Victor Serge

Kronstadt '21
1945
Solidarity Introduction
The following text, hitherto unpublished in Britain, first appeared in the American socialist paper
Politics, over 16 years ago. It describes the tragic ussian events of !arch, 1"#1.
The wor$ing%class had ta$en power three and a half years earlier, in the greatest revolution of all
time. But it had seen that power slowly slip from its hands, first in the factories, later in the &oviets.
A new bureaucracy was emerging. Its core was the Bolshevi$ party, whose patronage was becoming
essential for accession to all important posts, both in the economy and in the state.
'ith the final victories of the (ivil 'ar, wor$ing class discontent, which had been smouldering for
months, bro$e out in the great )eningrad stri$es of *anuary and +ebruary 1"#1, and in the ,ronstadt
uprising.
&erge describes an event in wor$ing class history concerning which &talinists, Trots$yists and
sundry others have indulged in a systematic campaign of misrepresentation and distortion. -e
shows how certain ideas concerning .the /arty. wor$ed out, in practice. The article also exposes the
hypocritical pretensions of those who claim the struggle against the developing bureaucracy as
some $ind of private mantle.
&erge.s testimony concerning ,ronstadt is of great historical value. It is the testimony of a
revolutionary who was in )eningrad during those fateful days, who actively participated in the
scenes he describes, and who endorsed, at the time, the actions of the ussian leaders.

000
1uring the night of +ebruary #2%#", I was awa$ened by a phone call. 3The 'hites have ta$en
,ronstadt3, an anxious voice told me. 3'e are fully mobili4ed3. It was Ilya Ionov, 5inoviev.s
brother%in%law. This was an appalling piece of news. If true, it meant that /etrograd itself would
soon be lost.
3'hat 'hites6 'here did they come from6 I can.t believe it73
3A general by the name of ,o4lovs$i %3
3But what about our sailors6 'hat about the &oviet6 The (he$a6 The wor$ers at the Arsenal63
3I.ve told you all I $now.3
5inoviev was in conference with the evolutionary (ouncil of the Army, so I rushed over to the
head8uarters of the Third 1istrict (ommittee. 9verybody was loo$ing pretty grim. 3It.s fantastic.
But it.s true.3 3'ell,3 I said, 3we must mobili4e everyone able to wal$. Immediately73 &omeone
replied, evasively: 3;es, we must mobili4e.3 But nothing could be done without instructions from
the /etrograd (ommittee. &everal comrades and I spent the rest of the night poring over a map of
the <ulf of +inland. 'e got word that small%scale stri$es were spreading through the suburbs.
'hites in front of us, famine and stri$es behind us7 I left at dawn, and on my way out of the hotel I
ran into one of the maids, 8uietly leaving the building with pac$ages under her arm.
3'here to so early in the morning, grandmother6 And with such a load63
The old woman sighed:
3There.s going to be trouble. ;ou can feel it in the air. They will slit your throats, my poor boy,
yours and the others. too. They.ll steal everything that isn.t nailed down, =ust as they did last time.
&o I.m pac$ing off my belongings.3
At intervals along the deserted streets there were little wall posters announcing treacherous sei4ure
of ,ronstadt by the counter%revolutionary general ,o4lovs$i and his accomplices, and summoning
the wor$ers to arms. But even before I reached the 1istrict (ommittee head8uarters I ran into
several comrades who had already turned out, !auser in hand, and they told me that the ,o4lovs$i
business was a contemptible lie: the ,ronstadt sailors had mutinied, and what we were up against
was a naval rebellion led by the ,ronstadt &oviet. If anything, that was still more serious> and the
worst of it was the paraly4ing effect of the official lie upon us. +or the party to lie to us this way
was something new. 3They had to do it because of the mood of the people,3 some of my
ac8uaintances explained. But they were frightened too. The stri$e had become almost general.
?obody even $new whether the street%cars would run.
)ater that day I had a tal$ with my friends in the +rench%spea$ing (ommunist group @I remember
that !arcel Body and <eorges -ellfer were both presentA. 'e decided not to ta$e up armsBto fight
neither against the hungry stri$ers nor against the exasperated sailors. In Cassili%Dstrov, in a street
white with snow, I saw a crowd gather, mostly women. I watched it push its way slowly forward to
mingle with the military%school cadets sent there to open up the approaches to the factories.
/atiently, sadly, the crowd told the soldiers how hungry the people were, called them brothers,
as$ed them for help. The cadets pulled bread out of their $napsac$s and divided it up. !eanwhile,
the !enshevi$s and the )eft &ocial evolutionaries were blamed for the stri$e.
