"This is an outrage, not a session!" cried Tchernov, and he left the
hall; the meeting was adjourned because of the noise and disorder....
Meanwhile, the question of the status of the Executive Committee was
agitating all minds. By declaring the assembly "Extraordinary
Conference," it had been planned to block the reelection of the
Executive Committee. But this worked both ways; the Left Socialist
Revolutionists decided that if the Congress had no power over the
Executive Committee, then the Executive Committee had no power over
the Congress. On November 25th the assembly resolved that the powers
of the Executive Committee be assumed by the Extraordinary
Conference, in which only members of the Executive who had been
elected as delegates might vote....
The next day, in spite of the bitter opposition of the Bolsheviki,
the resolution was amended to give all the members of the Executive
Committee, whether elected as delegates or not, voice and vote in
the assembly.
On the 27th occurred the debate on the Land question, which revealed
the differences between the agrarian programme of the Bolsheviki and
the Left Socialist Revolutionaries.
Kolchinsky, for the Left Socialist Revolutionaries, outlined the
history of the Land question during the Revolution. The first
Congress of Peasants' Soviets, he said, had voted a precise and
formal resolution in favour of putting the landed estates
immediately into the hands of the Land Committees.
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