Page:Lev Borisovich Kamenev - The Dictatorship of the Proletariat (1920).pdf/11

 working class was concentrated on the tasks of the war, and the Soviet state was transformed into a camp of armed proletarians.

Such was the experience of the Russian proletariat. We have now before us the experience of the class struggle for proletarian power in Finland, Hungary and Germany. The fundamental difference between the experience of Hungary, Finland and Germany and that of Russia consists in the fact that the bourgeoisie of those countries proved, as was to be expected, to be much more organised, united and capable of fighting than the Russian bourgeosie. Its period of confusion was much shorter; it organised a counter-attack against the proletariat much more rapidly and energetically; and by that very fact shortened the period of illusions of the proletariat itself as to the nature of its dictatorship.

The experience of the workers of Russia, Finland, Hungary and Germany allows us to establish an empiric law of the development of proletarian dictatorship, which may be expressed approximately in the following words. The fact of the conquest of the central political power by the proletariat in no wise completes the struggle for power, but only marks the beginning of a new and more determined period of warfare between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.

After the first blow of the proletarian revolution and the seizure of the central apparatus of power by the proletariat, the bourgeoisie inevitably needs a certain time for mobilisation of its forces, the bringing up of reserves and their organisation. Its passing to a counter attack opens up an epoch of undisguised warfare, and armed clash of the forces of both sides.

It is just during this period that the rule of the proletariat acquires the harsh features of a dictatorship: a Red Army, a terrorist suppression of the exploiters and their allies, the limitation of political liberty, becomes inevitable if the proletariat does not wish to give up without a fight the power it has won.