)eaflets distributed in the suburbs put forward the demands of the ,ronstadt &oviet. They added up
to a program for renewing the revolution. In brief: new elections for the &oviets, with secret ballot>
freedom of speech and freedom of press for all revolutionary groups and parties> liberty for the
trade%unions> liberation of all revolutionaries being held as political prisoners> no more official
propaganda> no more re8uisitioning in the rural districts> freedom of employment for artisans>
immediate withdrawal of the street patrols which were preventing free purchase of food supplies by
the general public. The ,ronstadt &oviet, the ,ronstadt garrison, and the sailors of the +irst and
&econd &8uadrons had rebelled to get that program accepted.

The Party Reflex !ies and Threats
)ittle by little, the truth bro$e through the smo$e screen laid down by the press, whose mendacity
now $new no bounds. And that was our press, the press of our revolution, the first socialist press in
history, therefore the first incorruptible, unbiased press in history. 9ven in the past, to be sure, it had
now and then laid itself open, to some extent, to the charge of demagogy @of a warm, sincere $ind,
howeverA and had used violent language about its opponents. But in doing so it had stayed within
the rules of the game, and had, in any case, acted understandably. ?ow, however, lying was its
settled policy. The Petrograd Pravda informed its readers that ,ou4min, (ommissar for the navy
and the army, had been manhandled during his imprisonment at ,ronstadt, and had narrowly
escaped summary executionBon written orders from the counter%revolutionaries. I $new ,ou4min,
an energetic, hard%wor$ing soldier, a teacher of military science, grey from tip to toe> his uniform,
even his wrin$led face were grey. -e 3escaped3 from ,ronstadt and turned up at &mollny.
3It is hard to believe.3 I said to him, 3that they intended to shoot you. 1id you really see any such
order63
-e loo$ed embarrassed, and did not answer for a moment.
3Dh, one always exaggerates a bit. There was a threatening note.3
In short, he had let his tongue run away with him. That was the whole story. The ,ronstadt rebels
had spilled not a single drop of blond, had gone no further than to arrest a few (ommunist officials,
all of whom had been well treated. !ost of the (ommunists, several hundred in all, had gone over
to the rebels, which showed clearly enough how wea$ the party had become at its base.
?evertheless, someone had coo$ed up this story about hairbreadth escapes from the firing s8uad7
umors played an ugly part in the whole business. 'ith the official press carrying nothing but
eulogies of the regime.s successes, with the (he$a operating in the shadows, every moment brought
its new, deadly rumor. -ard upon the news about the /etrograd stri$es, word reached ,ronstadt that
the stri$ers were being arrested en masse, and that the troops were occupying the factories. That
was untrue, or at least greatly exaggerated, although the (he$a, running true to form, had
undoubtedly gone about ma$ing stupid arrests. @!ost of these arrests were for short periods.A
-ardly a day passed without my seeing &erge 5orin, the secretary of the /etrograd (ommittee. I
$new, therefore, how many worries he had on his mind, and how determined he was not to adopt
repressive measures against wor$ers. I also $new that, in his opinion, persuasion was the only
weapon that would prove effective in a situation of this $ind, and how, to bac$ up his opinion he
was bringing in wagon%loads of foodstuffs. -e told me, laughingly, that once he had found himself
in a district where the )eft. &ocial evolutionaries had populari4ed the slogan: 3)ong )ive the
(onstituent Assembly73Bwhich clearly was another way of saying 31own with Bolshevism73. 3I
announced3, he went on, 3the arrival of several wagons full of food. In the twin$ling of an eye it
turned the situation upside down.3
In any case the ,ronstadt uprising began as an act of solidarity with the /etrograd stri$es, and as a
result of rumors @about repressive measuresA which were mostly without foundation.
,alinin and ,ou4min, whose stupid blundering provo$ed the rebellion, were chiefly to blame.
,alinin, as chairman of the epublic.s 9xecutive, visited ,ronstadt, and the garrison received him
with music and shouts of welcome. But when the sailors stated their demands he called them
traitors, accused them of thin$ing only of their own interests, and threatened merciless punishment.
,ou4min bellowed at them: the iron hand of dictatorship of the proletariat would stri$e down all
infractions of discipline, every act of treason7 The two of them were booed and $ic$ed outBand the
damage was done. It was probably ,alinin who, bac$ in /etrograd, invented 3the 'hite general,
,o4lovs$i3. +rom the very first, when it would have been easy to patch up the differences, the
Bolshevi$ leaders chose to use the big stic$. 'e were to learn later that the delegation sent from
,ronstadt to explain the issues at sta$e to the &oviet and people of /etrograd had got no further than
a (he$a prison.
