Steppes electoral district (Russian Constituent Assembly election, 1917)

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Constituency of the Russian Republic

Created1917

Abolished1918

Number of members14

Number of Uyezd Electoral Commissions10

Steppes
Former Civilian constituency for the All-Russian Constituent Assembly

Former constituency
Created	1917
Abolished	1918
Number of members	14
Number of Uyezd Electoral Commissions	10
Number of Urban Electoral Commissions	3
Number of Parishes	384
Sources:	^[1]^[2]

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]

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 uyezd [ru] 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

↑ И. С. Малчевский (1930). Всероссийское учредительное собрание. Гос изд-во. pp. 140–142.
↑ Б. Ф Додонов; Е. Д Гринько; О. В.. Лавинская (2004). Журналы заседаний Временного правительства: Сентябрь-октябрь 1917 года. РОССПЭН. pp. 206–208.
↑ Татьяна Евгеньевна Новицкая (1991). Учредительное собрание: Россия 1918 : стенограмма и другие документы. Недра. p. 13.
↑ 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.
1 2 Л. М Спирин (1987). Россия 1917 год: из истории борьбы политических партий. Мысль. pp. 273–328.
1 2 3 4 Революционное движение в Сибири и на Дальнем Востоке. Сб. статей. Вып. VII. Томск, 1974. pp. 121–124
↑ 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.
↑ 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.

v t e Electoral Districts of the 1917 Russian Constituent Assembly election
Northern/Northwestern	Arkhangelsk Olonets Vologda Petrograd Metropolis Petrograd Pskov Novgorod
Baltic/White Russian	Estonia Livonia Vitebsk Minsk Mogilev Smolensk
Central Industrial	Moscow Metropolis Moscow Tver Yaroslavl Kostroma Vladimir Kaluga Tula
Central Black Earth	Ryazan Oryol Kursk Voronezh Tambov Penza
Volga	Nizhni Novgorod Simbirsk Kazan Samara Saratov Astrakhan
Kama-Ural	Vyatka Perm Ufa Orenburg
Ukraine	Kiev Volynia Podolia Chernigov Poltava Kharkov Yekaterinoslav Kherson
Southern-Black Sea/Southeastern	Bessarabia Taurida Don Cossack Region Stavropol
Caucasus	Kuban-Black Sea Ter-Dagestan Pricaspian Transcaucasus
Turkestan	Horde Uralsk Turgai Transcaspian Samarkand Amu Darya Syr Darya Fergana Semirechie
Siberia	Tobolsk Steppes Tomsk Altai Yenisei Irkutsk Transbaikal Priamur Chinese Eastern Railroad Yakutsk Kamchatka
Military districts	Baltic Fleet Black Sea Fleet Northern Front Western Front South-Western Front Romanian Front Caucasian Front Russian forces in France and the Balkans

Bolshevik Party

Socialist-Revolutionary Party

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