[Maxim Litvinov]

a), b) and neither c) apply to a provisional government, because it is neither elected, nor if elections take place is she able to be elected, because she is not a party. Hence your statement that it was not democratic is simply mundane, it serves no purpose other than to compare them with the Bolshevics, who were a party.

What a complete nonsense.

[1] A provisional government can be appointed from MPs that have been elected to a forerunning body. It can also be elected outright.
[2] A provisional government can be constituted in such a way that it broadly represents the class, sex and ethnic background of the people on whose behalf it is governing.
[3] A provisional government can make decisions which it sees as being according to the popular will.
[4] A provisional government can make sure elections are held in order for an even more democratic body to emerge.

On these four points, any hypothetical provisional government could be democratic or at least slightly democratic. No comparison to the Bolsheviks is necessary. Instead, the Russian Provisional Government was not constituted as the result of elections, was not representative of the people, did not govern in the people's interests and so delayed and reneged on its promise to hold speedy elections that it never held them at all.


If you want, you can say such a provisional government was the best Russia could have hoped for after centuries of Romanov autocracy. But that's certainly not calling it democratic - no-one could seriously run through its membership, its decisions and its failure to call elections and call it democratic.

[noemon]

What a complete nonsense.

Complete and utter non-sense is your crap:

[1] A provisional government can be appointed from MPs that have been elected to a forerunning body. It can also be elected outright.
[2] A provisional government can be constituted in such a way that it broadly represents the class, sex and ethnic background of the people on whose behalf it is governing.
[3] A provisional government can make decisions which it sees as being according to the popular will.
[4] A provisional government can make sure elections are held in order for an even more democratic body to emerge.

[1]Such a forerunning body did not exist in Russia. Ergo, it does not apply to the case.
[2]If such a forerunning body does not exist, the mechanism that would allow her such representation does not exist.
[3]The same principle as above, popular will is measured in ballots, a mechanism that did not exist.
[4]Indeed, but when you have the Bolshevics decreeing order 1, sustaining chaos, and insurrect against the state, one is able to understand the why's, who later took all these nice democratic measures to a whole new level of Stalinism.

Instead, the Russian Provisional Government was not constituted as the result of elections, was not representative of the people, did not govern in the people's interests and so delayed and reneged on its promise to hold speedy elections that it never held them at all.

As we have seen for the millionth time, these do not apply to the pg, and hence constitute propaganda.

If you want, you can say such a provisional government was the best Russia could have hoped for after centuries of Romanov autocracy. But that's certainly not calling it democratic - no-one could seriously run through its membership, its decisions and its failure to call elections and call it democratic.

Noone is calling it "democratic" this or "democratic" that, except for you, precisely because you fail(willingly) to understand the obvious, and simply keep on trumpeting the clap-trap.

[ingliz]

FallenRaptor:

Election Results, November 12 1917

Socialist Revolutionaries 17,100,000 votes 380 deputies

Bolsheviks 9,800,000 168

Mensheviks 1,360,000 18

Constitutional Democrats 2,000,000 17

Minorities 77

Left Socialist Revolutionaries 39

People's Socialists 4

Total: 41,700,000 votes 703 deputies 60% turnout

However, due to the size of the country, the ongoing World War I and a deteriorating communications system, these results were not fully available at the time. A partial count (54 constituencies out of 79) was published by N. V. Svyatitsky in A Year of the Russian Revolution. 1917-18, Moscow, Zemlya i Volya Publishers, 1918. Svyatitsky's data was generally accepted by all political parties, including the Bolsheviks, and was as follows:

