bolshevist constitution frankly provided for a despotism. "For the
purpose of securing the working class in the possession of complete
power," reads the concluding section of chapter two of the
constitution, "and in order to eliminate all possibility of restoring
the power of the exploiters, (the capitalist or employing class), it
is decreed that all workers be armed, and that a socialist Red Army be
organized and the propertied class disarmed." These steps, the
constitution goes on to state, were to be taken for the express
purpose of introducing nation-wide socialism into Russia.

148. "DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT."--Shortly after the publication
of the constitution, Lenin and Trotzky, the two bolshevist leaders,
established what was called the "dictatorship of the proletariat." The
word proletariat refers vaguely to the working classes, but the
bolshevists interpreted the term to cover only that portion of the
workers which was pledged to the support of socialist doctrine. Lenin
admitted that a small number of bolshevized workingmen, the
proletariat, was maintaining, by force of arms, a despotic control
over the masses of the people. "Just as 150,000 lordly landowners
under Czarism dominated the 130,000,000 of Russian peasants," he once
declared, "so 200,000 members of the bolshevist party are imposing
their will on the masses." According to these figures, the controlling
element in Russia included less than one sixth of one per cent of the
people.

From the first, the great majority of the peasants stolidly resisted
the socialization of the country, but this did not discourage the
bolshevist leaders. "We have never spoken of liberty," said Lenin
early in 1921. "We are exercising the dictatorship of the proletariat
in the name of the minority because the peasant class in Russia is not