By what forces have the Bolsheviki thus killed our country? Twelve days before the organization of the autonomous administration was achieved and the elections to the Constituent Assembly begun, at the time when there had been organized all the autonomous administrations of volosts, districts, governments, and cities, chosen by equal, direct, and secret universal suffrage, thus assuring the realization of the will of the people and justifying the confidence of the population—even then they seized the power and established a régime which subjects all the institutions of the country to the unlicensed power of the Commissaries of the People. And these Commissaries rely upon the Soviets, which were chosen at elections that were carried out according to rank, with open balloting and inequality of vote, for therein the peasants count only as many representatives as the workmen of the cities, although in Russia their number is sixty times greater.
Absence of control permits every abuse of power; absence of secret voting permits that into these Soviets at these suspicious elections some enter who are attracted by the political rôle of these institutions; the defeat of inequality in the suffrage restrains the expression of the will of the peasants, and, accordingly, these cannot have confidence in this system of government. The tyranny that presided at these elections was such that the Bolsheviki themselves pay no attention to the results, and declare that the Soviets that are opposed to themselves are bourgeoisie and capitalists. We, representing the peasant workers, must declare in the name of our constituents: if anything can save Russia, it can only be the re-establishment of the organs of local autonomous administration, chosen by equal, direct, and secret universal suffrage and the resumption, without delay, of the work of the Constituent Assembly.
The Constituent Assembly alone can express the exact will of the working-people, for the system of election which governs it includes every measure of precaution against violence, corruption, and other abuses, and assures the election of deputies chosen by the majority; now, in the country, the majority is composed of the working class.
Millions of peasants delegated us to defend the Constituante, but this was dissolved as soon as it began to work for the good of the people. The work of the Constituante was interrupted at the time that it was discussing the law concerning land, when a new agricultural régime was being elaborated for the country. For this reason, and for this alone, the Constituante adopted only the first articles of this law, articles which established the definite transfer of all the land to the hands of the workers, without any ransom. The other articles of this law, which concerned the order of the apportionment of lots, its forms, its methods of possession, etc., could not be adopted, although they were completely elaborated in the commission and nothing remained but to sanction them.
We, peasants assembled in Congress, we, too, have been the object of violence and outrages, unheard of even under the Czarist régime. Red Guards and sailors, armed, invaded our premises. We were searched in the rudest manner. Our goods and the provisions which we had brought from home were stolen. Several of our comrade-delegates and all the members of the Committee were arrested and taken to Peter and Paul Fortress. We ourselves were, late at night, put out of doors in a city which we did not know, deprived of shelter under which to sleep. All that, to oblige us either to go to Smolny, where the Bolshevist government called another Congress, or to return to our homes without having attained any result. But violence could not stop us; secretly, as in the time of Czarist autocracy, we found a place to assemble and to continue our work.
In making known these facts to the country and the numerous millions of the peasant population, we call upon them to stigmatize the revolting policy practised by the Bolshevik government with regard to all those who are not in accord with it. Returned to our villages, dispersed in every corner of immense Russia, we shall use all our powers to make known to the mass of peasants and to the entire country the truth concerning this government of violence; to make known in every corner of the fatherland that the actual government, which has the hardihood to call itself "Government of the Workmen and Peasants," in reality shoots down workmen and peasants and shamelessly scoffs at the country. We shall use all our strength to induce the population of peasant workers to demand an account from this government of violence, as well as from their prodigal children, their sons and brothers, who in the army and navy give aid to these autocrats in the commission of violence.
In the name of millions of peasants, by whom we were delegated, we demand that they no longer obstruct the work of the Constituent Assembly. We were not allowed to finish the work for which we had come; at home we shall continue this work. We shall employ all our strength to effect, as soon as possible, the convocation of a new National Congress of Peasants' Delegates united on the principle of the defense of the Constituante, and that in a place where we need not fear a new dissolution. Lately we fought against autocracy and Czarist violence; we shall fight with no less energy against the new autocrats who practise violence, whoever they may be, and whatever may be the shibboleths by which they cover their criminal acts. We shall fight for the Constituent Assembly, because it is in that alone that we see the salvation of our country, that of the Revolution, and that of Land and Liberty.
Charged by our constituents to defend the Constituent Assembly, we cannot participate in a Congress called by those who have dissolved it; who have profaned the idea which to the people is something sacred; who have shot down the defenders of true democracy; who have shed the sacred blood of our Logvinov, member of the Executive Committee of peasant deputies, who on the 5th of January was killed by an explosive bullet during a peaceful manifestation, bearing the flag "Land and Liberty." Comrade-peasants who have come by chance to this Congress declare to these violators that the only Executive Committee that upholds the idea of the defense of the Constituante forms a center around which are grouped all the peasant workers. We call the entire mass of peasants to the work that is common to all—the fight for "Land and Liberty," for the true government of the people. "We all come from the people, children of the same family of workers," and we all have to follow a route that leads to happiness and liberty. Now this road, which leads to "Land and Liberty," goes through the Constituent Assembly alone. The Constituent Assembly was dissolved, but it was chosen by the entire people, and it ought to live.
Long live the Constituent Assembly!
Down with violence and tyranny!
All power to the people, through the agency of the
Constituent Assembly!
[Signed] The Third National Congress of Soviets of Peasant Delegates, United on the Principle of the Defense of the Constituent Assembly.