For almost a hundred years the finest Russians have lived by the idea of a Constituent Assembly … Rivers of blood have been spilled on the sacrificial altar of this idea, and now the ‘People’s Commissars’ have given the orders to shoot the democracy which demonstrated in honour of this idea …
Thus, on 5 January, the Petrograd workers were mowed down, unarmed … They were mowed down from ambush, through cracks in fences, in a cowardly fashion, as if by real murderers.
And just as on 9 January 1905, people who had not lost their conscience and reason asked those who were shooting: ‘What are you doing, idiots? Aren’t they your own people marching? You can see there are red banners everywhere …’
And — like the tsarist soldiers — these murderers under orders answered: ‘We’ve got our orders! We’ve got our orders to shoot.’
I ask the ‘People’s’ Commissars, among whom there must be decent and sensible people: Do they understand that … they will inevitably end up by strangling the entire Russian democracy and ruining all the conquests of the revolution?
Do they understand this? Or do they think, on the contrary, that ‘either we have power or everyone and everything will perish’?55
By 4 p.m., when the opening session of the Assembly commenced, the atmosphere in the Tauride Palace was extremely tense. Many of the SR deputies had taken part in the morning’s demonstration and were angered by the shootings. To add insult to injury, each of them had been bodily searched by the Bolshevik guards as they entered the palace. Contrary to the claims of the Bolshevik press, not all the arrested deputies had been released for the opening session: Argunov, Avksentiev and Sorokin were even reported as having made speeches in the Tauride Palace, when in fact they were still in the Peter and Paul Fortress. In the Catherine Hall, where the assembly was held, there were almost as many troops as there were delegates. They stood at the back of the hall and sat up in the galleries, drinking vodka and shouting abuse at the SR deputies. Lenin surveyed the scene from the old government loge, where the tsarist ministers had sat during the sessions of the Duma. He gave the impression of a general at the moment before the start of a decisive battle — and that indeed is what it was.
The SRs tried to take the initiative by opening the session with a debate of their own, but the Bolsheviks created such a din that their first speaker, Mikhailov, the oldest member of the Assembly, was unable to make himself heard. Chernov, elected Chairman of the Assembly, made a long and ineffectual speech, as was his usual custom; it did nothing for the reputation of the then only genuinely democratic national parliament in Russia’s history as it awaited its execution. Tsereteli then appeared, despite the Bolshevik order for his arrest, and did rather better, denouncing the regime with such a passion that even the hecklers on the Left were forced to shut up and listen. But the Bolsheviks soon after brought the conflict to a head. Raskolnikov, the leader of the Kronstadt sailors, introduced their Declaration of the Rights of the Working People. When this was rejected, by 237 votes against 146, the Bolsheviks declared the Assembly to be in the hands of the ‘counter-revolutionaries’ and walked out of the hall. A recess was called, while the Bolsheviks and Left SRs discussed what to do. The latter, wavering as usual, wanted to delay the dissolution, but Lenin was adamant: ‘the situation is now clear and we can get rid of them’. It was resolved to dissolve the Assembly, although out of deference to the Left SRs, who briefly returned to the session, Lenin instructed the Red Guards not to use violence: when the deputies left, the palace was to be locked up and no one allowed to convene there on the following day. At 2 a.m., having satisfied himself that everything was under control, Lenin returned to the Smolny, and went to bed.56
