the Constituent Assembly met in Petrograd’s Tauride Palace on 18 January. Lenin presented his decrees only to have them all rejected. He left in disgust, and the meeting continued without him until four the next morning, by which time the caretaker of the building announced ‘the guard is tired. I propose that you close the meeting and let everybody go home.’ The following day, they returned only to find the building locked and the Assembly dissolved by the Bolsheviks. Russia’s new democracy had lasted just thirteen hours.
