It was at the
beginning of the campaign, and the Bolsheviki had their own candidates in
the field in many places. It was a foregone conclusion that the Constituent
Assembly brought into being by the universal suffrage would be dominated by
Socialists. There was never the slightest fear that it would be dominated
by the bourgeois parties. What followed is best told in the exact language
of a protest to the International Socialist Bureau by Inna Rakitnikov,
representative of the Revolutionary Socialist party, which was, be it
remembered, the largest and the oldest of the Russian Socialist parties:
The _coup d'etat_ was followed by various other manifestations of
Bolshevist activity--arrests, searches, confiscation of
newspapers, ban on meetings. Bands of soldiers looted the country
houses in the suburbs of the city; a school for the children of
the people and the buildings of the Children's Holiday Settlement
were also pillaged. Bands of soldiers were forthwith sent into the
country to cause trouble there.... The bands of soldiers who were
sent into the country used not only persuasion, but also violence,
_trying to force the peasants to give their votes for the
Bolshevik candidates at the time of the elections to the
Constituent Assembly; they tore up the bulletins of the
Socialist-Revolutionists, overturned the ballot-boxes, etc_.
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