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Instruction to the Constituent Assembly from citizens of Viazhishchensk Volost, Petrograd Province

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By Citizens of Viazhishchensk Volost, Petrograd Province

Voices of Revolution, 1917

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Document 126

Instruction to the Constituent Assembly from citizens of Viazhishchensk Volost, Petrograd Province, 31 December 1917.

Instruction

To the chairman of the Constituent Assembly from the citizens of Viazhishchensk Volost, Gdovsk Uezd, Petrograd Province, a total of five hundred people, who attended the meeting on 31 December 1917, resolved: to demand from the Constituent Assembly the following:

1) Power must be soviet democratic power, both in the center and the provinces. The Constituent Assembly, as the highest organ, must implement everything the oppressed people supports. Whoever is in power and does not obey the oppressed people will be supporting the oppressors and will be immediately barred from membership and declared counterrevolutionary, and we demand from the electoral district a more democratic order and that they exclude the Kadets. 2.) Strengthen and implement the decree on land passed by the Congress of Soviets of Soldiers', Workers', and Peasants' Deputies on 26 October 1917, and do not honor any payments whatsoever under decree §§ 1, 2, 3, and 4. Everything must transfer free of charge to the benefit of the people, and proceed with the remaining §§ without alteration.

The Decree on Land was in four sections. The first three sections abolished private ownership, placed land holdings at the disposal of local land committees and peasant soviets, and declared any violence during the transfer process or damage to confiscated property a crime. The fourth stipulated that, until a final decision by the Constituent Assembly, the guide to implementing the decree should be the peasant mandate compiled by the Izvestiia of the All-Russian Soviet of Peasants' Deputies on the basis of 242 local peasant mandates and published on 19 August 1917. Included with the Decree on Land, these are the “remaining §§” referred to.

Repeal resettlement; subject to resettlement are the account keepers and well-to-do peasants whom society would recognize as depraved members and deserters. Soldiers may be resettled only at their own request. 3) Pass the most energetic measures to eliminate Kaledin's band of brigands. Bring the greatest pressure to bear on the bourgeois Ukrainian Rada,

After the February revolution of 1917 a Central Rada (equivalent to the Russian Soviet) was organized in Kiev by the Society of Ukrainian Progressives and various Ukrainian socialists. It functioned as a semi-independent Ukrainian government from March 1917 to April 1918. After October, the Rada tried to resist Bolshevik attempts to assert Soviet authority in Ukraine.

which is facilitating the adventurers and bandits who are waging campaigns against Soviet power. Put an end to the fratricidal [war] of the bandits, Kaledinites, Kornilovites, Kerenskyites, Dutovites and Co.;

Aleksandr Ilich Dutov (1864–1921) was elected chairman of the All-Russian Cossack Congress in Petrograd in June 1917. He supported General Kornilov's demands for stronger central leadership. After the October revolution, he became the leader of the antisoviet Cossack forces in the Ural region.

take measures to put down, arrest, and hand the main authors of the fratricidal war over to the strictest revolutionary court. 4) Demand strict support for the decree on peace passed by the second All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Soldiers', Workers', and Peasants' Deputies on 26 October 1917. Any members of the meeting who are against this should be arrested immediately and sent to one of the revolutionary regiments for the formation of separate battalions and dispatched to the front without being supplied with any form of clothing and armed with sticks, as happened at the River San

Located at the northern border of Galicia, now in Poland. After German soldiers crossed the San River in May 1915, the “great retreat” of the Russian army began.

in 1915. Maintain continuous oversight from the rear to avert desertion. The meeting considers it essential to promulgate as soon as possible the decree on the arrest of individuals, in both the center and the provinces, where such people are found to be advocating a continuation of the war or a new one with the Allies. Designate a place for the heroes who have been in the trenches to form up for dispatch to the rear.

