"The guards are tired ...!"


On January 18, 1918, the so-called "Constituent Assembly" meets in the Tauride Palace in Petrograd (as the Russian capital Saint Petersburg has been called since August 1914) ...:



The palace was once given by Tsarina Ekaterina II (we know her as "Catherine the Great") to her lover (and secret husband!) Prince Grigory Potjomkin for the conquest of southern Russia ...:



Now the "Constituent Assembly" is supposed - after the fall of the tsar in March 1917 and the bloodless takeover of power by the Bolsheviks during the "October Revolution" (November 1917) - to work out a new Russian constitution at this location.

Here is a picture of the historic meeting room ...:



The members of this assembly had been determined on November 25, 1917 in free, equal and secret ballot. It was the only really free elections in Russian history ...:



The election, in turn, was scheduled on the initiative of the bourgeois forces who overthrew the tsar and brought the "provisional government" into office.

Meanwhile, however, the wind in Russia has turned politically and is now blowing ice cold! Because with the "October Revolution" the Bolsheviks took over power in the autumn of 1917 - and they have no interest in an assembly that consists of 23 large, small and small parties and which could end up putting a new constitution in front of their noses. to which you have to comply.

By far the strongest force in the assembly are also the sworn enemies of Lenin's people, the Social Revolutionaries (Socialists), who received 16.5 million votes and have 380 MPs.

They are thus twice as strong as the Bolsheviks, for whose candidates only 9.02 million voters had voted and from whose ranks there are now 168 MPs.

The assembly was actually supposed to meet at the end of November 1917, right after the elections, but through all sorts of procedural tricks the Bolsheviks managed to ensure that the days in the packed hall are only now beginning - after they sit fairly firmly in the saddle ...:





Before the beginning of the meeting, the leader of the Bolsheviks, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, gave his people the following slogan:

"Trust the mood - but don't forget your guns!"

The chief Bolshevik also makes it clear:

"Any attempt, direct or indirect, to look at the constituent assembly question from a formal legal standpoint, within the framework of an ordinary bourgeois democracy and without regard to the class struggle and civil war, would be a betrayal of the proletarian cause and the acceptance of a bourgeois standpoint."

Translated from the tangled language of the Bolsheviks, this means:

"Anything that is not in our interests is fraud, illegal and will not be recognized!"

And of course the Bolsheviks Yakov Sswerdlow and Lev Trotsky...



... organized a counter-demonstration outside the doors ...:



When the MPs want to begin their actual work, they are literally overwhelmed by a flood of Bolshevik motions and speeches. When Lenin left the Tauride Palace...



... on the afternoon of January 18, he said to his colleagues:

"There is no need to disperse the constituent assembly: just let them chatter for as long as they want and end it and tomorrow we won't let anyone in."

At 4 a.m. on January 19, the members are still in session, the chief of the guard (provided by the Bolsheviks) enters ...



... the sailor Anatoly Grigoryevich Schelesniakow ...





...from the cruiser "Awrora"...



... with a dozen armed men in the wake of the hall.

He goes to the socialist Viktor Mihailowitsch Tschernow ...


... the elected Chairman of the Assembly, and says so that everyone in the hall can hear:

“The guards are tired. I suggest they end the session and let everyone go home. "

Some of his people reload their rifles - demonstratively and just as easily audibly.



Everyone in the hall understands the unspoken threat - and the members of the "Constituent Assembly" submit. Tschernow ends the meeting at 4:40 am - and sets a new appointment at 5 pm for the same day.

But it doesn't come to that anymore.

In the evening, the elected members found the building locked. The government of the Bolsheviks had declared the Constituent Assembly dissolved by decree ...:



This is how the only attempt in history to introduce real democracy in Russia ended.

Exactly 103 years ago today!

Well done sir..I learn new bits even when I think myself informed...history gives us context on who we are, might have become

Excellent precis of a very turbulent few days in Petrograd. If it hadn't been for the Red Navy, comrade Ulyanov would have struggled to get his way. Nice work Martin, and quality photos too!

Phil