The aggressor uses the legitimate democratic mechanisms (elections, congresses, parliamentary procedures) of the victim state to seize power from within. Unlike the holding of fake referendums in already occupied territories, this technique is applied to still sovereign, independent institutions. Through the infiltration of agents, falsification of representation quotas, forgery of mandates, and bribery of delegates, the aggressor artificially forms a majority. The goal is to compel a legitimate body of power to vote, in a formally lawful manner, to renounce sovereignty or transfer powers to forces controlled by the metropole.
An attempt to convert an electoral minority into a procedural majority at the congress. Actual support was negligible: in the Constituent Assembly elections "across the country as a whole the Bolsheviks gathered less than 24% of the votes, and in the Ukrainian gubernias only 10%"[1]. Hence the wager on capturing representative bodies: the Central Committee of the RSDLP(b) declared outright that "the transfer of government from the hands of one soviet party into the hands of another party is secured without any revolution, by a simple decision of the Soviets, by a simple re-election of deputies to the Soviets," while the All-Russian Central Executive Committee's decree of 4 December 1917 "On the right of recall of delegates" provided the mechanism for such a replacement[1][2].