The Fourth Extraordinary Congress of Soviets , ¹ held on March 14-16, 1918, where the question of ratification of the Brest Treaty with Germany was decided, is fairly fully covered in Soviet historical literature; general issues of theory and practice closely related to its work are considered; ² a detailed picture of the struggle for peace in local Soviets on the eve of the congress is given. ³. concrete material shows that Lenin's policy of peace expressed the interests of the broad masses of the people, enjoyed local support, and was based on the will of the working people.

However, in all studies, insufficient attention was paid to the composition of delegates to the congress. Meanwhile, this question is of great importance, as it makes it possible to find out the balance of forces between the supporters and opponents of peace, which determined the outcome of the struggle at the congress. In addition, its composition, as well as the two preceding and all subsequent ones, is a clear confirmation of the words of V. I. Lenin that since October 1917 "the working and exploited classes for the first time in history... they drew up their own Soviets, called for the political construction of the masses whom the bourgeoisie oppressed, slaughtered, and stupefied, and began to build a new, proletarian state themselves. " ⁴

The main sources for identifying the composition of All-Russian Congresses of Soviets are delegates ' mandates and their questionnaires. They complement each other. Mandates and certificates provide an opportunity to judge the party affiliation and which regions of the country are represented by delegates. The questionnaires also contain a more complete description of them: party experience, occupation, age, education, the degree of participation in the revolutionary movement and in Soviet work, the party composition of the Councils represented, and so on. On the basis of a combined analysis of these documents, the composition of the II and III All-Russian Congresses of Soviets has been sufficiently fully determined ^.5 The mandates and questionnaires of the Fourth Extraordinary Congress of Soviets, which are kept in the Central Executive Committee Fund ⁶, have not yet been considered from this point of view. In this paper, an attempt is made to analyze them and show the geographical representation, class, party and national affiliation of the delegates to this congress.

The literature provides various data on the total number of delegates to the IV Extraordinary Congress of Soviets (1204 and 1232 people), since the reports of the mandate commission of the Congress were different. This can be explained by the fact that delegates arrived at the congress during its work and could not be accurately accounted for by the mandate commission. A total of 1245 mandates are stored in the archive. Of these, 15 mandates included several delegates each. One mandate was issued for 16 people (issued by Vikzhe-

¹ "History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union", Vol. III, book I. M. 1967; "History of the October Socialist Revolution", M. 1967; "Soviets in the First Year of the proletarian dictatorship", M. 1967.

² See P. I. Sobolev. The Struggle of the Bolsheviks against the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries for the Leninist Policy of Peace, Moscow, 1965; K. Varlamov, N. Slamikhin. V. I. Lenin's exposure of the theory and tactics of the" Left " Communists, Moscow, 1964.

³ D. V. Oznobishin. From Brest to Yuryev, Moscow, 1966.

⁴ V. I. Lenin. PSS. Vol. 37, p. 286.

⁵ "The Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets", Moscow, 1957, pp. 7-30; E. N. Gorodetsky. Rozhdenie Sovetskogo gosudarstva [The Birth of the Soviet State], Moscow, 1965, chapters I and VI. The Third Congress of Soviets. "Marxist Historian", 1941, No. 3; E. G. Gimpelson. Some new data on the composition of the Third All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers', Soldiers 'and Peasants' Deputies. Voprosy Istorii, 1960, No. 9.

⁶ TsGAOR OF the USSR, f. 1235, op. 3, units hr. 24-29 (questionnaires); units hr. 30-32 (mandates).

page 202

Table N1

another one was for 6 people, two mandates included 3 and 11 - 2 people each. Three mandates contain a note stating that the delegates arrived in Moscow on March 23 and therefore did not participate in the congress (they are not included in the list of congress delegates). The largest number on the mandate is 1296 ⁷ . Therefore, we can assume that this is the minimum number of delegates who were elected to the congress. There are no mandates available for such well-known delegates as A.M. Kollontai, F. A. Sergeev (Artem), and G. V. Chicherin. Based on the available mandates and certificates, it can be concluded that at least 1,277 delegates were present at the congress, of which 1,244 had a casting vote and 33 had an advisory vote ^.8 All of them were envoys of 615 Soviets9 (only 370 Soviets ^were represented at the Third Congress).

The party affiliation of delegates and their distribution by geographical and national districts (only the Moscow and Petrograd provinces are highlighted), as well as by organizations, are shown in Table ^1-10 . The table shows that the Central Industrial District ranks first in terms of the number of delegates. It is followed by Ukraine, the Urals, the Volga region and the North of the country. The delegates represented 64 provinces and regions of Russia, including such remote ones as the Yenisei, Trans-Baikal and Far Eastern regions. The largest number of delegates was sent by the densely populated industrial provinces of the Center and South of the country - Moscow, Petrograd, Tver, Ekaterinoslav. The agricultural provinces of Ryazan, Voronezh, and Tambov were also widely represented at the congress. There were at least 234 delegates from national districts ^.11 Together with Russians, who make up the majority (926 people), the congress was attended by: Ukrainians - 117, Belarusians-37, Jews-64, Latvians-28, Estonians-9, Poles-7, Tatars-6, Armenians-6, Chuvash -

⁷ Ibid., ed. chr. 30, l. 205.

⁸ Counted by mandates and certificates.

