Roditcheff, who had been a member of three Dumas under the Tsar, remained unconvinced by this logic, and demanded a protest. It was written. Chernoff accused the Bolsheviki of being like the Mahommedans, who wanted to burn all the books but the Koran, on the ground that all things necessary to be said were said in the Koran, and all other books must either say something different, in which case they should be burned, or must say the same thing, which would be a waste of words. “The Constituent Assembly, if it is against the Bolshevik, it would not represent the people, if it is for the Bolsheviki, it will merely repeat what they have already done,” he said. Trotzky and Lenin had no hesitancy in declaring that, unless the Constituent Assembly was Bolshevik, it would not represent the people, and therefore must be dissolved. They said, quite truthfully, that the Assembly was chosen according to election laws made by the coalition government, and conducted by officials representative of that group, and of the political rather than of the economic ideal. The Revolution that overthrew Tsarism was basically a political revolution. That which established the dictatorship of the proletariat was fundamentally economic. Between the political and the economic revolutions, the demands of the masses had undergone a sweeping change. The Constituent Assembly, in spite of its socialistic membership, and its claim of being the only elective group in Russia, was a bequest of the political Revolution. More than a month elapsed between the time of that abortive meeting of thirty-five members, and the date of the actual opening of the national gathering. Petrograd awaited the hour with faint hope and much misgiving. On January 16, the “Extraordinary Commission for the Protection of Petrograd” declared the city in a state of siege, and issued the following proclamation: TO THE POPULATION OF PETROGRAD! The Extraordinary Commission for the Protection of Petrograd is in possession of information that counter-revolutionists of all shades, united in the struggle against the Soviet authorities, have scheduled their demonstration for January 18--the day of the opening of the Constituent Assembly. It has also become known that the leaders of these counter-revolutionary plots are Filonenko, Savinkoff, and Kerensky, who arrived in Petrograd, coming from the Don from Kaledin. The organization of the counter-revolutionists is being supported through considerable funds by the Moscow and Petrograd bankers and speculators. The Extraordinary Commission has taken appropriate measures for the maintenance of strict revolutionary order in the capital. Making this public to all citizens of Petrograd, the Extraordinary Commission calls their attention to the following: (1) Petrograd is in a state of siege, and all attempts of pogroms will be suppressed by armed force.