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5) Take up immediately the most energetic work in the plants and factories where they manufacture agricultural equipment and the peasants' basic necessities, such as plows, harrows, axles, scythes, iron, nails, sickles, manufactured items, and so on, without regard for the eight-hour workday. The more productivity improves, the more prices for items will fall. The above-mentioned output must be distributed at the demand of citizens and only to cooperative shops, and under no circumstances to private traders. Citizens who do not have the funds to acquire equipment for cultivating the land should be given such in installments from the state fund. 6) Repeal all payments on the land, taxes must be taken from income and be progressive, starting at no less than one thousand rubles. 7) Repeal the insurance payment on deeds, and make this tax progressive as well, starting at no less than five hundred rubles. Give out money in the event of fire, calculated so that each victim can build himself a structure without going into debt or selling off any livestock, and so forth, prematurely, which did occur among the peasantry under the old regime, which is what led the peasantry into poverty. No taxes on peasant structures, livestock, agricult. equipment, and so on, can be assessed from income. Income may be from earnings and sales. 8) Maintain medical institutions under the volost with doctors and beds without disturbing the uezd facility, which should be more organized, have a structure, lighting, heating, and a staff of medical personnel, at state expense. The work of the latter must be on democratic principles. 9) To satisfy the poor, work out a pension subsidy now on which one could live easily and thereby end the difficult status of the homeless. 10) Because of the yoke of the Romanovs they have endured, the peasants could not acquire agricultural structures, so the Meeting came out unanimously in favor of working toward brotherhood and equality, by demanding that building material be released free of charge from government reserves. Issue the soldiers a monetary subsidy equal to this cost. 11) Maintenance of administrations, institutions, and employees must be taken on by the state. There can be no improvements in the day-to-day and financial matters if those are provided for by the peasants. 12) Road repairs and swamp draining must be taken on by the state. Set about this work immediately, for there are no passable roads at all in the volost. The swamps are flooding several hay meadows and fields. 13) Immediately select a commission at the expense of the producers in both the center and the provinces to verify their productivity and management and the stealing and looting that have been committed during the present war. Where such are discovered, hand them over immediately to the revolutionary court-martial. 14) Full compensation to ill and wounded fighters and their families for the predatory war; the Meeting expresses its total lack of confidence in the old-regime medical boards that examined the warriors [voiny] and considers

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it its duty to declare that special medical boards should be appointed immediately and should include more politically conscious doctors as well as members from the wounded warriors proportionately for both. Files of all the soldiers participating in the current war must be considered. Pay must be monthly, specifically a) to those who have lost all capacity to work, 200 rubles, b) half the ability to work, 160 rubles, c) one-third, 120 rubles, d) one-fourth, 80 rubles—and those who have suffered wounds, illness, contusions, and asphyxiation during service that did not entail a decline in ability to work, 25 rubles, e) a killed husband's wife who has full ability to work should receive 60 rubles a month. If the wife of a killed man is ill, proceed according to §a). A killed man's wife who has remarried loses her subsidy. Children up to the age of eight years get a payment of 20 rubles; and after eight years, the same as students. f) A father and mother who lost a son in the war and do not have other sons living with them must be compensated according to [sections] a, b, c, d; g) the payment must be issued as of the day the soldier incurs the wound, contusion, asphyxiation, illness, or death; h) for warriors who have lost all ability to work there must be shelters, charitably arranged, with all the comforts and staff if those who have suffered wish to be there. 15) Agronomists must work in each volost with the consent of the citizens. For which a certain amount of land must be set aside for trial and instruction in the correct management of peasant farms. The maintenance of the latter is at treasury expense. 16) Full freedom of speech and the press, gatherings, meetings, assemblies, unions, and strikes. (Total inviolability of the person, in both the center and the provinces, for inflicting humiliation by an action, no matter in what form it was inflicted.)

This appears to be an example of what Russian linguists call “speech phantomization” (see the afterword), in which tht speaker has adopted words or phrases (here, “inviolability of the person”) without fully understanding their established meaning and hence misuses them. Like much of this document, this section is awkward in its determined use of the educated public discourse of the time, especially the language of the press. Still, the sense that these phrases concerned protecting individuals from insult was essentially correct.

17) As soon as possible, promulgate the most merciless section of the decree for individuals committing various types of robberies, assaults, and raids on citizens or inappropriate anarchistic tricks that cause panic among the population, as well as for individuals engaged in speculation and looting. Only this way will the population be reassured. 18) Strict and just [workers'] control over plants, factories, and mines, on the railroads and steamships, and so forth, over their productivity: cut leaders off from predatory profits and improve work productivity in production, thereby helping the exhausted population out of the impasse in which the country now finds itself. Arrest those sabotaging productivity and hand them over to a strict revolutionary court. 19) Levy merciless progressive taxes on capitalists, starting at five thousand rubles, in order to return our rubles that they stole, which they've been collecting for three hundred years, and especially in the current war, and in this way help the population start a new and just life. 20) Carry out a complete confiscation of the palaces of the Romanov clan as well as their valuables and capital, wherever they are, and put everything into the state fund.

