Page:Nikolai Bukharin - Programme of the World Revolution (1920).djvu/35

 any other country. Nowhere but in Russia has the victory of the working class and the establishment of a workers' government yet been achieved; no other country has yet a proletarian dictatorship, nor a Soviet Republic, nor a Soviet state.

It is very clearly understood that the Soviet Government, corresponding to the proletarian dictatorship, does not suit those groups of the population that are interested in a return to capitalist slavery, instead of going ahead to a communist order. It is also clear that they cannot possibly say frankly and openly, "we want the whip and the stick for the workers."

Here, too, a certain amount of deceit is required. Such deceit is the speciality of the right wing of the socialist revolutionaries and of the mensheviks who are shouting about "a struggle for a democratic republic," about the Constituent Assembly, which they declare will save us from all evils, and so on. But as a matter of fact the real question here is to transfer the government to the bourgeoisie. And in this fundamental question no agreement can possibly be arrived at between us, communists, and the various mensheviks, right wing socialist revolutionaries, the followers of the "Novaya Zhisn," and the rest of that fraternity. They, stand for capitalism, whilst we stand for a movement towards Communism. They—for a government of the bourgeoisie, we—for a dictatorship of the workers; they—for a parliamentary bourgeois republic, where capital will reign, we—for a Soviet Socialist Republic where all the power belongs to the workers and the poorest elements of the peasantry.

Until the present time, prior to the Russian Revolution of 1917, the dictatorship of the proletariat was only written about. But no one seemed to have quite a clear idea as to how this dictatorship was to be realised. The Russian Revolution evolved the actual form of the dictatorship—that of the Soviet Republic. And therefore, at the present moment, the best sections of the international proletariat are inscribing on their banners the motto of a Soviet republic and of a Soviet government. And therefore, too, our task now consists in strengthening the Soviet government by all the means in our power, and in clearing it of various undesirable elements, in attracting to the task of reconstruction a greater number of capable comrades, elected by the working and peasant masses. Only such a government, a government of the Soviets, a government of the workers and