&ome American AnarchistsB9mma <oldman, Alexander Ber$man, and a young man named
/er$us, the secretary of the ussian 'or$ers Enion in the Enited &tatesBhad arrived a short time
before. A scheme for mediation too$ shape in the course of some tal$s I had with them on several
successive evenings. 'hen I told some of the party comrades about it, they countered:
3That won.t do any good. 'e.re bound by party discipline, and so are you3.
I protested: 3Dne can get out of a party3.
(ool, unsmiling, they replied: 3?o Bolshevi$ deserts his party. And, anyway, where would you go6
Durs is the only party, to put it mildly.3
The Anarchist mediation group used to meet at the home of my father%in%law, Alexander oussa$ov.
&ince the Anarchists had the ear of the ,ronstadt &oviet, it had been decided that only Anarchists
would ta$e part in the negotiations, and that the American anarchists alone would assume
responsibility vis%F%vis the &oviet government> so I was not present. 9mma <oldman and Alexander
Ber$man had an interview with 5inoviev. They were received cordially, for they were still able to
spea$ authoritatively in the name of a section of the international proletariat. Their mediation
scheme, nevertheless, was a complete failure. As a sop, 5inoviev offered them every facility for
seeing ussia from a private railway car. 3Thin$ it over and you will understand3. !ost of the
ussian members of the mediation group were arrested. I was notBan indulgence which I owed to
the good opinion that 5inoviev, 5orin and a few others had of me, and to my position as a militant
in the +rench wor$ers. movement.

"hy I Su##orted the $olshe%i&s
After much hesitation, my (ommunist friends and I finally sided with the party. It was a painful
step to ta$e, and this is why we did it: the ,ronstadt sailors, we reasoned, were right. They had
begun a new freedom%giving revolution which would lead to popular democracy. (ertain Anarchists
who had not outgrown the illusions of childhood gave it a name: the .Third evolution.. The
country, by this time, was in bad shape. /roduction had come virtually to a stop. eserves of all
$inds had been used up, including even the reserves of nervous energy which sustain popular
morale. The wor$ers. elite, formed in the course of the struggles under the old regime, had literally
been decimated. The party, its membership swollen by the influx of bandwagon riders, inspired little
confidence. And there was nothing left of the other parties but tiny cadres, of doubtful ability. &ome
of them, to be sure, might in a few wee$s. time have put on flesh, but only by admitting en masse
the soured, the bitter, the exasperatedBvery different types from the 1"1G enthusiasts of the young
revolution. &oviet democracy had lost its vitality. It lac$ed leadership. It had no organisational
basis. And it had no defenders, except among the hungry and desperate masses of the people.
The popular counter%revolution translated the demand for freely%elected &oviets into the slogan
3&oviets without (ommunists73 If the Bolshevi$ dictatorship were to fall, we felt, the result would
be chaos: peasant putsches, the massacre of the (ommunists, the return of the HmigrHs, and, finally,
another dictatorship, of necessity anti%proletarian. The dispatches from &toc$holm and Tallinn
showed that the HmigrHs were thin$ing in precisely these terms. @These dispatches, by the way,
strengthened the determination of the leaders to put down the ,ronstadt rebellion 8uic$ly, and
without regard to the cost.A Dur thin$ing about all this had, furthermore, a factual basis. 'e $new of
fifty rallying%points for peasant insurrections in 9uropean ussia alone. 'e $new that Antonov, the
proponent of evolutionary &ocialism of the ight, was active in the area south of !oscow, and
that he was preaching both the destruction of the &oviet regime and the reinstatement of the
(onstituent Assembly. -e had at his command, in and around Tambov, a s$illfully organi4ed army
made up of several tens of thousands of peasants, and he had negotiated with the 'hites.
@Tu$achevs$y li8uidated this Cendee towards the middle of 1"#1.A
In these circumstances, the party should have beat a retreat by admitting that the existing economic
set%up was indefensible. It should not, however, have given up power. 3In spite of its faults, in spite
of its abuses, in spite of everything,3 I wrote at the time, 3the Bolshevi$ party, because of its si4e, its
insight, its stability, is the organi4ed force to which we must pin our faith. The evolution has at its
disposal no other weapon, and it is no longer capable of genuine renewal from within3.

