Tower of Bebel
21st April 2007, 10:26
Hi, I'm studying history and now I'm reading about the Russian Revolution of 1917. Suddenly I read this:
Thus was accomplished the Bolshevik or November Revolution, But the long awaited Constituent Assembly remained to be dealt with, It met in January 1918. Thirty six million persons had voted for it, Of these, 9 million had voted for the Bolshevik deputies, showing that the Bolshevik program, launched less than a year before by a small band of émigrés, had a widespread mass appeal. But almost 21 million had voted for Kerensky's party, the agrarian, populist, peasant-oriented Social-Revolutionaries. However, said Lenin, "to hand over power to the Constituent Assembly would again be compromising with the malignant bourgeoisie." The Assembly was broken up on the second day of its sessions; armed sailors dispatched by the people's commissars simply surrounded it. The dissolution of the Constituent Assembly was a frank repudiation of majority rule in favor of "class rule" - to be exercised for the proletariat by the Bolsheviks. The dictatorship of the proletariat was now established. Two months later, in March 1918, the Bolsheviks renamed themselves the Communist party.
Ok, it was not Kerensky's party anymore as he already had gone to the US, but I do not want to talk about it.
Is it true that the Social-Revolutionaries got the majority of the votes? But why did the majority vote for the Social-Revolutionaries when less than a year before kerensky failed to apease the masses. If it was because of the farmers who were the majority, then why vote for the SR when the Boslheviks were the first ones that promised to devide the lands without exception and without compensation for the landlords?
Thus was accomplished the Bolshevik or November Revolution, But the long awaited Constituent Assembly remained to be dealt with, It met in January 1918. Thirty six million persons had voted for it, Of these, 9 million had voted for the Bolshevik deputies, showing that the Bolshevik program, launched less than a year before by a small band of émigrés, had a widespread mass appeal. But almost 21 million had voted for Kerensky's party, the agrarian, populist, peasant-oriented Social-Revolutionaries. However, said Lenin, "to hand over power to the Constituent Assembly would again be compromising with the malignant bourgeoisie." The Assembly was broken up on the second day of its sessions; armed sailors dispatched by the people's commissars simply surrounded it. The dissolution of the Constituent Assembly was a frank repudiation of majority rule in favor of "class rule" - to be exercised for the proletariat by the Bolsheviks. The dictatorship of the proletariat was now established. Two months later, in March 1918, the Bolsheviks renamed themselves the Communist party.
Ok, it was not Kerensky's party anymore as he already had gone to the US, but I do not want to talk about it.
Is it true that the Social-Revolutionaries got the majority of the votes? But why did the majority vote for the Social-Revolutionaries when less than a year before kerensky failed to apease the masses. If it was because of the farmers who were the majority, then why vote for the SR when the Boslheviks were the first ones that promised to devide the lands without exception and without compensation for the landlords?