Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/420

 less suppression of the reisistance of the exploiters, who cannot be at once deprived of their wealth, of their advantages in organization and knowledge, and who will, therefore, during a quite long period, inevitably attempt to overthrow the hateful (to them) authority of the poor. Secondly, every great revolution, and especially a Socialist revolution, even if there was no external war, is inconceivable without an internal war, thousands and millions of cases of wavering and of desertion from one side to the other, and a state of the greatest uncertainty, instability and chaos. And, of course, all the decadent elements of the old order, inevitably very numerous and connected largely with the petty bourgeoisie (for the petty bourgeoisie is the first victim of every war and every crisis) cannot fail to "show up" during such a profound transformation. And these elements of decay cannot "show up" otherwise than through the increase of crimes, hooliganism, bribery, speculation and other indecencies. It takes time and an iron hand to get rid of this.

There never was a great revolution in history in which the people did not instinctively feel this and did not display salutary firmness, shooting down thieves on the spot. The trouble with previous revolutions was this—that the revolutionary zeal of the masses, which kept them vigilant and gave them strength to mercilessly suppress the elements of decay, did not last long. The social, the class causes of such weakness of revolutionary zeal lay in the weakness of the proletariat, which is the only class capable (if sufficiently numerous, conscious and disciplined) of attracting the majority of the exploited toilers (the majority of the poor, if we should use a simpler and more popular expression) and of retaining power for a sufficiently long,time to completely suppress both all exploiters and all elements of decay.

This historical experience of all revolutions, this universal historical—economic and political—lesson was summed up by Marx in his brief, sharp, exact and vivid formula: the dictatorship of the proletariat. And that the Russian revolution correctly approached this universal historical problem has been proven by the victorious march of the Soviet oganization [sic] among all peoples and tongues of Russia. For the Soviet rule is nothing else than the organized form of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the dictatorship of the class conscious proletariat, rousing to a new democracy, to independent participation in the administration of the state, tens and tens of millions of exploited toilers, who through their