Preparliament

Preparliament 

(officially, the Provisional Council of the Russian Republic from Oct. 2 [15], 1917), a consultative organ under the bourgeois Provisional Government.

The Preparliament was formed at a session of the Presidium of the Democratic Conference on Sept. 20 (Oct. 3), 1917, and was initially called the All-Russian Democratic Council. The Preparliament was to have a total of 313 members, representing 15 percent of each faction and group of the Democratic Conference. The new coalition Provisional Government that was formed on Sept. 25 (Oct. 8) curtailed the powers and functions of the Preparliament and changed its composition by also including in it representatives of “qualified” (tsenzovye)—that is, bourgeois and landholders’—organizations and institutions, such as the Cadet party and commercial and industrial associations. The number of members was thus increased to 555. According to incomplete data, the Preparliament was composed of 135 Socialist Revolutionaries, 92 Mensheviks, 30 People’s Socialists, and 75 Cadets; the Bolsheviks held 58 seats.

In unmasking the counterrevolutionary nature of the Preparliament, V. I. Lenin wrote that its only purpose was to divert the workers and peasants from the developing revolution (Poln. sobr. soch., 5th ed., vol. 34, p. 260). On Oct. 5 (18) the Central Committee of the RSDLP (B) decided that the Bolsheviks would leave the Preparliament. On Oct. 7 (20) the Socialist Revolutionary N. D. Avksent’ev was elected chairman of the Preparliament. The same day the members of the Bolshevik faction left the Preparliament, declaring that the Bolsheviks had nothing whatever in common with the “government of treason to the people” and with the “council of counterrevolutionary connivance.”

Addressing the Preparliament on Oct. 24 (Nov. 6), A. F. Kerensky acknowledged the state of insurrection in Petrograd. In an attempt to split the revolutionary forces and avert a revolution, the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries passed a resolution (123 votes for, 102 against, 26 abstentions), which, in addition to a demand for suppressing the uprising, drew the government’s attention to the need for immediate issuance of a decree on placing the land under the management of the land committees and making a decisive foreign policy step by proposing to the allies that peace conditions be declared and peace negotiations be started. At 1 P.M. on Oct. 25 (Nov. 7), revolutionary troops seized the Mariinskii Palace and the Preparliament was disbanded.

REFERENCES

Lenin, V. I. Poln. sobr. soch., 5th ed., vol. 34. Pages 257–63, 342–46, and 347–50.
Slavin, N. F. “Oktiabr’skoe vooruzhennoe vosstanie i Predparlament.” In the collection Lenin i Oktiabr’skoe vooruzhennoe vosstanie v Petrograde. Moscow, 1964.