"In fact, there never was either a secret election in Soviet Russia, or one based on equal suffrage. Elections are usually conducted at a given factory or foundry at open meetings, by the raising of hands and always under the knowing eye of the chairman. The majority of the workers very frequently do not take part in these elections at all. The rights of a minority are never recognized, as proportional representation has been rejected. "As regards direct elections, it is again a mere phrase. The Central Executive Committee, which is supposed to embody the supreme administrative organ of the country, was actually being elected through a four-grade system. Local Soviets send their representatives to the Provincial Congress, the Provincial Congress is represented by delegates at the All-Russian Congress, and only this last body elects the Central Executive Committee. Often the delegates are not elected by the regular meetings of the Soviets at all, but are sent by the Executive Committees, cleverly handpicked by the Bolsheviki after the system of proportional representation was rejected.... "The exclusion from the Soviets of all who think differently from the Bolsheviki developed gradually. They 'cleansed' the Soviets in Perm and Ekaterinburg, in January 1918; in Ufa, Saratov, Samara, Kazan and Yaroslavl in December, 1917; in Moscow and Petrograd in February, 1918. They were excluding all Socialists-Revolutionists and the Mensheviki, to say nothing of the People's Socialists and members of the Labor Group. Often, when workers demanded new elections to the Soviet (as happened in Petrograd late in December of 1917, and early in January, 1918), and such elections did take place, the Bolsheviki would not permit the newly elected delegates to enter the building of the Soviet and frequently arrested them. Gradually only Bolsheviki and Socialists-Revolutionists of the Left remained in the Soviets. Soon, however, after the assassination in Moscow of Count Mirbach, the German Ambassador, and the attempt at rebellion in Moscow early in June, 1918, by the Socialists-Revolutionists of the Left, the Bolsheviki began to fill up the prisons with the latter just as they did with the Socialists-Revolutionists of the Right and the Menshiviki. "So, practically, there remained only Bolsheviki in the Soviets. And as there was no difference of opinion among them, regular meetings were soon abandoned altogether and the ostensible 'rule of the working masses' thus definitely disappeared. A few persons, often appointed from above (the Bolsheviki often had recourse to bayonets to support the fiction of Soviet rule: in Tumen the Executive Committee of a non-existent Soviet was brought from Ekaterinburg under a convoy of 800 Red Guards), would rule and lord it over the people, tired and weary of the war and a sterile revolution. "Occasional outbursts of popular wrath serve as indications of the depth of dissatisfaction which is engendered by the Soviets and their offshoots, the Military-Revolutionary Committee. Thus, in the Polevsky works, in Ekaterinburg County, a mob of peasants, armed with axes, scythes and sticks, fell upon the Soviets and beast-like tore into fragments fifty Bolsheviki. In the Neviansk works the insurrection of the workers against the Red Army lasted for three days, until reinforcements from Perm finally subdued this 'counter-revolutionary' revolt. In Okhansk County 2,000 peasants were shot down for demanding the abolition of the Soviets and the re-establishment of the rule of the people."
In the April 19, 1919, issue of "Struggling Russia" we are told that "Vlast Naroda," in May, 1918, thus described the uprisings against the Soviets: