On January 5 (18), 1918, at 4 p.m., the first and only meeting of the Russian Constituent Assembly opened in Petrograd; it was attended by 410 of the 715 deputies who had been elected. At the very beginning of the meeting, the Bolshevik representative Yakov Sverdlov unceremoniously interrupted the speech of Semën Shvetsov, the oldest deputy of the convention, and proposed himself as chairman of the meeting of the Constituent Assembly. In the voting, Viktor Chernov (1872–1952), one of the leaders of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, was elected as chairman by a majority of votes, while Socialist-Revolutionary Party member Mikhail Vishnyak was elected secretary of the meeting. Fierce debates erupted concerning acceptance of the agenda, on which the Bolsheviks were trying to place items that were most acceptable to them.
In his speech, the well-known political and public figure Irakly Tsereteli (1881–1959) made the following declaration: “The Social Democratic bloc calls on the entire working class of Russia to reject the unrealizable and disastrous attempts to thrust the dictatorship of a minority on the entire revolutionary democracy, to stand up in defense of the sovereignty of the Russian Constituent Assembly, and to demand that all agencies of power that arose because of the Civil War recognize the supreme power of the Constituent Assembly.” In voting, this proposal of the Socialist Revolutionaries received a majority of 237 votes.
After a short break in the meeting, it was decided, on the basis of an extraordinary petition of the Social Democrat Matvey Skobelev (1885— 1938), to elect a nonpartisan committee to investigate the circumstances of the shooting that occurred during the worker demonstrations on the opening day of the Constituent Assembly and to establish who was responsible for these shootings. After this, the Bolshevik Fëdor Raskolnikov (Ilin) (1892–1939) read a statement from his faction: “A large majority of Russia’s workers demanded that the Constituent Assembly recognize the achievements of the great revolution: the Soviet decrees on land, peace, workers’ control, and above all to recognize the power of the Soviets of workers’, soldiers’, and peasants’ deputies. The All-Russian Central Executive Committee proposed to the Constituent Assembly that it recognize this will as binding on it. A majority of the Constituent Assembly rejected this proposal... we declare that we are leaving this Constituent Assembly to allow Soviet power to make the final decision about its position vis-à-vis the counterrevolutionary part of the Constituent Assembly.” After finishing his statement, the Bolshevik functionary, along with the members of his faction, left the hall of the Tauride Palace. The discussion continued, but around 3 a.m. on January 6 (19), the Left Socialist-Revolutionary bloc also decided to leave the meeting. Their leader Vladimir Karelin (1891–1938) announced: “The Constituent Assembly has entered on the path of struggle with Soviet power to turn everything to the advantage of the class of exploiters while the two camps struggle. We are leaving this assembly.”
Toward 4 a.m. on January 6 (19), 1918, with 215 deputies remaining in the hall, the anarchist sailor Anatoly Zheleznyakov (1895–1919) made his infamous appeal to Viktor Chernov, chairman of the Constituent Assembly: “I have been instructed to let you know that everyone present should leave the meeting hall, because the guard is tired.” After this ultimatum, the Constituent Assembly quickly accepted the part of the law on land that was read, as well as a peace resolution, an appeal to allies, and a resolution proclaiming the creation of the Russian Democratic Federal Republic. A recess was announced, and the meeting was adjourned at 4:40 a.m. on January 6 (19). The members of the Constituent Assembly who gathered at 5 p.m. later that same day found all doors of the Tauride Palace tightly locked. That night, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, which was under the control of the Bolsheviks, adopted a decree dissolving the Constituent Assembly.
Subsequently, CPC Chairman Vladimir Lenin, in a discussion with his closest comrade-in-arms, Leon Trotsky (1879–1940), characterized the position of the Bolshevik leadership rather precisely: “The dissolution of the Constituent Assembly by Soviet power is a complete and open liquidation of formal democracy in the name of the revolutionary dictatorship.”
On January 18 (31), 1918, the Third All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’, and Peasants’ Deputies in Petrograd adopted a resolution, “On the Federal Institutions of the Russian Republic,” giving the country a new state name: the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic. The resolution said that the state was “founded on the basis of a voluntary union of the peoples of Russia, as a Federation of the Soviet Republics of these peoples.” Moreover, the congress approved the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly and adopted a resolution updating the language of all Soviet laws by removing references to their nature as provisional, “pending the convening of a Constituent Assembly.”
Nevertheless, according to the logic of the political struggle, the flag of the democratic national Constituent Assembly was convenient to use against Soviet power, and this was in fact done at the very first opportunity. A catalyst for the explosion of “democratic counterrevolution” of 1918 and the beginning of the Russian Civil War that lasted many years was provided by the mutiny of the Czechoslovak Volunteer Corps on May 26, 1918.
Having taken power into their own hands, the Bolsheviks began, from the very start, to place economic policy under state control. As early as April 1917, Lenin had delineated the party’s position in relation to highly developed industries: “... our proposal must be immediately practicaclass="underline" these mature syndicates must be made the property of the state. If the Soviets want to take power, then it is only for such purposes. There is no reason for them to take anything more.”2
Lenin reaffirmed this platform position on the eve of the October Revolution of 1917. In his pamphlet, The Impending Catastrophe and How to Combat It [Grozyashchaya katastrofa i kak s ney borotsya], which was published in September 1917, he wrote: “Nationalization of the oil industry is possible immediately, and is obligatory for the revolutionary democratic state, especially when it is suffering a great crisis, when it is necessary at all costs to spare the people’s labor and increase the production of fuel.”3
The Bolsheviks considered the establishment of workers’ control at enterprises to be an important step along the path of “socialization” of Russia’s industry, and the law on workers’ control was adopted on November 14, 1917. Lev Kritsman, a well-known party activist of those years, wrote: “The idea of workers’ control is first to learn from your class enemy how to run all parts of the enterprise, the technical, administrative, and commercial, to check all his actions and, consequently, to observe all his habits.”
The idea of creating “peoples’ oil fields” soon followed and was discussed at the CPC meeting of January 27, 1918. It was during that same meeting of the Soviet government that the question of nationalizing the Russian oil industry was first considered. The CPC decision instructed the VSNKh to develop, without delay, a plan for nationalizing the industry. The VSNKh responded by creating a special committee on the nationalization of the Russian oil industry, which immediately began working on ideas.
On February 15, 1918, the CPC considered a draft decree on nationalization, which was accepted as a basis, and a committee was created to definitively resolve this issue. On February 21, the draft was sent to the People’s Commissariat for Finance for an opinion, and on March 1, the CPC created a new committee, made up of representatives of the VSNKh and of the people’s commissariats of labor and finance, to complete a draft on methods of carrying out the nationalization of the oil industry.