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21) Immediately carry out a universal requisitioning of privately owned commercial industry and trade and turn everything into cooperatives. Under requisitioning, prices must be minimal—that is, no higher than they were in 1914; make a monetary payment only for the monthly upkeep of the owners and their families. All production henceforth, until the population's needs have been met, must be sold through a ration card system, in both the center and the provinces, with an exception made for soldiers. 22) Melt down all monuments, with the exception of writers', and reforge them into sickles, scythes, plows, and the like. 23) Separate the church from the state and the schools from the church. The churches then must be maintained at the expense of parishioners. The construction of school buildings, lighting, heating, textbooks, teachers, and so on, must be paid for out of the treasury. 24) Universal education for both sexes. Start of studies at eight years, ending at sixteen years, except for those wishing to continue further. Each student must from now on be issued an annual subsidy for the academic year both for food and for expenses, in both the centet and the provinces, out of the state fund. 25) Provide a subsidy for the peasantry out of the state fund in the event of a failed harvest or the decline or illness of livestock, for the value of the loss. 26) Repeal all excise taxes and indirect taxes. Trade in output should be free. 27) Introduction of universal labor obligation. Press the selfish exploiters [shkurodery]

Shkurodery (pronounced shkurodyory) is a slang expression drawing on the phrase drat' shkuru s kogo (to pull the skin off someone—i.e., to exploit him) and shkurnik (one who selfishly thinks only about his or her own skin).

to the lathes, joiner's benches, mines, and other dirty jobs, and by no means allow them into any institutions or establishments. 28) Confiscate any privately owned automobiles, carriages, harnesses, and horses. Organize a carrier industry for the benefit of the State. 29) Requisition all gold and silver items now, wherever they are, and melt them down for coins; this will improve the ruble's rate of exchange. 30) Immediately after the demobilization of the army, set about the installation of a telegraph-telephone network for communications, especially between the volost and the uezd and the uezd and the provincial center, which will improve work productivity in organizations. 31) For the unification and enlightenment of the peasantry, immediately set about constructing a building at the volost level for assemblies, meetings, unions, and so on, for there are no such buildings; equip the building with a movie theater; the cost of this must come out of the state fund. 32) When pregnant, women must have an equal right to a subsidy with those working in plants, factories, and so forth. 33) It is required that individual members of the peasantry adhere strictly to the instructions and demands of the peasantry, without taking one step back, and that everything possible be done to improve the living conditions for the land-poor peasantry and make them equal with other

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peasants and workers. We consider it impermissible that until now land-poor peasants have worked from eighteen to twenty hours a day. Use all our powers and funds to improve their day-to-day material and financial status. The Meeting expressed the opinion that it will support representatives who are advocates for the oppressed people—up to and including using weapons against individuals who dare speak out in favor of the former oppression

Long live Socialism

Freedom

Soviet power

the peace of nations

the Constituent Assembly

the International

We will support the present instruction with all the powers and means at the volost's disposal. We ask our comrades to join us. Send it to the uezd and Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Peasants' Deputies and the Revolutionary Committee. Ask the socialist newspapers to reprint it.

Passed unanimously.

Chairman, F. Anisimov

Resolution of the General Meeting	Demand an immediate
of citizens of Viazhishchensk Volost	Convocation of the Constituent
31 December 1917	Assembly

Chairman of the general meeting of the citizens of Viazhishchensk Volost, F. Anisimov

Transcription

Document Details

Document TitleInstruction to the Constituent Assembly from citizens of Viazhishchensk Volost, Petrograd Province

AuthorCitizens of Viazhishchensk Volost, Petrograd; Province

RecipientConstituent Assembly

RepositoryGARF

ID #f.1781, op.1, d.42, ll.309-312ob

DescriptionN/A

Date1917 Dec 31

AOC VolumeVoices of Revolution, 1917

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