Third All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Peasants Deputies

a congress held in Petrograd in the Smol’nyi on Jan. 13 (26), 1918. In preparation for the congress, the Right Socialist Revolutionaries (SR’s) tried to isolate the peasants’ soviets from the proletarian leadership, arguing for the organizational and functional separation of the peasants’ soviets and the soviets of workers’ and soldiers’ deputies. Of the delegates attending the congress, 705 had voting rights, while 115 had consultative rights. Close to 320 Bolsheviks and 165 Left SR’s were among the delegates. Organizations represented at the congress included 340 local soviets and 129 soldiers’ committees.

At the first session, the congress adopted a resolution—proposed by Ia. M. Sverdlov, chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, and opposed by the Right SR’s and Mensheviks—by which the congress joined together with the Third All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, which was then in session and which assumed the name of Third All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’, and Peasants’ Deputies. This merger was the final stage in the process by which Soviet power was vested in a single supreme body; it hastened the union of local soviets of workers, soldiers, and peasants and consolidated the alliance of the working class with the working peasantry.