, who in a special pamphlet on the "Dictatorship of the Proletariat," specifically reasoning about Russia, where the question of a form of state higher than the democratic-bourgeois republic has been raised directly and repeatedly, remains silent on this question. How does this differ in practice from going over to the side of the bourgeoisie?

(Let us note in parentheses that here too Kautsky trails behind the Russian Mensheviks. They have plenty of people who know "all the quotations" from Marx and Engels, but not a single Menshevik from April 1917 to October 1917 and from October 1917 to October 1918 ever attempted to analyze the question of a state of the Commune type. Plekhanov too sidestepped this question. It was apparently necessary to keep silent.)

It goes without saying that to discuss with people who call themselves socialists and Marxists but in practice go over to the bourgeoisie on the main question—the question of a state of the Commune type—would be casting pearls before swine. It will be sufficient to publish in the appendix to this pamphlet my theses on the Constituent Assembly in full. From them the reader will see that the question was posed on December 26, 1917, theoretically, historically, and in practical-political terms.

If Kautsky, as a theoretician, has completely renounced Marxism, then he could at least, as a historian, have examined the question of the struggle of the Soviets against the Constituent Assembly. We know from many of Kautsky's works that he was able to be a Marxist historian, that such works of his will remain a firm heritage of the proletariat, despite his later renegacy. But on this question Kautsky, even as a historian, turns away from the truth, ignores well-known facts, acts as a sycophant. He wishes to represent the Bolsheviks as unprincipled, and he recounts how the Bolsheviks tried to mitigate the conflict with the Constituent Assembly before dispersing it. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this; we have nothing to repudiate; I publish the theses in full, and in them it is stated as clearly as day: you wavering petty-bourgeois gentlemen, ensconced in the Constituent Assembly, either reconcile yourselves with the dictatorship of the proletariat, or we shall defeat you "by revolutionary means" (theses 18 and 19).

This is how the truly revolutionary proletariat always has acted and always will act in relation to the wavering petty bourgeoisie.

Kautsky stands on the question of the Constituent Assembly from a formal point of view. In my theses it is stated clearly and repeatedly that the interests of the revolution stand above the formal rights of the Constituent Assembly (see theses 16 and 17). The formal-democratic point of view is precisely the point of view of the bourgeois democrat, who does not recognize that the interest of the proletariat and of proletarian class struggle stands above all else. Kautsky, as a historian, could not but recognize that bourgeois parliaments are organs of one class or another. But now Kautsky had need (for the dirty business of renouncing the revolution) to forget Marxism, and Kautsky does not pose the question of what class organ the Constituent Assembly was in Russia. Kautsky does not analyze the concrete situation; he does not wish to look at the facts; he says not a word to German readers about the fact that in the theses there is given not only a theoretical elucidation of the question of the limitedness of bourgeois democracy (theses nos. 1–3), not only the concrete conditions that determined the discrepancy between the party lists of the middle of October 1917 and reality in December 1917 (theses nos. 4–6), but also the history of class struggle and civil war in October–December 1917 (theses nos. 7–15). From this concrete history we drew the conclusion (thesis no. 14) that the slogan "all power to the Constituent Assembly" became in fact the slogan of the Cadets and Kaledin's followers and their accomplices.

Historian Kautsky does not notice this. Historian Kautsky has never heard that universal suffrage sometimes produces petty-bourgeois, sometimes reactionary and counter-revolutionary parliaments. Historian-Marxist Kautsky has never heard that one thing is the form of elections, the form of democracy, and another is the class content of a given institution. This very question of the class content of the Constituent Assembly is directly posed and resolved in my theses. It is possible that my resolution of it is incorrect. Nothing would be more desirable for us than Marxist criticism of our analysis. Instead of writing completely stupid phrases (and there are many of them in Kautsky), to the effect that someone is preventing criticism of Bolshevism, Kautsky should have undertaken such criticism. But the point is that he has no criticism. He does not even pose the question of class analysis of the Soviets on the one hand and the Constituent Assembly on the other. And therefore it is impossible to argue or debate with Kautsky; it remains only to show the reader why Kautsky cannot be called anything other than a renegade.

The divergence of the Soviets from the Constituent Assembly has its history, which even a historian not standing on the point of view of class struggle could not overlook. Kautsky refused to touch on even this factual history. Kautsky concealed from German readers the well-known fact (now concealed only by malicious Mensheviks) that the Soviets, even under the domination of the Mensheviks—that is, from the end of February to October 1917—diverged from the "all-state" (that is, bourgeois) institutions. Kautsky essentially stands on the point of view of reconciliation, agreement, cooperation between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie; no matter how much Kautsky denies this, such is his point of view, a fact confirmed by the entire Kautsky pamphlet. That the Constituent Assembly should not have been dispersed means: the struggle against the bourgeoisie should not have been carried to the end, it should not have been overthrown, the proletariat should have reconciled itself with the bourgeoisie.

Why then did Kautsky remain silent on the fact that the Mensheviks were engaged in this disreputable business from February to October 1917 and achieved nothing? If it was possible to reconcile the bourgeoisie with the proletariat, why did reconciliation fail under the Mensheviks, why did the bourgeoisie hold aloof from the Soviets, why did the Soviets come to be called (by the Mensheviks) "revolutionary democracy" and the bourgeoisie—"property-qualified elements"?

Kautsky concealed from German readers the fact that it was precisely the Mensheviks, in the "epoch" (February–October 1917) of their domination, who called the Soviets revolutionary democracy, thereby acknowledging their superiority over all other institutions. Only by concealing this fact was historian Kautsky able to make it appear that the divergence of the Soviets from the bourgeoisie has no history, that it arose suddenly, spontaneously, without cause, as a result of the bad conduct of the Bolsheviks. In reality, it was precisely the experience of more than half a year (for a revolution this is an enormous period) of Menshevik compromising, of attempts to reconcile the proletariat with the bourgeoisie, that convinced the people of the fruitlessness of these attempts and drove the proletariat away from the Mensheviks.

