of dictatorship. It will serve as a good lesson… Only scoundrels and imbeciles can think that the proletariat must first win a majority of votes in elections” Likewise Maclean also quotes Lenin as saying in regard to the same matter that:“Now is not the time for parliamentary illusions!” It is clear from this that Lenin was in no doubt about the stance that the Bolsheviks would take to democracy and opposition. There would be no power sharing with any other political groups and this included even other socialists who were not Bolsheviks. In this we see the beginning of the one party state. What followed soon after was all in the same spirit. December 1917 saw the creation of the All-Russian Commission for Suppression of Counter-Revolution, Sabotage and Speculation (shortened to its Russian acronym - CHEKA). The Cheka quickly became one of the main instruments of terror and coercion. By January the arrest, imprisonment and execution without trial of political opponents was commenced. In response to a letter to a newspaper by his old friend and respected writer Maxim Gorky criticizing the Bolshevik actions, Lenin wrote:“As the State is only a transitional institution which we are obliged to use in the revolutionary struggle in order to crush our opponents forcibly, it is pure absurdity to speak of a Free People’s State. During the period when the proletariat still needs the State, it does not require it in the interests of freedom, but in the interests of crushing its antagonists.” One of the most defining characteristics of Lenin’s political practice was the use of violence. The ultimate expression of this was the formation of the Red Army that would conduct a ruthless Civil War against all opposition from 1918 to 1921. In terms of the political structuring, the new state used the various town and country Soviets as the organs of government. Each local Soviet elected delegates to the nex...
