to elect from its midst an
authorized delegation which will carry on negotiations with the
representatives of the Allied countries and which will present the
appeal to jointly formulate terms upon which a speedy termination
of the war will be possible, as well as for the purpose of
carrying out the decisions of the Constituent Assembly regarding
the question of peace negotiations with the countries fighting
against us.

This delegation, which is to be under the guidance of the
Constituent Assembly, is to immediately start fulfilling the
duties imposed upon it.

Expressing, in the name of the peoples of Russia, its regret that
the negotiations with Germany, which were started without
preliminary agreement with the Allied countries, have assumed the
character of negotiations for a separate peace, the Constituent
Assembly, in the name of the peoples of the Federated Republic,
_while continuing the armistice, accepts the further carrying on
of the negotiations with the countries warring against us_ in
order to work toward a general democratic peace which shall be in
accordance "with the people's will and protect Russia's
interests."

VI

Immediately following the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly a body of
Red Guards shot the two Constitutional Democrats, Kokoshkin and Shingariev,
who were at the time confined as prisoners who were ill in the Naval
Hospital. The reason for the brutal murder of these men was that they were
bourgeoisie and, therefore, enemies of the working class! It is only just
to add that the foul deed was immediately condemned by the Bolshevik
government and by the Soviet of Petrograd. "The working class will never
approve of any outrages upon our prisoners, whatever may have been their
political offense against the people and their Revolution," the latter body
declared, in a resolution on the subject of the assassinations. Two days
after the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly twenty-three
Socialist-Revolutionist members of that body, assembled at the office of
their party, were arrested, and the premises occupied by Red Guards, the
procedure being exactly as it used to be in the old days under the Czar.

There is a relentless logic of life and action from which there can be no
escape. Czarism was a product of that inexorable process. All its
oppression and brutality proceeded by an inevitable and irresisti