p Once power was theirs, the working people of Russia went on to build a socialist society under Bolshevik leadership. The top priority was to evolve a new state structure, the first of its kind. Though the working millions were already participating in the conduct of all the country’s affairs through the Soviets, their own creation, we had to regulate the procedures of those bodies, to give them the organised and functional structure that was lacking in the early days.

p The firm establishment of the Soviets and the development of the socialist state structure concerned the Central Committee and Lenin increasingly, especially after the move to Moscow. Sverdlov, for his part, never tired of emphasising the need for the closest possible contact between the organs of power and the workers, who should be extensively involved in running the state.

p The first specialist courses for agitators and CEC instructors were arranged on Sverdlov’s initiative, and were later renamed the Ya. M. Sverdlov Communist University, which gained a well-earned reputation as a training ground for the professional core of the Party and the Soviets. He drew up the first curriculum himself; I have a handwritten copy:

p Labour and capital and the history of the class struggle: Lenin; 

p The agrarian question: Yaroslavsky; 

p Food supplies: Tsyurupa and Svidersky; 

p The organisation of Soviet power: Vladimirsky; 

p Parliamentarianism and the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie: Pokrovsky; 

p The construction of the Soviets: Petrovsky; 

p The national question: Stalin; 

p The Soviets and education: Lunacharsky.

p Sverdlov gave lectures on the state and took an interest in the academic progress and living conditions of the students. He would often say to me after talking with them: ’My goodness, what people they are! With people like that we can move mountains.’

p The Party put a great deal of effort into framing a new legislative system that would bring order and the rule of law to the country and ensure that the interests of the workers were met. This work proceeded under the guidance of Lenin, who was an outstanding jurist, while Sverdlov, head of the highest Soviet legislative body, the CEC, was constantly at hand to help him in this complex task.

p Sverdlov was actively involved in all aspects of the work from 30 March 1918, when the Central Committee instructed him to form a Constitutional Commission.

p The first Soviet Constitution, the fundamental law of the Soviet state that had emerged from the October Revolution, was adopted less than a year after the revolution. Based on Lenin’s Declaration of the Rights of the Working and Exploited People, it was the embodiment and summary of all that the people had learned in creating and establishing the Soviet State.

p Dozens of prominent Soviet and Party members, and leading specialists in law, worked under Lenin’s leadership to draw up the Constitution. Having passed through its formative stages in the CEC and the Central Committee, it was presented to the All-Russia Congress of Soviets.

The Constitutional Commission’s work was completed by June 1918 and the draft document was passed on to a commission of the Central Committee headed by Lenin, which made several amendments. On 10 July 1918 the Fifth Congress of Soviets ratified the Constitution of the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic.