Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/334

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THE PROLETARIAN REVOLUTION IN RUSSIA

nary agreement with the Allied democracies, have assumed the character of negotiations for a separate peace, the Constituent Assembly, in the name of the peoples of the Russian Federal Republic, while continuing the armistice, accepts the further carr3ring on of the negotiations with the countries warring against us in order to work towards a general democratic peace which shall be in accordance with the people's will and protect Russia's interests."

Shortly after the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, the All-Russian Soviet Congress approved the action of its Executive Committee in dissolving the Assembly, and about the same time a Peasant's Assembly also ratified the dissolution. The peasants, through the Social-Revolutionists of the Left, now the dominant factor in the Social-Revolutionary Party and who accepted the program of the Bolsheviki and the Soviets, approved not only the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly but the general legislative measures of the Soviet regime.

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Declaration of the Soviet Executive Committee, read at the opening session of the Constituent Assembly for adoption, and rejected:

I

1.—Russia is to be declared a Republic of the workers', soldiers' and peasants' Soviets. All power in the cities and in the country belongs to the Soviets.

2.—The Russian Soviet Republic is based on the free federation of free peoples, on the federation of National Soviet Republics.

II

Recognizing as its duty the destruction of all exploitation of the workers, the complete abolition of the class system of society, and the placing of society on a Socialistic basis, and the ultimate bringing about of a victory for Socialism in every country, the Constituent Assembly decides further:

1.—The socializing of land will be carried out, private ownership of land will be abolished, all the land is proclaimed to be the common property of the people and will be given to the toiling people without compensation on the principle of equal right to use the land.

All the forests, mines and waters, which are of social import-