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What in fact is the power of the state? What are its basic elements, and what is generally meant by the state apparatus? From the viewpoint of the preoctober Lenin "by the state apparatus is meant first of all a standing army, police, and bureaucracy." (Will The Bolsheviks Retain the Government Power? Vol. 14, Part 2, p. 227)

Thus, as the Preoctober Lenin pictured to himself, and impressed upon the minds of the working masses, the peasants and the soldiers, the Republic of the Soviets was nothing eles but an anarchist federation of many thousands of Soviet-Communes scattered over the vast spaces of Russia. This, in fact, is a complete democracy, which has reached its logical stage of development, Anarchism. The bourgeois socialists cried, "Lenin has ascended the vacant throne of Bakunin". Is it really true? Is Lenin an anarchist? The answer is both "yes", and "no".

Preoctober Lenin followed the example of the founder of Christianity, who spoke to the people in parables whose hidden meaning he disclosed only to his disciples. All of Preoctober Lenin's agitational (sic.) essays which are appeals to the masses, have a predominant anarchistic tone. However, all his more or less theoretical essays, intended only for a narrow circle of readers, are permeated with the musty odor of Marxism.

Until October, Lenin was guided by the example of the Marx who was forced by the events of the 1870-1, for reasons of tactics, to lean in the direction of anarchism and to write "The Civil War in France", which stands apart from all his works and has almost no connection with his general conception of socialism. Similarly, the events of 1917 forced Lenin to deviate from his dogma in order to further it. But Postoctober Lenin shows his true face, and thus discloses the insincerity of the Preoctober Lenin. The desire to develop his insignificant faction of the social democratic into a party of significance and his peculiar desire for power pointed out to Lenin the path he was to follow in order to secure domination over the masses. This same will for power led him to adopt the methods by which he became the idol of this party and of the toiling population. Thus, the heretofore outspoken centralist, who writing in "Iskra" stated that "it was not the business of the proletariat to occupy itself with federalism", decided in the name of centralism to become a terrible federalist.

That this is a factual appraisal of Lenin's tactics is confirmed in a statement made at the time by the present dictator, Stalin. In 1919, while still Commissar of National Affairs, Stalin with his native blunt stupidity publicly declared that the Communists "are moving via federalization towards centralization". This statement frankly discloses the reason which prompted Lenin to stand for "a republic without a police force, a standing army, officers subject to recall instead of a bureaucracy enjoying the