Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/326

 to the pontpoint [sic] where force and dictatorship are each equally unnecessary because their functions have become unnecessary.

The first problem of the Soviet state, accordingly, was to emerge victorious out of the civil war which immediately broke loose. The defeat of Kerensky at Gatchina, on November 14, disposed of Kerensky, but it did not dispose of the efforts of the counter-revolution to crush the new proletarian regime.

Many of the revolts against the new regime were organized by the military clique, led by Kaledine, Kornilov & Co. The revolts of [sic] of the Cossacks were particularly menacing, and were crushed only by the heroic activity of the Red Guards. The Red Guard played a very important role in the civil war during the Soviet regime. It consisted almost wholly of armed workingmen, militant class conscious, who thoroughly understood the Revolution, were willing to die for it, and acted as the dynamic centre of the revolutionary masses in action. But the military opposition to the Soviet government was almost negligible; the real opposition came from other sources, and in a more threatening manner.

The bourgeoisie and the propertied classes generally, including the petite bourgeoisie, were almost a solid mass in opposition to the Soviets. Of this opposition, that of the imperialistic bourgeoisie itself was the least important; it was the opposition of the middle class and the petty bourgeois intelligentsia which proved most formidable. And this opposition expressed itself in the form of sabotage; that is to say, the intelligentsia and the middle class generally refused to co-operate with the Soviets in the reconstruction of the country and did all in their power to hamper this reconstruction. Technicians refused their service in industry; school teachers went on strike; men and women of specialized ability refused to co-operate with the constituted bodies of reconstruction. Men and women of the bourgeoisie, in hospitals, in charity organizations, everywhere their service were needed, indulged in sabotage, either by open refusal of work or by cunningly interfering with the normal course of things. And the lies, the slanders—the output was enormous. The intelligentsia, the petty bourgeois intellectuals and professionals, constituted an active and venomous centre of resistance to the Workers' and Peasants' Government.

In this attitude, the petite bourgeoisie demonstrated in practice the revoultionary Socialist theory that it is the greatest enemy of the proletarian revolution, before and after the event. The proletarian revolution means the supremacy of the great mass of the people, of the propertiless workers and peasants; unless these great masses