Speech At A Meeting Of The Central Committee Of The R.S.D.L.P.(B.) December 11(24), 1917

V. I. Lenin

Speech At A Meeting Of The Central Committee Of The R.S.D.L.P.(B.)

December 11(24), 1917^[1]

Minutes

Delivered: 11 December, 1917
First Published: 1929 in Minutes of the CC R.S.D.L.P(B.), August 1917-February 1918 Published according to the Minutes
Source: Lenin’s Collected Works, Progress Publishers, Moscow, Volume 26, 1972, pp. 377
Translated: Yuri Sdobnikov and George Hanna, Edited by George Hanna
Transcription & HTML Markup: Charles Farrell and David Walters
Online Version: Lenin Internet Archive November, 2000

Comrade Lenin proposes (1) to dismiss the bureau of the Constituent Assembly group; (2) to explain our attitude towards the Constituent Assembly to the group in the form of theses; (3) to draw up an address to the group in which it should be mentioned that the Party Rules prescribe the subordination of all representative institutions to the Central Committee; (4) to appoint a member of the Central Committee to lead the group; (5) to draw up rules for the group.

Footnotes

^[1] On December 11 (24), 1917, the Contra1 Committee of the R.S.D.L.P.(13.) discussed one question—the stand taken by the Bolshevik group in the Constituent Assembly. It was raised in view of the fact that “right-wing sentiments have prevailed in the group, whose views differ from those of the Central Committee” (Minutes of the Central Committee of the R.S.D.L.P.(B.) August, 1917 to February 1918, (in Russian, Moscow, 1958, p. 100).

The provisional bureau of the group opposed the C.C. line on the Constituent Assembly. It took a bourgeois-democratic approach to the Assembly and held that its convocation was the final stage of the revolution . It proposed that control over its convocation should be abandoned. The Central Committee resolved to work out theses on the Constituent Assembly and set a meeting of members of the group in Smolny at 4.00 p.m. on December 12 (25) to discuss a CC. report and theses and to re-elect the bureau of the group. Lenin read out his “Theses on the Constituent Assernbly”, which he had written at the Central Cornmittee’s request. After a prolonged debate, they were unanimously adopted by the group. On December 13 (26) they were published by Pravda.

V. I. Lenin