Steppes electoral district (Russian Constituent Assembly election, 1917)

The Steppes electoral district (Russian: Степной избирательный округ) was a constituency created for the 1917 Russian Constituent Assembly election. The electoral district covered the Akmolinsk Oblast and the Semipalatinsk Oblast.[3] According to Wade (2004), it is unclear whether the election was carried through to completion in the electoral district.[4]

Steppes
Former Civilian Constituency
for the All-Russian Constituent Assembly
Former constituency
Created1917
Abolished1918
Number of members14
Number of Uyezd Electoral Commissions10
Number of Urban Electoral Commissions3
Number of Parishes384
Sources:[1][2]

Lists in the fray

Fourteen lists contested the election in the Steppes;

  • No. 1 - Cossacks
  • No. 2 - Clergy and laity
  • No. 3 - Bolsheviks
  • No. 4 - Internationalists
  • No. 5 - Alash
  • No. 6 - Kadets
  • No. 7 - Tatars
  • No. 8 - Socialist-Revolutionaries
  • No. 9 - Socialist Cossacks
  • No. 10 - United Socialists
  • No. 11 - Kirghiz Socialists
  • No. 12 - Germans
  • No. 13 - Muslim Democrats
  • No. 14 - Clergy and Laity of Petropavlovsk

[5]

Campaigning

Bolshevik Party

The Bolshevik list (no. 3) included V.M. Kosarev, A.A. Zvezdov, V.V. Tarakanov and V.S. Gorshkov as some of its candidates. The Omsk Soviet of Workers and Soldiers Deputies appealed to workers and peasants to vote for the Bolshevik list. Bolshevik agitations called for established of soviet power whilst campaigning for the Constituent Assembly ballot. The newspaper Revolyotsionnaya mysl' ('Revolutionary Thought') played an important role in the Bolshevik campaign.[6]

Attempting to break the SR monopoly among the peasantry, the Bolsheviks in Omsk sent out some twenty railway workshop labourers and twenty soldiers to Akmolinsk Oblast and Tobolsk Governorate (being a separate electoral district) to campaign among the peasants.[6]

Socialist-Revolutionary Party

In the run up to the elections, the Socialist-Revolutionary Party was split as an Omsk-based left-wing group led by N. Ishmaev broke away. However, even after the departure of the leftists the SRs suffered internal divisions. On October 17, 1917 the West Siberian Soviet of Peasants Deputies Executive Committee held a meeting and decided to field the right-wing SR leader P. Derber as candidate for the Constituent Assembly election. But a group of right-wing SRs in the Omsk Provincial SR Party Council opposed Derber's candidature, arguing that his moral standing was questionable.[6]

The West Siberian Soviet of Peasants Deputies received a major financial boost from the Ministry of Education, which provided some 3 million Russian rubles for anti-Bolshevik agitation in the lead up to the vote.[6]

Results

The account of U.S. historian Oliver Henry Radkey, used as source for the results table below, only includes votes from Omsk and surroundings.[7]

Steppe
(only Omsk and surroundings)
Party Vote %
List 3 - Bolsheviks 11,681 37.71
List 6 - Kadets 4,925 15.90
List 10 - United Socialists
(Mensheviks-Rightwing Socialist Bloc)		 4,712 15.21
List 8 - Socialist-Revolutionaries 4,018 12.97
List 11 - Kirghiz Socialists 1,841 5.94
List 4 - Menshevik-Internationalists 1,660 5.36
List 1 - Cossack 1,069 3.45
List 2 - [Orthodox] Clergy and Laymen 555 1.79
List 5 - Alash 181 0.58
List 7 - Tatars ?
List 9 - Cossacks-Socialists ?
List 12 - Germans ?
List 13 - Muslim-Democrats ?
List 14 - [Orthodox] Clergy and Laymen of Petropavlovsk ?
Unaccounted 332 1.07
Total: 30,974

[8]

This account of the vote in Semipalatinsk uezd comes from the work of Soviet historian L. M. Spirin.

Steppe
(only Semipalatinsk uezd)
Party Vote %
List 5 - Alash 58,331 85.63
List 8 - Socialist-Revolutionaries 3,375 4.95
List 1 - Cossack 3,136 4.60
List 3 - Bolsheviks 1,910 2.80
List 9 - Cossacks-Socialists 475 0.70
List 7 - Tatars 468 0.69
List 2 - [Orthodox] Clergy and Laymen 150 0.22
List 4 - Menshevik-Internationalists 115 0.17
List 6 - Kadets 106 0.16
List 10 - United Socialists
(Mensheviks-Rightwing Socialist Bloc)		 19 0.03
List 13 - Muslim-Democrats 14 0.02
List 12 - Germans 11 0.02
List 14 - [Orthodox] Clergy and Laymen of Petropavlovsk 5 0.01
List 11 - Kirghiz Socialists 2 0.00
Total: 68,117

[5]

References
  1. И. С. Малчевский (1930). Всероссийское учредительное собрание. Гос изд-во. pp. 140–142.
  2. Б. Ф Додонов; Е. Д Гринько; О. В.. Лавинская (2004). Журналы заседаний Временного правительства: Сентябрь-октябрь 1917 года. РОССПЭН. pp. 206–208.
  3. Татьяна Евгеньевна Новицкая (1991). Учредительное собрание: Россия 1918 : стенограмма и другие документы. Недра. p. 13.
  4. Rex A. Wade (31 July 2004). Revolutionary Russia: New Approaches to the Russian Revolution of 1917. Routledge. pp. 256–257. ISBN 978-1-134-39764-8.
  5. Л. М Спирин (1987). Россия 1917 год: из истории борьбы политических партий. Мысль. pp. 273–328.
  6. Революционное движение в Сибири и на Дальнем Востоке. Сб. статей. Вып. VII. Томск, 1974. pp. 121-124
  7. Oliver Henry Radkey (1989). Russia goes to the polls: the election to the all-Russian Constituent Assembly, 1917. Cornell University Press. pp. 161–163. ISBN 978-0-8014-2360-4.
  8. Oliver Henry Radkey (1989). Russia goes to the polls: the election to the all-Russian Constituent Assembly, 1917. Cornell University Press. pp. 148–160. ISBN 978-0-8014-2360-4.
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