Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly
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The Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly (Комитет членов Учредительного собрания (Комуч) in Russian, or Komitet chlenov Uchreditelnogo sobraniya (Komuch)), also known as Samarskaya uchredilka (if loosely translated, means "unauthorized self-establishment of power in Samara"), a counterrevolutionary "government", formed in Samara on June 8, 1918 after the Czech Legion had occupied the city.
Komuch proclaimed itself the highest authority in Russia, temporarily acting on behalf of the Constituent Assembly on the territory, occupied by the interventionists and the Whites, until the convocation of the new composition of the Assembly. Initially, Komuch consisted of 5 esers - members of the Constituent Assemly, dissolved by the Soviets (V.K.Volsky - chairman, Ivan Brushvit, Prokopiy Klimushkin, Boris Fortunatov, Ivan Nesterov). Subsequently, the Committee grew in size owing to the members of the Constituent Assembly (mainly, esers), who had come to Samara. Thus, by the end of September, Komuch numbered 96 people.
Komuch's executive body was the Council of Department Heads under the lead of Yevgeny Rogovsky. Having seized power with the help of the Czech Legion, Komuch announced "reinstatement" of democratic freedoms: they formally established an 8-hour working day, permitted worker's conferences and congresses of peasants, kept plant and factory committees (fabzavkomy, or fabrichno-zavodskiye komitety) and trade unions. Komuch abrogated the Soviet decrees, returned all the plants, factories and banks to their former owners, declared freedom of private enterprise and reinstated zemstva, city dumas and other establishments. Paying lip service to socialization of land, Komuch, in fact, provided landowners with an opportunity to take away their confiscated lands from the peasants and, also, harvest the winter crops of 1917. Komuch sent punitive expeditions to the rural areas of Russia in order to protect the property of landowners and kulaks, recruit and later mobilize people for the so-called People's Army.
Owing to the military support from interventionists and kulaks and Red Army's weakness, Komuch's power spread into the provinces of Samara, Simbirsk, Kazan, Ufa and Saratov in June-August of 1918. However, by the early November, the peasants became convinced of Komuch's counterrevolutionary nature and grew wary of it, organizing occasional resistance. In September, Komuch's People's Army sustained a number of defeats from the Red Army and left a major part of Komuch's territories. On September 23, Komuch yielded its power to the Directory of Ufa after a State Conferance between the Komuch itself and the Proviosnial Siberian Government, which would prove to be powerless and short-lived. Both regimes were made to become the new Provisional All-Russian Government (PA-RG).
After Admiral Kolchak's coup, the Directory and other establishments were dissolved by General Vladimir Kappel in November of 1918.
