All-Russian Central Executive Committee

• 1. Introduction

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  The All-Russian Central Executive Committee opened its first session during a revolution that was still deciding which direction to fall. Born from the First All-Russian Congress of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies in Petrograd in June 1917, it would within months transform from a body dominated by Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries into the supreme governing institution of the new Soviet republic. Along the way, it would be accused of illegality by its own predecessor, watch its chairman replaced overnight, and absorb a rival peasant executive committee to form a coalition that reshaped Russian history. How did a committee of 320 deputies, initially chaired by a Menshevik named Nikolai Chkheidze, become the foundation for Bolshevik rule? And what did it actually do with that power before the 1936 constitution swept it aside?

• 2. Structure and Powers

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  The 1918 Russian Constitution placed precise limits on the committee's size: no more than 200 elected members at any one time. Statute 26 of Article III required the committee to convene the All-Russian Congress of Soviets at least twice a year, though extra sessions could be called either by the committee itself or at the request of local Soviets. The committee was completely subordinate to the Congress, which elected it, and the Constitution left the functions of its Collegiate and Presidium deliberately vague, presumably treating them as supervisory or revisionary bodies.

  In practice, the committee's reach was sweeping. It gave general direction to the Worker-Peasant government and coordinated legislation and administration across the entire Soviet state. It reviewed and adopted decrees proposed by the Council of People's Commissars, and it could issue its own decrees and instructions directly. State budgets, both for the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic as a whole and for each of its administrative divisions, were decided jointly by the committee and the full Congress. The committee also formed the Council of People's Commissars and created the departmental units, known as People's Commissariats, that managed individual branches of administration. Deputies themselves either worked inside those departments or carried out special assignments on the committee's behalf.

• 3. Mensheviks in Control

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  The congress that brought the committee into being, held in Petrograd from June 3 to 24 of 1917, elected 320 deputies to serve in it. The breakdown reflected the broader political makeup of the first Congress of Soviets: 123 Mensheviks, 119 Socialist Revolutionaries, 58 Bolsheviks, 13 United Social Democrats, and 7 others. Nikolay Chkheidze, a Menshevik, took the chair.

  Until August 1917, the committee met at the Tauride Palace, then relocated to Smolny. After the July upheavals in Petrograd, the committee's leaders joined a commission the Provisional Government set up to restore order in the city. The committee publicly welcomed the appointment of Socialist Revolutionary Aleksandr Kerensky as minister-chairman of the government and voted to grant the government unlimited powers. That posture would prove a political liability as the Bolsheviks spent the following weeks persuading council after council to switch allegiances.

• 4. Bolshevization of the Soviets

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  By early September 1917, following the collapse of the Kornilov revolt, the committee jointly with the executive committee of the All-Russian Council of Peasant Deputies called for a Democratic Conference. A telegram signed by Nikolay Chkheidze and Nikolay Avksentiev, the chairmen of the two executive committees, described the gathering as a chance to "create a strong revolutionary government capable of uniting all revolutionary Russia to repel external enemies and for the suppression of any attempts on conquered freedom."

  Behind that appeal lay a deteriorating map. By the beginning of November, the Bolsheviks held up to 90 percent of seats in the Petrograd Soviet and up to 60 percent in Moscow. They had majorities in 80 local Soviets of large industrial cities. Viktor Nogin, a Bolshevik, became chairman of the Presidium of the Moscow Council in September; Lev Trotsky took the chair of the Petrograd Council at the same time. Soldiers' committees on the Northern and Western fronts, the Petrograd garrison, and the Central Committee of the Baltic Fleet all shifted to the Bolsheviks, though army-level committees remained Socialist Revolutionary-Menshevik until November.

• 5. The Contested Second Congress

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  With a Bolshevik majority secured in Petrograd, the party set its sights on the upcoming Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets. The Bolshevik Petrograd Soviet organized the First Congress of Soviets of the Northern Region on October 24-26 in Petrograd, with Baltic Fleet representatives taking part. The Socialist Revolutionary-Menshevik committee refused to recognize the congress as legal, charging the Bolsheviks with violating delegate election procedures. Lenin personally considered declaring the Northern Regional Congress the highest authority, but delegates resolved instead to leave the question of power to the Second All-Russian Congress.

  The dispute over convening authority was substantive. According to the procedures then in force, only the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, as the permanent body of the previous Congress, had the right to call a new All-Russian Congress. The committee, still in Menshevik-SR hands, had no intention of doing so voluntarily. On October 19, the official Soviet newspaper Izvestia stated plainly: "No other committee is authorized and does not have the right to take the initiative to convene a congress." The committee declared in advance that the Second Congress would be only an illegal "private meeting of individual Soviets", and then, contradicting its own position, agreed to convene it, pushing the opening date from October 20 to October 25 of 1917. Ten percent of the Congress delegates turned out to be Latvians, a proportion the source notes did not correspond to their share of the population. Peasant Russia, which backed the Socialist Revolutionaries, had no representation at all; the Second All-Russian Congress of Peasant Deputies met separately, as the first one had.

• 6. Handover of Power

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  The Second Congress opened on November 7 at 10:40 in the evening, in the middle of the armed uprising already under way in Petrograd. The Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries condemned the Bolshevik action as an illegal coup, and the outgoing committee announced that it considered the congress a failure and its decisions optional for local Soviets. On November 8, at the congress's evening session, Lenin proposed dissolving the old committee and electing a new one alongside a temporary workers' and peasants' government - the Council of People's Commissars.

  The new 101-member committee included 62 Bolsheviks and 29 Left Social Revolutionaries. Menshevik Internationalists, Ukrainian socialists, and one representative of the radical maximalist Socialist Revolutionary faction also sat in it. Moderate socialist representatives refused to join, maintaining their boycott. Lev Kamenev became chairman. On November 9, the Congress sent an appeal to local Soviets to rally around the new committee, and the commissars of the former composition had their authority declared discontinued. Kamenev held the chair from November 9 to 21, 1917, when Yakov Sverdlov succeeded him and held the position until his death in office on the 16th of March 1919.

• 7. Coalition and Merger

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  A week after taking power, the new committee adopted a resolution on the 14th of November 1917, declaring socialist party agreement desirable. It set out explicit terms: recognition of the Soviet government's program as expressed in the decrees on land, peace, and workers' control; acceptance that counter-revolution must be fought ruthlessly; recognition of the Second Congress as the sole source of power; and government accountability to the committee itself. The terms also included enlarging the committee by adding representatives from trade unions, factory committees, postal and telegraph workers, and other organizations, provided those bodies had been re-elected within the previous three months.

  On the 28th of November 1917, the committee merged with the 108-member executive committee elected at the Extraordinary All-Russian Peasants' Congress. After that merger, the Left Socialist Revolutionaries agreed to join the Council of People's Commissars and form a coalition with the Bolsheviks. The merged body was composed of 62 Bolsheviks, 29 Left SRs, and 10 Mensheviks and Right SRs. Kamenev continued as chair with a tie-breaking vote. On the 30th of December 1922, the Soviet Union was formed; Mikhail Kalinin, who had held the RSFSR chairmanship since the 30th of March 1919, simultaneously became chairman of the newly formed Central Executive Committee of the All-Union Congress of Soviets. Kalinin would hold both positions, increasingly ceremonial over time, until the 15th of July 1938.