claim of the Bolsheviki that the fact that the
candidates had all been nominated before the November insurrection should
be regarded as reason for acknowledging the Bolshevik Soviet as superior to
the Constituent Assembly. They insisted upon the point, which the Bolshevik
spokesmen did not attempt to controvert, that the Constituent Assembly
represented the votes of many millions of men and women,[37] while the
total actual membership represented by the Soviet power did not at the time
number one hundred thousand!

As might have been expected, the proposal to adopt the declaration
submitted to the Constituent Assembly in this arrogant fashion was rejected
by an enormous majority. The Bolshevik members, who had tried to make the
session a farce, thereupon withdrew after submitting a statement in which
they charged the Constituent Assembly with being a counter-revolutionary
body, and the Revolutionary-Socialist party with being a traitorous party
"directing the fight of the bourgeoisie against the workers' revolution."
The statement said that the Bolshevik members withdrew "in order to permit
the Soviet power to determine what relations it would hold with the
counter-revolutionary section of the Constituent Assembly"--a threat which
needed no interpretation.

After the withdrawal of the Bolshevik members, the majority very quickly
adopted a declaration which had been carefully prepared by the
Socialist-Revolutionists during the weeks which had elapsed since the
elections in the preliminary conferences which had been held for that
purpose. The declaration read as follows:

RUSSIA'S FORM OF GOVERNMENT

In the name of the peoples who compose the Russian state, the
All-Russian Constituent Assembly proclaims the Russian State to be
the Russian Democratic Federated Republic, uniting indissolubly
into one whole the peoples and territories which are sovereign
within the limits prescribed by the Federal Constitution.

LAWS REGARDING LAND OWNERSHIP

1. _The right to privately own land within the boundaries of the
Russian Republic is hereby abolished forever._

2. All land within the boundaries of the Russian Republic, with
all mines, forests, and waters, is hereby declared the property of
the nation.

3. The republic has the right to control all land, with all the
mines, forests, and waters thereof, through the central and local
administration, in accordance wi