2. All electoral committees, all local organizations, the Councils of Workmen’s, Soldiers’, and Peasants’ Delegates and the soldiers’ organizations at the front are to bend every effort toward safeguarding the freedom of the voters and fair play at the elections to the Constituent Assembly, which will be held on the appointed date. If language has any meaning at all, by these declarations the Bolsheviki were pledged to recognize and uphold the Constituent Assembly. As the electoral campaign proceeded and it became evident that the Bolsheviki would not receive the support of the great mass of the voters, their organs began to adopt a very critical attitude toward the Constituent Assembly. There was a thinly veiled menace in the following passages from an article published in _Pravda_ on November 18, 1917, while the electoral campaign was in full swing: _To expect from the Constituent Assembly a painless solution of all our accursed problems not only savors of parliamentary imbecility, but is also dangerous politically...._ The victory of the Petrograd proletariat and garrison in the November revolution furnishes the only possible guaranty of the convocation of the Constituent Assembly, and, what is not less important, assures success to such a solution of our political and social problems which the War and the Revolution have made the order of the day. The convocation of the Constituent Assembly stands or falls with the Soviet power. The elections to the Constituent Assembly were held in a large majority of electoral districts on the 12th, 19th, and 26th of November, 1917--that is, after the _coup d’état_, in the full tide of Bolshevist enthusiasm. The Bolsheviki were in power, and there is abundant evidence that they resorted to almost every known method of coercion and intimidation to secure a result favorable to themselves. Of 703 deputies elected in 54 out of a total of 81 election districts, only 168 belonged to the Bolshevist Party. At the same time the Party of Socialists-Revolutionists proper, not reckoning the organizations of the same party among other nationalities of Russia, won twice that number of seats--namely, 338. Out of a total of 36,257,960 votes cast in 54 election districts the Bolshevist Party counted barely 25 per cent. The votes cast for their candidates amounted to 9,023,963, whereas the Socialists-Revolutionists polled 20,893,734--that is, 58 per cent. of all the votes cast.