Lenin dissolves the Constituent Assembly after one day
Russia holds its freest election ever, the Bolsheviks lose, and Lenin shuts the doors with Red Guards.
Quick facts
- Election
- November 1917
- Bolshevik vote share
- About 24%
- Dissolved
- 19 January 1918, after one session
What happened
Elections for Russia's Constituent Assembly, a body meant to write the country's new constitution, were held in November 1917. The Bolsheviks won a little under a quarter of the vote, well behind the Socialist Revolutionaries, and the Assembly convened at Petrograd's Tauride Palace on 18 January 1918 by the modern calendar. When the delegates refused to recognize the authority of the Soviet government over their own, the Bolsheviks and their Left Socialist Revolutionary allies walked out. World History Encyclopedia records that Lenin then ordered his Red Guards to shut the assembly down after it had sat for a single day; when deputies returned the next afternoon, they found the Tauride Palace's entrances barricaded.
Why it matters
Russia's most democratic experiment to date lasted about thirteen hours before Lenin closed it because his party had lost the vote, a decision widely cited afterward as an early sign of Bolshevik authoritarianism. Elected democracy did not return to Russia until after the Soviet Union's collapse more than seven decades later.
How we know
World History Encyclopedia's account of the Bolshevik Revolution's aftermath documents the November 1917 election results and Lenin's order to dissolve the Assembly once it refused to submit to Soviet authority.
Sources
- World History Encyclopedia. Bolshevik Revolution: When Russia Became a Socialist State in 1917 · Reputable sourceworldhistory.org · The domain "worldhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- World History Encyclopedia. Bolshevik Revolution: When Russia Became a Socialist State in 1917 · Reputable sourceworldhistory.org · The domain "worldhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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