Podvoiskii knew the route the procession was to take, since the organizers had widely advertised it, and deployed his men to bar its way. The forward detachment of his troops, with loaded guns and machine guns, deployed on the streets and rooftops at the point where Panteleimon Street run into Liteinyi. As the head of the procession approached this crossing, shouts went up—“Hurrah for the Constituent Assembly!”—whereupon the troops opened fire. Some demonstrators fell, others ran for cover. But they soon re-formed and continued on their way. Because more troops barred access to Kirochnaia Street, the demonstration proceeded along Liteinyi, running into volleys of gunfire as it was about to turn into Shpalernaia. Here it broke up in disorder. Bolshevik soldiers pursued the demonstrators and seized their banners, tearing them to shreds or tossing them on bonfires. A different procession in another part of the city, composed mostly of workers, also met with gunfire. The same fate befell several smaller demonstrations.121
Russian troops had not fired on unarmed demonstrators since the fateful day in February 1917 when they dispersed crowds defying prohibitions against public gatherings: violence then had sparked mutinies and riots that marked the onset of the Revolution. And before that was Bloody Sunday and 1905. Given these experiences, it was not unreasonable for the organizers of the demonstrations to assume that this massacre, too, would ignite nationwide protests. The victims—according to some accounts eight, according to others twenty-one122—received a solemn funeral on January 9, the anniversary of Bloody Sunday, and were buried at the Preobrazhenskii Cemetery, close by the casualties of that time. Worker delegations carried wreaths, one of which was inscribed: “To the victims of the arbitrariness of Smolnyi autocrats.”123 Gorky wrote an angry editorial in which he compared the violence to Bloody Sunday.*
As soon as news reached him that the demonstrators had been dispersed and the streets were under Bolshevik control—this happened around 4 p.m.—Lenin ordered the meeting to begin. On hand were 463 deputies, slightly more than one-half of those elected, among them 259 SRs, 136 Bolsheviks, and 40 Left SRs.† From the opening bell, the Bolshevik deputies and armed guards jeered and booed non-Bolshevik speakers. Many of the armed men who filled the corridors and the balcony did not have to force themselves to behave raucously, for they had helped themselves to the vodka generously dispensed at the buffet. The minutes of the Assembly open with the following scene:
A member of the Constituent Assembly, belonging to the SR faction, exclaims from his seat: “Comrades, it is now 4 p.m., we suggest that the oldest member open the meeting of the Constituent Assembly.” (Loud noise on the left, applause in the center and on the right, whistles on the left.… Inaudible.… Loud noise and whistles continue on the left and applause on the right.) The oldest member of the Constituent Assembly, Mikhailov, ascends [the podium].
Mikhailov rings. (Noise on the left. Voice: “Down with the usurper!” Continuing noise and whistles on the left, applause on the right.)
Mikhailov: “I declare an intermission.”124
The Bolsheviks pursued a simple strategy. They would confront the Assembly with a resolution that would, in effect, delegitimize it: in the almost certain event that it failed, they would walk out, and without formally disbanding it, make further work by the Assembly impossible. Following this plan, F. F. Raskolnikov, the Bolshevik ensign from Kronshtadt, moved a motion. Although called “Declaration of the Rights of the Toiling and Exploited Masses,” unlike its 1789 prototype, it had more to say about duties than rights: it was here that the Bolsheviks introduced the universal labor obligation. Russia was proclaimed a “republic of soviets” and a number of measures which the Bolsheviks had previously passed were reconfirmed, among them the Land Decree, worker control over production, and the nationalization of banks. The critical article asked the Assembly to renounce its authority to legislate—the very authority for the sake of which it had been elected. “The Constituent Assembly concedes,” it read, “that its tasks are confined to working out in general the fundamental bases of reorganizing society on a socialist basis.” The Assembly was to ratify all the decrees previously issued by the Sovnarkom and then adjourn.125
Raskolnikov’s motion lost 237–136: the vote indicates that all the Bolshevik delegates, but only they, voted in favor; the Left SRs apparently abstained. At this point, the Bolshevik delegation declared the Assembly to be controlled by “counterrevolutionaries” and walked out. The Left SRs kept their seats for the time being.
