industrial freedom, but not when forced to do so by that illegal body the Soviet."
The assembly met at Petrograd on January 19, 1918. It met under the guns of the Baltic Fleet and while Petrograd was filled with Red guards of the Bolsheviki. And then the Bolsheviki "called the bluff" of the "yellow" S. R.; the executive commissaries with Lenine at their head, walked into the Assembly and laid before the Bourgeois socialists there, not the mandate they expected, but merely the suggestion that the Assembly should legalize the Industrial State by constitutional provision, demanding and enforcing an immediate vote upon the suggestion. Forced to show their falsity, the Assembly voted it down and their traitorous conduct apparent to all, the Bolsheviki dissolved the Assembly with armed sailors.
Bourgeois opposition thru parliamentary channels unmasked and ended, the Soviets all over Russia elected delegates to an All-Russian Assembly of Soviets, which on February 1, 1918, adopted the long delayed constitution, legalizing the de facto Industrial State.
Finland, early in December 1917, had under bourgeois-socialist rule, declared independence from Russia and adopted a constitution even more conservative than the United States Constitution. A provision, "Free speech, shall prevail, but nothing shall be said against the government." Free speech, providing you say nothing! The freedom of a socialist (?) republic!
But Finland's conduct received approbation from both capitalist governments and socialist parliamentarians the world over, while the latter cast an eye of tentative disapproval on the Bolsheviki control of Russia.
The rank and file of the American Socialist Party,