'o(rade against 'o(rade
The /olitical Bureau finally made up its mind to enter into negotiations with ,ronstadt, lay down an
ultimatum, and, as a last resort, attac$ the fortress and the ice%bound battleships. As it turned out, no
negotiations ever too$ place. But an ultimatum, couched in revolting language, appeared on the
billboards over the signature of )enin and Trots$y: 3&urrender or be shot li$e rabbits73 Trots$y,
limiting his activities to the /olitical Bureau, $ept away from /etrograd.
!eanwhile the (he$a had declared war on the !enshevi$ &ocial%1emocrats by publishing an
outrageous official document accusing them of 3conspiring with the enemy, planning to sabotage
the railways,3 etc. The Bolshevi$ leaders themselves were embarrassed> they shrugged the charges
aside: 3!ore of the (he$a.s ravings73 But they let the charges stand all the same and promised only
that there would be no arrests and that everything would come out alright. 9ven so, the !enshevi$
leaders 1an and Abramovich were arrested @in /etrogradA: and the (he$a @led at this time, as I
remember, by a red%headed wor$er named &emionov, a hard, ignorant little manA wanted to have
them shotBon the grounds that they had organi4ed the stri$e, which was now almost general @and
at least GIJ spontaneousA. I had =ust had a run%in with &emionov over two students the (he$a had
arbitrarily sei4ed. I got word to )enin through <or$y @who was also at that moment intervening to
save the !enshevi$ leadersA. Dnce )enin had been informed, we $new our friends were out of
danger.
9arly in !arch, ed Army troops advanced across the ice against the ,ronstadt fortress and fleet.
The rebel artillery opened fire on the assailants. Infantrymen wearing long white par$as advanced in
waves, and in some places the ice crac$ed under them. -ere and there a huge bloc$ of ice would
brea$ loose and, turning slowly over, would carry its human cargo with it into the blac$ depths of
the water. And then, comrade against comrade, the shameful slaughter began...

)"e'll *e +ur +,n Ther(idor)
!eanwhile, in !oscow, the Tenth (ongress of the party, on )enin.s motion, had abolished the
re8uisitioning system @.'ar (ommunism.A, and put the ?9/ into effect. All the economic demands
of ,ronstadt had been met7 The (ongress had, at the same time, gone out of its way to heap abuse
upon all the opposition groups. The 'or$ers. Dpposition, for instance, had been described as an
3anarcho%syndicalist deviation with which the party cannot ma$e terms3, although it was not
Anarchist in any sense, and had advocated nothing but trade union management of production
@which, incidentally, would have been a big step in the direction of wor$ers. democracyA. +inally,
the (ongress had drafted its members, many of whom belonged to opposition groups, for the battle
against ,ronstadt. The extreme )eft winger 1yben$o, himself once a ,ronstadt sailor, and the
writer and soldier Bubnov, leader of the group in favor of .democratic centralisation., went to do
battle on the iceBagainst insurgents with whom, deep in their hearts, they had no 8uarrel.
Tu$achevs$y was now preparing the final assault.
Dn one of these blac$ days, )enin said to a friend of mine @I use his exact wordsA: 3This is
Thermidor. But we shall not let ourselves be guillotined. 'e.ll be our own Thermidor.3
The Drianienbaum incident is never mentioned> but in my opinion it brought the ,ronstadt rebels
within reach of a victory which they did not wantBand might easily have resulted in the fall of
/etrograd. &erge 5orin, the blond Ci$ing who was secretary of the /etrograd (ommittee, noticed
something peculiar about the orders being given by one of the infantry commanders. +or instance,
certain arbitrarily chosen cadets were $ept standing guard close to the artillery emplacements, and
regroupings were being effected for which there was no evident reason. After a couple of days there
was no longer any doubt that a conspiracy was afoot. As an act of solidarity with ,ronstadt, an
entire regiment was going to switch sides and call upon the army to rebel. 5orin immediately
ordered into the regiment men who could be counted upon, doubled the number of sentry posts and
the compliment of soldiers assigned to each, and arrested the regiment.s commanding officer, a man
who had spent many years as an officer in the Imperial Army. -e was brutally fran$: 3+or years I
had loo$ed forward to that hour. I hate you, you murderers of ussia. ?ow I.ve lost, life means
nothing to me.3 Along with a considerable number of his accomplices, he was shot. -is regiment,
by the way, had been withdrawn from the front in /oland.

