Page:Lenin - The Soviets at Work (1919).pdf/32

30 Kornilov dictatorship (if Kornilov be taken as the Russian type of a bourgeois Cavaignac), or a dictatorship of the proletariat—no other alternative is possible for a country which is passing through an unusually swift development with unusually difficult transitions and which suffers from desperate disorganization created by the most horrible war. All middle courses are advanced—in order to deceive the people—by the bourgeois, who are not in a position to tell the truth and admit openly that they need a Kornilov, or—through stupidity—by the petty bourgeois democrats, the Tchernovs, Zeretellis and Martovs, prattling of a united democracy, of the dictatorship of democracy, of a single democratic front and similar nonsense. Those who have not learned even from the course of the Russian revolution of 1917–1918 that middle courses are impossible must be given up as hopeless.

On the other hand, it is not hard to see that during any transition from capitalism to Socialism a dictatorship is necessary for two main reasons. In the first place, it is impossible to conquer and destroy capitalism without the merciless suppression of the resistance of the exploiters, who cannot be at once deprived of their wealth, of their advantages in organization and knowledge, and who will, therefore, during quite a long period inevitably attempt to overthrow the hateful (to them) authority of the poor. Secondly, every great revolution, and especially a Socialist revolution, even if there were no external war, is inconceivable without an internal war, with thousands and millions of cases of wavering and of desertion from one side to the other, and with a state of the greatest uncertainty, instability and chaos. And, of course, all elements of decay of the old order, inevitably very numerous and connected largely with the petty bourgeoisie (for the petty bourgeoisie is the first victim of every war and every crisis) cannot fail to "give themselves away" during such a profound transformation. And these elements of decay cannot appear otherwise than through the increase of crimes,