⁹ Counted according to the list of delegates to the IV Congress of Soviets ("Verbatim Report of the 4th Extraordinary Congress of Soviets", Moscow, 1920) and by mandates.

¹⁰ The table is based on mandates and credentials. TsGAOR USSR, f. 1235, op. 3, ed. chr. 30, 31, 32.

¹¹ Calculated by mandates (TSAOR USSR, f. 1235, op. 3, units of chr. 30, 31, 32).

page 203

Table N 2 ¹³

Social composition of party factions

3, Bulgarians - 3, Lithuanians-2, others-7, a total of 289 people ¹² .

An analysis of the questionnaires filled out by the delegates shows that the absolute majority of participants in the congress were workers and peasants. Of the 1,225 people who filled out the questionnaires, 779, or more than 64%, were workers and peasants. About 80% of the delegates took part in the All-Russian Congress for the first time. Only 267 people indicated in the questionnaire that they had participated in previous congresses.

Many of the mandates contained instructions from local councils to their delegates to stand up for peace. The majority of Soviets with a peaceful position, as evidenced by their responses to the request of the CEC and the Council of People's Commissars, was ¹⁴ . Some Soviets, such as the Moscow, Voronezh, Kostroma and Kursk Soviets, on the eve of the Congress, under pressure from the masses, revised their previous negative position and approved the signing of a peace treaty. The Arkhangelsk and Vyatka provincial Soviets, which were "in favor of war", elected Bolsheviks, supporters of peace, as delegates to the Fourth Extraordinary Congress of Soviets ^.15

The Bolshevik faction at the Fourth Congress of Soviets, according to the mandates, united at least 67% of all delegates, while at the previous congress it had 60% of the vote. This shows that with the expansion and consolidation of Soviet power, the authority of the Bolshevik Party also grew. Out of the 675 questionnaires filled out by the Bolsheviks16, it is clear that more than half of the delegates were workers and most of them were highly qualified (locksmiths, turners, machinists, tailors, etc.), a significant part of them passed through a serious school of revolutionary struggle and party work: 388 people joined the party before 1917, 176 of them - until 1905. But the Bolshevik faction was not united. There was a small group of "left communists" who opposed peace and were in favor of a revolutionary war. In this they were allied with the Left SR faction. The left Social Revolutionaries, who were most active in the struggle against peace, lost a significant part of their former voters, and therefore at the Fourth Congress they had 22% of the vote against 39%, which they had at the Third All-Russian Congress. According to the questionnaires, the majority of the left-Socialist-Revolutionary faction (72%) is from-

¹² Calculated from questionnaires (ibid., units of pages 27, 28, 29).

¹³ The table is based on the available 1,225 questionnaires.

¹⁴ See Lenin's Collection XI, p. 60; Lenin's Collection XXXVI, p. 30.

¹⁵ D. V. Oznobishin. Op. ed., pp. 174, 179, 197; " Establishment of Soviet power in the Kostroma province "(March 1917-September 1918). Collection of documents. Kostroma. 1957, p. 282; "The struggle for the establishment and consolidation of Soviet power in the Kursk province". Kursk. 1957, p. 174; G. E. Mymrin. October in the North. Arkhangelsk, 1967, p. 98; E. S. Sadyrina. October in the Vyatka province. Kirov. 1957, p. 185.

¹⁶ Questionnaires were filled out by "not all Bolsheviks with mandates. Thus, there are no questionnaires of V. I. Lenin, Y. M. Sverdlov and a number of other leaders of the party and the Soviet state.

page 204

employees and peasants were responsible, while the workers who were part of it were mostly connected not with large-scale, but with small-scale production, and in large part they were artisans (carpenters, shoemakers, felt makers, etc.).

The counter-revolutionary forces at the Fourth Congress of Soviets were represented by Mensheviks, right SRS, and Bundists. The delegates of these parties were a relatively small group of 77 people (6% of the total number of delegates). This figure corresponds to the number of their mandates. The higher number of people who completed the questionnaires (108) was probably due to the fact that many delegates of counter-revolutionary parties attended the congress without receiving mandates. The fact is that, in an effort to use the Fourth Extraordinary Congress of Soviets for its own purposes, the Menshevik Central Committee suggested that its party organizations immediately prepare a representative office for the congress and demanded that, if it was impossible for delegates to arrive at the congress in time, they send their mandates to its disposal, leaving a pass for names in them. In the ranks of the counter-revolutionary parties, workers and peasants were a minority (there were only three skilled workers); the majority were people who reflected the interests of the bourgeoisie.

Guided by the decisions of the Seventh Congress of the RCP (b), the absolute majority of delegates of the Bolshevik faction launched an active struggle for the ratification of the Brest Treaty. V. I. Lenin's report and final speech were crucial in this respect. As is well known, the Fourth Congress of Soviets resolutely rejected the resolutions proposed by the left SRS, the United Revolutionaries, the internationalists, the right SRS, the communist anarchists, and the maximalists. The Congress ratified the Brest Treaty. In the roll-call vote, 784 votes were cast for the Bolshevik resolution, 261 against, 115 abstained, and 84 did not vote. ¹⁷ This decision signified the victory of Lenin's policy of peace and contributed to the consolidation of both the domestic and international position of the Soviet Republic.

¹⁷ "Verbatim report of the 4th Extraordinary Congress of Soviets", p. 64.

page 205

Permanent link to this publication: