It stands to reason that the Bolsheviks had no intention of allowing such an Assembly to meet, for they well knew that the Council and the Ukrainian people were opposed to the excesses of the Bolsheviks and their system of massacring their opponents, and that any expression of the wishes of the people would establish some other form of government. As a result they continued their policy of trying to disintegrate the Council and of arousing discontent in all possible quarters. By sending Bolshevik bands, composed largely of non-Ukrainians, into the country, by spreading incendiary appeals to the people, by fomenting class hatred in every way, they succeeded in keeping the country stirred up and in preventing the stabilization of conditions. Then they induced the Kiev Soviet, composed chiefly of non-Ukrainian workers in some of the factories, to demand the calling of an All-Ukrainian Council of Soviets on December 5/17. The Council saw to it that this was not a mere rump convention of the Bolsheviks, as Stalin had planned, but was widely representative of all the leftist elements of Ukraine which were grouped in Soviets or Councils. As a result, the Bolshevik resolutions were voted down and the following was adopted: “The meeting of the Ukrainian Councils emphasizes its definite decision that the Central Council in its further work stand solidly on guard over the achievement of the revolution, spreading and deepening without halt the revolutionary activity to safeguard the class interests of a laboring democracy and call together without delay the Ukrainian Constituent Assembly, which alone can reveal the true will of all democratic Ukraine. The meeting of the Councils of Peasants’, Workmen’s and Soldiers’ Delegates of Ukraine in this manner expresses to the Ukrainian Central Council its full confidence and promises it its absolute support.” The resolution went on to say, “On paper the Soviet of People’s Commissars seemingly recognizes the right of a nation to self-determination and even to separation, but only in words. In fact, the government of Commissars brutally attempts to interfere in the activities of the Ukrainian government which executes the will of the legislative organ of the Central Council. What sort of self-determination is this? It is certain the Commissars will permit self-determination only to their own party; all other groups and peoples they, like the Tsarist regime, desire to keep under their domination by force of arms. But the Ukrainian people did not cast off the Tsarist yoke only to take upon themselves the yoke of the Commissars.” This resolution, adopted in December, 1917, expresses with rare nicety the entire policy of Soviet thought on its relations with other peoples and groups and it would have been well for Ukraine, had the sober judgment of these Councils prevailed. It would have saved a great deal of anguish and bloodshed in the coming years.