Party Ideology Votes

Russian Socialist Revolutionaries Socialist 16,500,000

Bolsheviks Socialist 9,023,963

Ukrainian, Moslem, and other non-Russian Socialist

Revolutionaries Socialist 4,400,000

Constitutional Democrats Liberal 1,856,639

Mensheviks Socialist 668,064

Moslems Religious 576,000

Jewish Bund Socialist 550,000

Ukrainian socialists Social Democratic 507,000

Popular Socialists Social Democratic 312,000

Other Rightist groups Rightist 292,000

Association of Rural Proprietors and Landowners Rightist 215,000

Bashkirs Ethnic 195,000

Poles Ethnic 155,000

Germans Ethnic 130,000

Ukrainian Social Democrats Social Democratic 95,000

Cossacks Ethnic 79,000

Old Believers Religious 73,000

Letts Ethnic 67,000

Co-operators Social Democratic 51,000

German socialists Social Democratic 44,000

Yedinstvo Social Democratic 25,000

Finnish socialists Social Democratic 14,000

Belarusians Ethnic 12,000

Total: 35,333,666

The Right SR's and their Social Democratic coalition had an overall majority, 62% of votes cast on a 60% turnout. 41 million + voted not 20 million and the Bolsheviks and their Left SR allies were in the minority. Why do you think the Bolsheviks dissolved the assembly after one day.

You can say defencism was a betrayal of socialism and point to all the other 'mistakes' of the SR's. You can speculate that the proletarian revolution would have been lost in the peasant mass if the SR's had formed a government You can call the SR's counterrevolutionaries and the Mensheviks vaccilating. You can argue Lenin acted because he believed the Russian revolution was the beginning of the international revolution. But it is very difficult to argue Lenin was respecting the democratic will of the people.

But I believe Lenin did the right thing. If he had allowed the assembly to continue the revolution would have been lost. The assembly would have attempted to institute a liberal bourgeois democracy based on the German model and would instead have created chaos. Two days after the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly the Bolsheviks created a counter-assembly, the Third Congress of Soviets. They gave themselves and the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries 94% of the seats. The Bolsheviks retained the state apparatus and with it the power of the state.

[tornadouk]

Can I clear a few things up. To begin with the provisional government was not a Tsarist government with out a Tsar. Kerensky who became prime minister in July was a SR!

The Bolsheviks began their coup on 25th October 1917. The coup was largely sucessful except there were a few delays including the seizure of the Winter Palace. The 2nd Soviet Congress then convened that same evening, i.e. the Bolsheviks had siezed power before the congress met. This was Lenin's plan.

According to the Soviet Credentials Committee the Bolsheviks did not have an absolute majority in the congress, however they did so with the support of the left SRs. It should also be noted that the Bolsheviks had managed to gain more than their "fair share" of delegates, i.e. the Soviets containing large amounts of Bolsheviks were overrepresented in the Soviet Congress, and the Bolsheviks seemed to have conjured up a large amount of delegates.

The new Soviet leaders were selected from the delegates, and the Bolsheviks were given a majority in the Soviet Congress Exec. The Mensheviks refused to take the seats on the exec allocated to them. Several Mensheviks and right SRs then made speeches condemning the Bolshevik coup and then walked out. This reduced the anti-Bolshevik factions in the Congress further, and made Martov's attempt to pass a resolution for an all-democratic government even more hopeless. Martov later walked out after being mocked by Trotsky.

[ingliz]

After Nicholas II abdicated on 1st March, 1917, the new Provisional Government announced it would introduce a Constituent Assembly. Elections were due to take place on 17th September but problems caused by the need to prepare electoral lists resulted in them being postponed until November.

A total of 703 candidates were elected to the Constituent Assembly in November, 1917. This included Socialist Revolutionaries (299), Bolsheviks (168}, Mensheviks (18} and Constitutional Democratic Party (17).

The Bolsheviks were bitterly disappointed with the result as they hoped it would legitimize the October Revolution. When it opened on 5th January, 1918, Victor Chernov, leader of the Socialist Revolutionaries, was elected President. When the Assembly refused to support the programme of the new Soviet Government, the Bolsheviks walked out in protest.

