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 Rh as the state is a labor state?" we must say "not quite a labor state." This is peculiar inasmuch as many of Trotsky's mistakes are based upon this point. In fact we have not a labor state, but a labor-peasant's state, first of all. Many things may be explained on this account. Already our party program shows that we have a labor state with burocratic perversions. That is the reality of the transitory period. Can you tell me whether in such a burocratic state, etc.

Also at the meeting of the Congress of Soviets, as reported in the Petrograd Pravda of December 23, 1920, Lenin made it clear that he was aware that the non-Communists—the Communist Party including only 600,000 members—did not support the leading policies of his government:

In Russia to-day we have neither a democracy, a Soviet régime nor a Labor State, but the dictatorship of the Communist Party. The only phrases by which the Communists now insist in disguising their rule are "the dictatorship of the proletariat" and the "Republic of the Workmen and Peasants." The fact that they continue to use these expressions while at the same time they confess it is the Communist Party that governs indicates the brazen deception that permeates their entire propaganda.