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to the orders of individual representatives of the soviet powers during working hours", (Vol. 15, p. 220), and of the "beginning of a period of 'merciless' tightening up, and of a prolonged and insistent fight for a strict proletarian discipline as against the threatening wave of petty-bourgeois laxity and anarchy." The slogan of Lenin had now become, " to mercilessly tighten up, to discipline severely, to ruthlessly destroy laxity." (Vol. 15, p. 224). And this policy has been and is being followed to this day with all the mercilessness prescribed. And the tightening up and the disciplining has been carried out over the land of Russia with such zeal and fervor, that it has creased to be a land and has become instead a huge prison, a vast correction institution, from which Mussolini and Hitler are learning their lessons in discipline, and upon which the body of international reactionaries look with concealed envy.
In the preceding paragraphs was described the concept of the soviet democracy which Lenin expounded before the Russian workers and peasants who were tired of despotism. However, as soon as the Bolsheviks found themselves at the helm, Lenin's declarations changed. "It is stated that soviet democracy is absolutely incompatible with personal dictatorship. This reasoning is very bad." (Vol. 15, p. 217). "Soviet socialist democracy is not inconsistent with personal rule and dictatorship, for the will of the class is at times best brought into realization by a dictator, who alone will accomplish more and who is frequently more needed." (Vol. 17, p. 89). "The will of hundreds and even of tens of thousands of people frequently may be expressed through one person". (Vol. 17, p. 104). And thus, for over many years, the will of millions of people has been expressed in the will of one person, and the land as was stated by Schevchenko, is silent, because the people are prospering. Socialist democracy in Russia has long ago disappeared into the realm of myths, and the very term made synonymous with reaction; and today absolutism is regarded as a revolutionary and progressive phenomenon.
Time and again Lenin had spoken of the inadmissibility of ruling bureaucrats appointed from above. Yet when the professional unions made an attempt to reject the representative of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik party, Radeck, as the government appointed bureaucrat, Lenin foamed at the mouth shouting, "What? the Central Committee has no right to attach to professional unions persons who are best familiar with the German experiments and who can have a corrective effect in the case of an incorrect line of action? A Central Committee unable to solve such a problem, surely could not govern!" (Vol. 17, p. 84).
The Post-October Lenin, as we see, demanded the right to appoint his bureaucrats not only to the local state governing
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