Lenin then read the Bolshevik resolution:
The Peasants’ Congress, fully supporting the Land decree of November 8th… approves of the Provisional Workers’ and Peasants’ Government of the Russian Republic, established by the second All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies.
The Peasants’ Congress… invites all peasants unanimously to sustain that law, and to apply it immediately themselves; and at the same time invites the peasants to appoint to posts and positions of responsibility only persons who have proved, not by words but by acts, their entire devotion to the interests of the exploited peasant-workers, their desire and their ability to defend these interests against all resistance on the part of the great land-owners, the capitalists, their partisans and accomplices….
The Peasants’ Congress, at the same time, expresses its conviction that the complete realisation of all the measures which make up the Land decree can only be successful through the triumph of the Workers’ Social Revolution, which began November 7th, 1917; for only the Social Revolution can accomplish the definite transfer, without possibility of return, of the land to the peasant-workers, the confiscation of model farms and their surrender to the peasant communes, the confiscation of agricultural machinery belonging to the great land-owners, the safe-guarding of the interests of the agricultural workers by the complete abolition of wage-slavery, the regular and methodical distribution among all regions of Russia of the products of agriculture and industry, and the seizure of the banks (without which the possession of land by the whole people would be impossible, after the abolition of private property), and all sorts of assistance by the State to the workers….
For these reasons the Peasants’ Congress sustains entirely the Revolution of November 7th… as a social revolution, and expresses its unalterable will to put into operation, with whatever modifications are necessary, but without any hesitation, the social transformation of the Russian Republic.
The indispensable conditions of the victory of the Social Revolution, which alone will secure the lasting success and the complete realisation of the Land decree, is the close union of the peasant-workers with the industrial working-class, with the proletariat of all advanced countries. From now on, in the Russian Republic, all the organisation and administration of the State, from top to bottom, must rest on that union. That union, crushing all attempts, direct or indirect, open or dissimulated, to return to the policy of conciliation with the bourgeoisie—conciliation, damned by experience, with the chiefs of bourgeois politics—can alone insure the victory of Socialism throughout the world….
The reactionaries of the Executive Committee no longer dared openly to appear. Tchernov, however, spoke several times, with a modest and winning impartiality. He was invited to sit on the platform…. On the second night of the Congress an anonymous note was handed up to the chairman, requesting that Tchernov be made honorary President. Ustinov read the note aloud, and immediately Zinoviev was on his feet, screaming that this was a trick of the old Executive Committee to capture the convention; in a moment the hall was one bellowing mass of waving arms and angry faces, on both sides…. Nevertheless, Tchernov remained very popular.
In the stormy debates on the Land question and the Lenin resolution, the Bolsheviki were twice on the point of quitting the assembly, both times restrained by their leaders…. It seemed to me as if the Congress were hopelessly deadlocked.
But none of us knew that a series of secret conferences were already going on between the Left Socialist Revolutionaries and the Bolsheviki at Smolny. At first the Left Socialist Revolutionaries had demanded that there be a Government composed of all the Socialist parties in and out of the Soviets, to be responsible to a People’s Council, composed of an equal number of delegates from the Workers’ and Soldiers’ organisation, and that of the Peasants, and completed by representatives of the City Dumas and the Zemstvos; Lenin and Trotzky were to be eliminated, and the Military Revolutionary Committee and other repressive organs dissolved.
Wednesday morning, November 28th, after a terrible all-night struggle, an agreement was reached. The _Tsay-ee-kah,_composed of 108 members, was to be augumented by 108 members elected proportionally from the Peasants’ Congress; by 100 delegates elected directly from the Army and the Fleet; and by 50 representatives of the Trade Unions (35 from the general Unions, 10 Railway Workers, and 5 from the Post and Telegraph Workers). The Dumas and Zemstvos were dropped. Lenin and Trotzky remained in the Government, and the Military Revolutionary Committee continued to function.