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 regime 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
regime. 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