[3] The Socialist Revolutionary Party (SRs) wanted to keep the Peasants' Congress separate from that of the Workers’ and Soldiers’.

As the congress continued the number of those attending grew from 942 voting delegates with a further 104 participating in an advisory capacity to over 1,500[2] Lenin described the Congress as having "opened a new epoch in world History” and that by establishing the organisation of a new state power created by the October Revolution it had "projected the lines of future socialist construction for the whole world, for the working people of all countries”.

[5] Occurring shortly after the Constituent Assembly had been dissolved by order of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (VTsIK), the Congress resolved to expunge any references to the forthcoming Constituent Assembly from all new editions of decrees and laws of the Soviet Government, becoming thus the supreme body of national power and authority in Russia, with the VTsiK assuming its duties in between the sessions of the Congress.

It was also agreed to establish the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic on the basis of a free union of the peoples of Russia.

[7] The Mensheviks, Right Socialist-Revolutionaries and the Menshevik-Internationalists used the Congress to indicate their opposition to the domestic and foreign policy which the Bolsheviks passed.