Later that day, Vladimir Lenin announced that the Constituent Assembly had been dissolved. Soon afterwards all opposition political groups, including the Socialist Revolutionaries, Mensheviks and the Constitutional Democratic Party, were banned in Russia.

spartacus

In the morning of 5 January 1918, demonstrators (officials, university and high school students, workers and soldiers) assembled at nine separate points throughout the city. The route rows of demonstrators joined together at the Field of Mars, heading towards Tauride Palace from Liteiny Avenue. As they approached the Palace, however, the demonstrators were stopped and broken up; this led to armed clashes in some places (12 people were killed and at least 20 wounded). The Constituent Assembly started work at 16:00 on January 5 (18} 1918, and was attended by about 410 of 715 deputies. Centrist Socialist-Revolutionaries held the majority, while Bolsheviks and left-wing Socialist-Revolutionaries held 155 seats. V.M. Chernov, leader of the Socialist-Revolutionary party, was elected Chairman of the Constituent Assembly. The majority of the Constituent Assembly refused to discuss the Working and Exploited People's Declaration of Rights (brought forth by Sverdlov, chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee) and similarly refused to validate decrees put forth by the Soviet of the People's Commissars. The Bolshevik group responded by leaving the meeting hall. Left wing Socialist-Revolutionaries followed the Bolsheviks when right wing groups refused to vote on the Soviet government's policy. The rest of the deputies, though without a quorum, passed acts relating to peace and land, a law proclaiming Russia a federative democratic republic, and others. The meeting lasted about 13 hours and was closed at 04:40 on 6 (19) January 1918, as requested by the Commander of the Guard, A.G. Zheleznyakov, who claimed it was necessary to leave the hall since it was late and the Guard was tired. On the night of 7 (20) January 1918, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee passed a decree dissolving the Constituent Assembly. Opposition groups decided to move their meetings out of Petrograd, and some of them later established a Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly in Samara.

St.Petersburg encyclopedia

Ukrainian political circles expected that the assembly would legislate a democratic-republican political system and the national rights of the non-Russian peoples......Only 54 of the 79 electoral districts reported the results of the voting. In Ukraine the elections to the Russian assembly took place on 10–12 December 1917 in eight districts. The results of the voting in Podilia were not reported. The outcome was a reflection of the political attitudes of the population during the revolution. Out of 36,260,000 votes cast throughout the territory of the former Russian Empire the Russian Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs) received 45.5 percent; the Bolsheviks, 24.9 percent; the Ukrainian Party of Socialist Revolutionaries, 9.5 percent; the Constitutional Democratic (kadet) party, 5.1 percent; the Russian Social Democratic Workers' party (Mensheviks), 1.8 percent; the Ukrainian Socialists (the name used at the front by the Ukrainian Socialist Revolutionaries and Social Democrats), 1.4 percent; and the Ukrainian Social Democratic Workers' party, 0.26 percent. In Ukraine the 7,580,000 votes cast were divided in the following way: the national groups (non-Russian parties) won 61.5 percent (among them the Ukrainian SRs won 45.3 percent); the Russian SRs, 24.8 percent; the Bolsheviks, 10 percent; and the Kadets, 3.7 percent. Of the 120 deputies elected in Ukraine, 71 were Ukrainian SRs, 2 were Ukrainian Social Democrats, 4 were from the national minorities (1 Pole, 2 Jews, 1 Moslem), 30 were Russian SRs, 11 were Bolsheviks, 1 was a Kadet, and 1 was from the Union of Landowners. In six districts where the bloc of Ukrainian socialist parties (SRs, the Peasant Association, and Social Democrats) presented a single list of candidates, it won a clear majority of the votes: 77 percent in Kyiv gubernia, 71 percent in Volhynia, 60 percent in Chernihiv gubernia, 60 percent in Poltava gubernia, 52 percent in Katerynoslav gubernia, and 33 percent in Tavriia gubernia. In Kharkiv gubernia and Kherson gubernia the Ukrainian and the Russian SRs ran together; therefore the Ukrainian SRs received only 12 percent of the votes in the former and 25 percent in the latter gubernia.

encyclopedia of Ukraine

There seems to be a great deal of confusion regarding the Constituent Assembly. I would hope three different sources make things a little clearer.

To relinquish the sovereign power of the Soviets, to relinquish the Soviet Republic won by the people, for the sake of the bourgeois parliamentary system and the Constituent Assembly, would now be a step backwards and would cause the collapse of the October workers’ and peasants’ revolution.

V. I. Lenin, Draft Decree On The Dissolution Of The Constituent Assembly