Correctly Remembering Russia's History

Today -- Tuesday, January 18, 2007 -- marks the 89th anniversary of Russia's short-lived and long-forgotten All-Russian Constituent Assembly. This was a democratically elected parliament, chosen from among thirteen political parties on December 8, 1917, some four weeks after the so-called "Great October Revolution" on November 7, 1917.

Truth be known, the latter and much-ballyhooed date in Russian "revolutionary" history is little more than a product of Soviet disinformation and of Western pseudo-intellectual acquiescence in that monumental scam.

As the following truth-in-history lesson demonstrates, a combination of Soviet revisionism and of Western indifference to historical fact have been costly. They have not only wildly distorted what happened on that date but have almost completely "air-brushed" from history several other momentous dates which reveal what actually happened in Revolutionary Russia of 1917-18.

(Note: For clarity in identifying particular dates, this essay uses today's universal calendar rather than Russia's so-called Old Calendar which was calibrated to be 13 days earlier. For example, the events of October 25 (O.C.) are correctly commemorated on November 7, instead.)

In all too much of the media and academia, November 7 is portrayed as the glorious occasion on which Lenin's supposedly "popular" Bolsheviks finally overthrew the centuries-old dictatorship of the Russian Czars. It was (and still is) portrayed by left-wing propaganda as the seminal dividing line between the bourgeois evil which preceded it and the so-called "people's democracy" which followed it.

In truth, the only truly "popular" revolution of that era had already concluded on March 15, 1917. It was then that a myriad of democratically-motivated political movements forced Czar Nicolas II to abdicate. What happened several months later on November 7 was not a true revolution at all. It was a clamorous (and only partially-successful) counter-revolutionary coup d'etat -- which merely seized tenuous control over what was in many ways still the "Provisional Government" established earlier by the Russian Revolution.

At a time when Russia's "national day" is still celebrated on November 7 -- rather than on November 25 or January 18 -- and when certain die-hards still speak of "the great ideals of Lenin and the October Revolution," we might do well to determine what those "great ideals" were and what really did happen in those tumultuous days. Only if the "history" from which we are supposed to learn (in order that we not repeat it) is essentially accurate can we hope to avoid such repetition.

Although all relevant facts, figures, names and dates cannot possibly be stated and interpreted in any brief review, suffice it to say that alleged "facts" which are in conflict with the following chronology should be regarded as dangerously suspect:

  1. The popular, democratically-motivated Russian Revolution of February-March 1917 forced Czar Nicolas II to abdicate on March 15, 1917.

  2. At that moment, Leon Trotsky was living in New York and V.I. Lenin was in exile in Switzerland, having stated just six weeks earlier: "Probably we and even our children may not live to the day that the [Russian] Revolution will break out."

  3. Astounded by the Czar's overthrow, Lenin (that self-proclaimed clairvoyant of historical imperatives) did not return to Russia until April 16, more than one full month after the Czar's ouster. Trotsky finally straggled in on May 4, almost seven weeks after the fact.

  4. An All-Russian Congress of Soviets -- the interim parliament of a so-called "Provisional Government" headed first by George Lvov and then by Social Revolutionary (SR) Alexander Kerensky -- was selected, with the following make-up:
  5. In early July, the failure of a disjointed Bolshevik-led uprising resulted in orders for the arrest of Lenin, Trotsky, Zinoviev and other "Left" radicals. After a month in hiding, Lenin fled to Finland but was soon -- and most unwisely -- allowed to return as insurance against a possible "Rightist" coup by the forces of General Lvar Kornilov.

  6. The multi-party Congress of Soviets, (which had met sporadically during the summer and early fall, mainly to plan for parliamentary elections in early December) convened for what would be its last session on November 6-7, 1917. Intimidated by yet another Bolshevik insurrection, later grandiosely mislabeled the "Great October Revolution," the Congress' only significant actions were to oust Kerensky and to designate Lenin as "Chief Commissar" of what was more a radicalized extension than an outright overthrow of the Provisional Government.

  7. On December 8, 1917 (November 25, O.C.), previously scheduled elections (which Lenin earlier supported but tried at the last moment to delay, so as later to cancel entirely) chose what was intended to become the permanent All-Russian Constituent Assembly -- with less than 25% of the seats Bolshevik, as follows: (Disastrously for Lenin, Trotsky et al, the combined number of seats held by their increasingly unpopular Bolsheviks and their Left SR allies fell to only 30% -- down sharply from their combined 43% in the earlier Congress of Soviets.)

  8. This staunchly anti-Bolshevik Constituent Assembly was destined to convene only once -- on the now dis-remembered date of January 18, 1918 -- before being forcibly adjourned by Lenin's militia during the pre-dawn hours of January 19. Its major actions were to elect the Center-Right SR Victor Chernov as presiding officer and to crush (237-138) a major Bolshevik attempt to preclude the Assembly from addressing Russia's future role in the ongoing World War I.

  9. During the afternoon of January 19, 1918 Comrade Lenin, acting as Chairman of a self-appointed "All-Russian Executive Committee," issued a proclamation abolishing the Assembly and establishing single-party "Soviet" rule over Russia.

  10. This completed the second (and the only truly effective) Bolshevik coup d'etat. First, it prevented the infant Assembly from establishing the West European-style parliamentary democracy to which it was committed by the decisive December 8, 1917 elections. And, second, it triggered the bloody four-year civil war which finally resulted in the creation of the infamous Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in December 1922.

Now that the largely forgotten date of March 15, 1917, and the cynically overplayed date of November 7, 1917 have come and gone, we should begin corrective action by applying a heavy dose of truth-in-history to the elections of December 8, 1917 and to the Constituent Assembly's convening on January 18, 1918. These are the anniversary dates, respectively, of the election and the convening (and almost immediate dissolution) of Mother Russia's very first freely-elected government.

If that long-forgotten infant Russian democracy had not been strangled to death in its crib after less than 24 hours of parliamentary life in mid-January of 1918, Lenin's brutal Soviet State would never have come into being. Fascist-left Communism would never have come to "liberate" the Russian people from all prospects of liberty, and would never have dragged them through seven long decades of single-party, police-state Socialism.

And there would be no Evil Empire, no Cold War, no November 7 "national day" festivities in Moscow or elsewhere, no new Russian coins being urged with the likeness of Lenin on them and no modern-day Russian revanchists sulking about the back alleys toasting the memory of Zhugashvili (Stalin) -- and whispering that "The great ideals of Lenin and the Great October Revolution will live again!"

An outlandish prospect, one might ask?

Not if Russian President Vladimir Putin continues his steady drift toward the communoid-Left. And not if we continue the folly of mis-remembering and ignoring so much of what really did happen in the Russian revolutionary and the Bolshevik counter-revolutionary days of 1917-22.

Jim Guirard -- TrueSpeak Institute 703-768-0957 Justcauses@aol.com

Jim Guirard served for many years as Chief-of-Staff to former Democratic U.S. Senators Allen Ellender and Russell Long of Louisiana. His new TrueSpeak Institute is devoted to truth-in-language and truth-in-history in public discourse.