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Mute Deputies. The first vote was the crucial one—for the chairmanship of the Assembly. The SRs nominated Chernov; the Bolsheviks, Marya Skpiridonova. Chernov won, 244-151. Apparently, he had the pathetic hope that the Reds might be persuaded to moderation and compromise; his speech was couched in Socialist and international tones, as though attempting to placate the Bolsheviks and appealing for the unity that all Russia desperately wanted. The response was bloodthirsty. "Bullets are the only way!" screamed the Bolsheviks. In answer to Chernov, Bolshevik Nikolai Bukharin strode to the platform to cry, "We demand a dictatorship of the toiling classes!" and, "From this platform we proclaim a war to the death on the bourgeois-parliamentary republic."
By 11 that night it became clear to Lenin that harassment and threats would not prevent the SR majority from enacting a whole series of resolutions that would have the effect of law. His tactic: an order to the Bolshevik Deputies to walk out of the Assembly. After some hesitation, the Left SRs followed them. In the hall, the sailors and Red soldiers now threw off all restraint. They leaped through the barriers, carried their rifles cocked along the corridors, stormed into the galleries. In their seats the Deputies were motionless, tragically mute. We were isolated from the world, just as the Tauride, Palace was isolated from Petrograd, and Petrograd from Russia. Surrounded by tumult, in the wilderness, we were given over to the will of the triumphant enemy.
"Citizen Sailor." There were moments when it seemed that the troops would end the tension by opening fire. We heard that trucks had been brought up to carry us off as prisoners. We collected candles in case the electricity was cut off. Through it all, we maintained the forms of parliamentary procedure. At 4 in the morning, during a debate on the land law, a sailor climbed up on the platform, went to the podium and stood there for a time as though sunk in thought. Then, abruptly, he pulled Chairman Chernov's sleeve and announced that, according to instructions he had received, everybody was to leave the hall. An argument began between Chernov and the "Citizen Sailor," Chernov insisting: "We'll disperse only if force is used," and the sailor stubbornly repeating: "The meeting hall must be cleared immediately."
We had had no food since noon; we were all exhausted; we knew that imprisonment or death or exile lay ahead for most of us. At 4:40 a.m. the first session of the All-Russian Constituent Assembly came to an end. We voted to adjourn and voted a special resolution to meet again at 5 in the afternoon.
The excited crowd left the hall in a slowly moving stream. V. M. Chernov came down from the platform, rolling his papers into a cylinder. We walked off to the coat racks together. The sentries did not stop anyone, but I heard a remark aimed at Chernov: "There's someone for the point of a bayonet."
The last word was Lenin's. In an order to his troops that night, he said: "From tomorrow morning on, no one will be allowed into the Tauride Palace." The only freely elected Parliament in the history of Russia had lasted less than a single day. Russia subsided into the Soviet night.