Russian Constituent Assembly - Election Results (November 12/25, 1917)

Election Results (November 12/25, 1917)

For details see the main article Russian Constituent Assembly election, 1917

More than 60 percent of citizens with the right to vote actually voted for Constituent Assembly. The election yielded the following results:

Party Votes Number of deputies
Socialist Revolutionaries 17,490,000 370
Bolsheviks 9,844,000 175
Mensheviks 1,248,000 16
Constitutional Democrats 2,000,000 17
Minorities 77
Left Socialist Revolutionaries 2,861,000 40
People's Socialists 4
Total: 41,700,000 703

However, due to the size of the country, the ongoing World War I and a deteriorating communications system, these results were not fully available at the time. A partial count (54 constituencies out of 79) was published by N. V. Svyatitsky in A Year of the Russian Revolution. 1917-18, Moscow, Zemlya i Volya Publishers, 1918. Svyatitsky's data was generally accepted by all political parties, including the Bolsheviks, and was as follows:

Party Ideology Votes
Russian Socialist Revolutionaries Socialist 16,500,000
Bolsheviks Socialist 9,023,963
Ukrainian, Moslem, and other non-Russian Socialist Revolutionaries Socialist 4,400,000
Constitutional Democrats Liberal 1,856,639
Mensheviks Socialist 668,064
Moslems Religious 576,000
Jewish Bund Socialist/Ethnic 550,000
Ukrainian Socialist-Federalists Social Democratic/Ethnic 507,000
Popular Socialists Social Democratic 312,000
Other Rightist groups Rightist 292,000
Association of Rural Proprietors and Landowners Rightist 215,000
Bashkirs Ethnic 195,000
Poles Ethnic 155,000
Germans Ethnic 130,000
Ukrainian Social-Democrats Social Democratic/Ethnic 95,000
Cossacks Ethnic 79,000
Old Believers Religious 73,000
Letts Ethnic 67,000
Co-operators Social Democratic 51,000
German socialists Social Democratic/Ethnic 44,000
Yedinstvo Social Democratic 25,000
Finnish socialists Social Democratic/Ethnic 14,000
Belarusians Ethnic 12,000
Total: 35,333,666

The bottom line was that the Bolsheviks received between 22% and 25% of the vote, albeit as clear winners in Russia's urban centers and among soldiers on the "Western Front" (two-thirds of those soldiers' votes). In the city of Moscow, for example, the Bolsheviks won 47.9% of the votes, the Constitutional Democrats (Kadets) 35.7% and the SRs 8.1 percent. While losing the urban vote, the Socialist-Revolutionary Party received around 57-58% (62% with their social democratic allies), having won the massive support of the country's rural peasantry who constituted 80% of the Russian population. However, this is a half truth because the Ukrainian Socialist Revolutionaries did not attend the Constituent Assembly when it convened. Another major factor is the split within the Socialist Revolutionaries which led to support for the Bolsheviks by the leftist SR faction.

Read more about this topic:  Russian Constituent Assembly

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