Page:Samuel Gompers - Out of Their Own Mouths (1921).djvu/104

 78 without subjection there must be suppression, and it is clear that where there is suppression there must also be violence and there cannot be liberty or democracy.

This reasoning on the surface means that no peoples are ready for liberty or democracy, and as there must be some form of dictatorship, why not the dictatorship of Lenin and his Party? But under the surface is also the shrewd calculation, evident throughout the Soviet leader's statements, that the Russian masses, being accustomed to merciless repression and subjection will finally give up hope of self-government and submit to the Soviet's rule if the Bolshevists can remain a few years longer in the saddle.

In his official report to the Soviet Economic Conference in January, 1920, Lenin frankly justified the rule of a minority of the city workers, which he calls the conscious "vanguard," over the majority of the city workers as well as the peasants who constitute 90 per cent of the population—and it is to be an arbitrary personal rule like that of the army. Here is what he said: