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[48] The elections to the Constituent Assembly had been fixed by the Provisional Government for September 17, 1917, and the article "The Constituent Assembly Elections" was written in connection with the opening of the election campaign. The first part of the article appeared in Pravda, No. 99, July 5, but was not continued because the paper was suppressed after the July days. The article was printed in full only on July 27, in Rabochy i Soldat, No. 4. [p. 158]
[49] The All-Russian Peasants' Union was a petty-bourgeois organization which arose in 1905 and demanded political liberty, a Constituent Assembly and the abolition of private ownership of land. It disintegrated in 1906, but resumed its activities in 1917, and on July 31 convened an All-Russian Congress in Moscow. The congress declared its unqualified support of the Provisional Government, favoured continuation of the imperialist war, and opposed the seizure of the landed estates by the peasants. In the autumn of 1917 several members of the Central Committee of the Peasants' Union took part in repressing peasant uprisings. [p. 158]
[50] The Soviet of Peasants' Deputies of the Petrograd Garrison, which later changed its name to the Petrograd Soviet of Peasants' Deputies, was constituted on April 14, 1917, from representatives of the military units and some of the industrial plants of Petrograd. Its chief object was to secure the transfer of the tenure of all land to the peasants without compensation. It opposed the compromising policy of the All-Russian Soviet of Peasants' Deputies, which was controlled by Right-wing Socialist-Revolutionaries. After the October Socialist Revolution the Petrograd Soviet of Peasants' Deputies took an active part in the establishment of Soviet rule in the countryside and in the implementation of the Decree on the Land. The Soviet terminated its existence in February 1918 with the demobilization of the old army. [p. 161]