The Soviets—a splendid, having a great future, combat organization of the proletariat—this Kautsky recognizes. Once this is so, Kautsky's entire position collapses like a house of cards or like a petty bourgeois's dream of getting by without sharp struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. For the whole revolution is nothing but continuous and moreover desperate struggle, and the proletariat is the vanguard class of all the oppressed, the focus and center of all the aspirations of all and every oppressed toward their liberation. The Soviets—an organ of struggle of the oppressed masses—naturally reflected and expressed the moods and the change of views of these masses incomparably more rapidly, more fully, more accurately than any other institutions whatever (in this, by the way, lies one of the sources of why Soviet democracy is the highest type of democracy).

The Soviets managed from February 28 (old style) to October 25, 1917, to convene two all-Russian congresses representing the gigantic majority of Russia's population, all workers and soldiers, seven or eight-tenths of the peasantry, not counting the mass of local, district, city, provincial, and regional congresses. In that time the bourgeoisie did not manage to convene a single institution representing the majority (except the obviously fake, jeering, proletariat-enraging "Democratic Conference"{124}). The Constituent Assembly reflected the same mood of the masses, the same political grouping, as the first (June) All-Russian Congress of Soviets{125}. By the time of the convocation of the Constituent Assembly (January 1918), the second congress of Soviets had taken place (October 1917){126} and the third (January 1918){127}, and both showed as clearly as day that the masses had shifted to the left, had become revolutionized, had turned away from the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries, had gone over to the side of the Bolsheviks—that is, had turned away from petty-bourgeois leadership, from illusions of compromise with the bourgeoisie, and had gone over to the side of proletarian revolutionary struggle for the overthrow of the bourgeoisie.

Consequently, even the external history alone of the Soviets shows the inevitability of the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly and its reactionary character. But Kautsky firmly adheres to his "slogan": let the revolution perish, let the bourgeoisie triumph over the proletariat, so long as "pure democracy" flourishes! *Fiat justitia, pereat mundus!*[17]

Here are the brief summaries of the All-Russian Congresses of Soviets in the history of the Russian revolution:

128 The IV Extraordinary All-Russian Congress of Soviets, convened to decide the question of ratification of the Brest Peace Treaty, was held in Moscow on March 14–16, 1918. At the congress, according to the stenographic record, 1232 delegates with voting rights were present, of which 795 were Bolsheviks, 283 Left Socialist Revolutionaries, 29 center Socialist Revolutionaries, 21 Mensheviks, 11 Internationalist Mensheviks, and others. After information by G. V. Chicherin, the Deputy People's Commissar of Foreign Affairs, on the peace treaty, with a report on this question on behalf of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, Lenin spoke; with a counter-report from the Left Socialist Revolutionary faction against ratification of the peace treaty—B. D. Kamkov. The Mensheviks, right and left Socialist Revolutionaries, Maximalists, anarchists, and others spoke against ratification of the Brest Treaty. After sharp debate, the congress voted by name and by an overwhelming majority of votes adopted the resolution proposed by Lenin on ratification of the peace treaty; 784 votes were cast in favor, 261 against, 115 delegates abstained.

The congress adopted a resolution on the transfer of the capital of the Soviet state to Moscow and elected the All-Russian Central Executive Committee consisting of 200 persons.

129 The V All-Russian Congress of Soviets opened on July 4, 1918, in Moscow in the Grand Theater. At the congress, 1164 delegates with voting rights were present, of which Bolsheviks numbered 773, Left Socialist Revolutionaries—353, Maximalists—17, Anarchists—4, Internationalist Mensheviks—4, members of other parties—3, non-party—10.

With a report on the activities of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, Ya. M. Sverdlov spoke; with a report on the activities of the Council of People's Commissars—V. I. Lenin. After heated debate on the reports of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars, the congress by a majority of votes adopted the resolution proposed by the Communist fraction, in which it expressed "complete approval of the foreign and domestic policy of the Soviet government." The resolution of the Left Socialist Revolutionaries, which proposed expressing lack of confidence in the Soviet government, annulling the Brest Peace Treaty, and changing the foreign and domestic policy of the Soviet power, was rejected.

Having suffered defeat at the congress, the Left Socialist Revolutionaries proceeded to open armed action, launching on July 6 a counter-revolutionary mutiny in Moscow. In connection with this, the congress interrupted its work and resumed it only on July 9. Having heard the government's report on the events of July 6–7, the congress fully approved the decisive actions of the government in liquidating the criminal adventure of the Left Socialist Revolutionaries and indicated that those Left Socialist Revolutionaries who share the views of their leading circles "cannot have a place in the Soviets of Workers' and Peasants' Deputies."

In the resolution on the report of A. D. Tsyurupa, the People's Commissar of Food, the congress confirmed the inviolability of the grain monopoly, pointed to the necessity of decisive suppression of the resistance of the kulaks, and approved the organization of committees of the poor.

At the closing session, on July 10, the congress heard a report on the organization of the Red Army and unanimously adopted the resolution proposed by the Communist fraction, in which measures were outlined for the organization and strengthening of the Red Army on the basis of mandatory military service of working people.

The congress adopted the first Constitution of the RSFSR, which legislatively consolidated the achievements of the working people of the Soviet country.

One need only glance at these figures to understand why the defense of the Constituent Assembly, or speeches (such as Kautsky's speeches) to the effect that the Bolsheviks do not have the majority of the population behind them, are met in our country only with laughter.