861.01/63: Telegram
The Acting Secretary of State to the Commission to Negotiate Peace
2269. For the Secretary of State and McCormick:
Referring to your 2471, June 8, 7 p.m.98 Consul General Harris reports the Omsk Government disagrees on only one point namely, question of convening the old Constituent Assembly, because it is not willing that the majority of the members of that Assembly, who are now in the ranks of the Bolsheviki and who do not fully represent the Russian people, should be able to seize upon and resume control of Russia. Harris comments further as follows:
“My personal opinion is that one might as well keep Lenine and Trotsky in power as to turn the one [sic] over to the Left Wing of Social Revolutionary Party. Chernoff and his associates would have undoubtedly delivered Siberia to the Bolsheviki if the Ufa Directorate had been permitted to remain in power at Omsk, and I fully believe such would have been the trend of affairs if the issue had not been forced last November and Kolchak invited to assume charge of affairs. In this matter I fully agree with the attitude of the Omsk Government that an entirely new Constituent Assembly should be convened and the one which elected Chernoff President in 1917 completely ignored.”
My recollection is that of the 800 members elected to the Constituent Assembly in 1917 only 200 were Bolshevists, in spite of the perfectly open measures taken by the Bolsheviki to influence voting, especially with all polls open to returning soldiers, many of whom voted several times. When the Assembly actually convened at Petrograd Ambassador Francis telegraphed as follows:99 [Page 374]
“Members attending something over four hundred, of which two-thirds Social Revolutionary, one-third Bolsheviks and extreme left of Social Revolutionary.”
Chernoff, Social Revolutionary, was elected President of Assembly. The career of Chernoff has been one of constant opportunism. When the Root Mission was in Russia, members of the Cabinet of the Provisional Government were perfectly frank in conversation regarding Chernoff’s suspected relations with Germany. I can readily see that grave embarrassments and complications might result from reviving the first Constituent Assembly. Elections to it were held under the Bolshevik régime. The Assembly itself never met as a whole. The subsequent career of its Chairman and of many of the members has been such as to have become the subject of bitter controversy. Moreover, since the elections of 1917 the situation in Russia has changed radically and completely in all parts of the enormous territory of that country.
- Not printed; it transmitted text of reply from Admiral Kolchak, printed p. 375.↩
- Foreign Relations, 1918, Russia, vol. i, p. 351.↩