Declaration of the Rights of the Working and Exploited People

Structure and Content

The adopted Declaration comprised four sections. The first established the political foundations of the Soviet state and the federal principle; the second set the basic task of building socialism and provided for land socialisation, workers' control and bank nationalisation, universal labour conscription, and the creation of a Red Army. The third set out foreign-policy principles: peace, the annulment of secret treaties and of foreign loans, and self-determination including Finland and Armenia. The fourth excluded the exploiting classes from governing the Soviet state while providing that the workers and peasants of each nation could independently decide at their own congress on participation in the federal government and other federal Soviet institutions.

On the economic side, the Declaration abolished private land ownership, declared the entire land fund the property of the people and transferred it to the working people without redemption on egalitarian principles, and nationalised forests, subsoil, waters of state importance, model estates and agricultural enterprises. Confirmation of workers' control and the Supreme Economic Council was framed as the first step toward the complete transfer of factories, mines, railways and other means of production and transport to the Soviet Republic, and the annulment of tsarist, landlord and bourgeois loans was regarded as a first blow at international banking capital. The Declaration was to be published immediately and read from the Constituent Assembly rostrum by the official representative of Soviet power opening it.

Conflict with the Constituent Assembly and Adoption by the Third Congress

The Declaration was drafted amid severe crisis after the First World War and social upheaval. The Bolsheviks claimed to hold power only until the Constituent Assembly convened, and the draft written by Lenin was approved by the All-Russian Central Executive Committee on 3 (16) January in order to obtain the Assembly's endorsement. The SR majority found its demands unacceptable. On 5 (18) January Sverdlov read the Declaration out on behalf of the Bolshevik faction, but the Assembly did not take it up. The Bolsheviks and then the Left SRs walked out, depriving the sitting of a quorum; the remaining deputies adopted ten points of a land law, and the next day the doors were closed and the Assembly was dissolved.

Sources differ over precisely how the Assembly disposed of the Declaration: the Russian Wikipedia article states that it was rejected by 237 votes to 136, while other accounts, including a later passage in the same article and other legal sources, say the Assembly refused even to discuss it and did not place the question on its agenda. Either way, the Assembly did not adopt the Declaration, and it was dissolved as a result.

After the dissolution, the question of the constitutional order passed to the Third Congress of Soviets, which opened on 10 (23) January and whose delegates mostly belonged to or supported the Bolshevik party. On 12 (25) January the Congress definitively adopted the Declaration, making it the provisional constitutional document of the Soviet republic, and after the workers' and soldiers' congress merged with the peasants' congress the merged congress again put it to a vote on 18 (31) January and adopted it unanimously. The text was published on 17 January 1918 in Pravda No. 2 and on 31 January 1918 in Izvestia TsIK No. 2.

Incorporation into the Constitution and Significance

On Lenin's proposal the Declaration was included in the Constitution of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic adopted by the Fifth All-Russia Congress of Soviets on 10 July 1918 as its introductory part, and the two together formed the single fundamental law of the RSFSR. In that constitution the Declaration's provisions appear as Articles 1 to 8, including the abolition of private land ownership, confirmation of workers' control and the Supreme Economic Council, the annulment of tsarist, landlord and bourgeois loans, the creation of a socialist Red Army and the disarming of the propertied classes, the foreign-policy chapter, and the exclusion of exploiters from government agencies together with the free federation of Soviet republics.

In Soviet legal commentary the Declaration was treated as a constitutional rather than purely programmatic document: a detailed reading concludes that it legally fixed what had already been achieved in practice. Stalin's contemporaneous characterisation placed it in the transitional period from capitalism to socialism, defined by the suppression of the overthrown classes and defence against external attack as the two basic functions. The Declaration did not establish concrete forms of federation, and it served as a prototype of the future constitution, with its provisions carried into the legal systems of the USSR and the union republics until 1991.

Titles and Distinctions

The document circulates in English under several titles. Besides the standard rendering, a separate translation under the title 'Declaration of the Rights of the Toiling and Exploited Peoples' shows that the same document is cited with different standard English titles and section structure.

The Declaration is distinct from the Declaration of the Rights of the Peoples of Russia, issued on 15 November (Old Style) 1917. The former is a constitutional document defining the constitutional order and the social and economic tasks of the Soviet state, whereas the latter proclaimed the equality and self-determination of nations; the Declaration itself likewise contained clauses recognising Finland's complete independence, the beginning of the withdrawal of troops from Persia, and self-determination for Armenia.