Discontent manifested itself also among the soldiers of the Preobrajenski and Litovsky regiments, and others.  In this manner in the day of the meeting of the Constituent Assembly they were no longer very numerous.  What loud cries, nevertheless, they had sent forth lately when Kerensky wished to send the Preobrajenski and Seminovski regiments from Petrograd!  “What?  Send the revolutionary regiments from Petrograd?  To make easier the surrender of the capital to the counter-revolution?” The soldiers of the Preobrajenski Regiment organized in their barracks frequent meetings, where the acts of the Bolsheviki were sharply criticized; they started a paper, The Soldiers’ Cloak, which was confiscated.

On the other hand, here is one of the resolutions voted by the workers of the Putilov factory: 

    The Constituent Assembly is the only organ expressing the will of
    the entire people.  It alone is able to reconstitute the unity of
    the country.

The majority of the deputies to the Constituent Assembly who had for some time been elected had arrived in Petrograd, and the Bolsheviki always retarded the opening.  The Socialist-Revolutionist fraction started conferences with the other fractions on the necessity for fixing a day for the opening of the Constituante, without waiting the good pleasure of the Commissaries of the People.  They chose the date, December 27th, but the opening could not take place on that day, the Ukrainian fraction having suddenly abandoned the majority to join themselves to the Bolsheviki and the Revolutionary Socialists of the Left.  Finally, the government fixed the opening of the Constituent Assembly for the 5th (18th) of January.

Here is a document which relates this fight for the date of the opening of the Constituante: 

    Bulletin of Members of the Constituent Assembly Belonging to the
    Socialist-Revolutionist Fraction.  No. 5, Dec. 31, 1917.

    To All the Citizens: 

The Socialist-Revolutionist fraction of the Constituent Assembly addresses the whole people the present expose of the reasons for which the Constituent Assembly has not been opened until this day:  it warns them, at the same time, of the danger which threatens the sovereign rights of the people.

Let it be thus placed in clear daylight, the true character of those who, under pretext of following the well-being of the workers, forge new chains for liberated Russia, those who attempt to assassinate the Constituent Assembly, which alone is able to save Russia from the foreign yoke and from the despotism which has been born within.

    Let all the citizens know that the hour is near when they must be
    ready to rise like one man for the defense of their liberty and
    their Constituent Assembly.

    For, citizens, your salvation is solely in your own hands.