The 'he&a Ta&es +%er
The rebellion had to be li8uidated before the thaw. The final assault was launched by Tu$achevs$y
on !arch 1G and resulted in an audaciously%won victory. The ,ronstadt sailors, fighting without
competent officers @one of their number, to be sure, was an ex%officer named ,o4lovs$i, but he
played an unimportant role and had no authorityA, made poor use of their artillery. &ome escaped to
+inland> some fought a savage defensive battle, from fort to fort and street to street, and died
shouting. 3)ong live the 'orld evolution73 &ome even died with the cry: 3)ong )ive the
(ommunist International73 &everal hundred were ta$en into /etrograd and turned over to the
(he$a, which months laterBcriminally, stupidlyBwas still shooting little groups of them. These
prisoners belonged body and soul to the revolution> they had given expression to the sufferings and
will of the ussian people> and there was the ?9/ to show that they had been right7 +urthermore,
they had been ta$en prisoner in a civil war, and by a government which for a long while had been
promising an amnesty to those of its adversaries who were willing to become its supporters.
14er=ins$i presided over this endless massacreBor at least let it happen.
The ,ronstadt leaders, men un$nown up to the uprising, were drawn from the ran$s. Dne of them,
/etrichen$o, escaped to +inland and may still be alive. Another, /erepel$in, turned up later among
some friends I used to visit at the old prison in &hpalnernaya &treetBthrough which so many
revolutionaries, )enin and Trots$y, among others, had passed in days gone by. +rom the depths of
his cell, before disappearing finally from sight, /erepel$in told us the whole story of ,ronstadt.
That dismal !arch 127 The morning papers had big headlines in honor of the proletarian
anniversary of the /aris (ommune. And each time the cannon fired on ,ronstadt, the window panes
rattled in their frames. In the offices at &molny, everyone felt uneasy. (onversation was avoided,
except between close friends and even they spo$e sharply to each other. The vast ?eva landscape
had never before seemed to me so blea$ and desolate. @By a remar$able coincidence, there was a
(ommunist uprising in Berlin on that same !arch 12, one whose defeat mar$ed a turning%point in
the strategy of the International, from the offensive to the defensive.A

The -reat Ideas .ie
,ronstadt inaugurated a period of doubt and dismay inside the party. In !oscow, a Bolshevi$
named /eniuch$in, who had distinguished himself during the (ivil 'ar, pointedly resigned from the
party to found a new political movementBto be called, if I remember correctly, the &oviet /arty. -e
set up his party head8uarters in a street lined with wor$ers. homes, and for a while nothing was
done about it. Then he was arrested. &everal comrades came to me and as$ed me to intervene on
behalf of his wife and child, who had been evicted from their home and were sleeping in a hall
somewhere. I was unable to do anything for them. The wor$er !iasni$ov, another old Bolshevi$B
he had ta$en part in the revolt in the Epper Colga in 1"KI, and there was a close personal tie
between him and )eninBspo$e out in favor of freedom of the press 3for everybody, from the
Anarchists at one extreme to the !onarchists at the other3. After a sharp exchange of letters he
bro$e with )enin, and before long he was deported to 9rivan, in Armenia. +rom there he went to
Tur$ey. I was to run into him in /aris some twenty years later. The 3'or$ers. Dpposition3 seemed
to be heading towards a definite brea$ with the /arty.
As a matter of fact, we were already well on the way towards being overwhelmed by a nascent
totalitarianism. The word .totalitarianism. itself had not come into existence yet> but the thing it
stands for was ruthlessly ma$ing itself our master without our $nowing it. I belonged to the
ridiculously small minority which did $now. But the ma=ority, both of the party.s leaders and of its
militants, had come to regard .'ar (ommunism. as a merely temporary economic ad=ustment
analogous to the highly centrali4ed productive arrangements which <ermany, +rance and 9ngland
had wor$ed out during the war. These centrali4ation schemes had been called .'ar (apitalism.. &o
the ma=ority believed that once peace was restored the state of siege would automatically dissolve,
and that we would then get bac$ to some $ind of &oviet democracyBwhat $ind it was no longer
possible to say.
The great ideas of 1"1G, the ideas which had enabled the Bolshevi$ party to sweep along with it the
peasant masses, the army, the wor$ing class and the !arxist intelligentsia, were certainly dead. -ad
not )enin, in 1"1G, argued in favor of a &oviet press so free that any group able to muster 1K,KKK
supporters would be allowed to publish its own newspaper, and at public expense6 -ad he not
written that the transfer of power from one party to another within the &oviets could be
accomplished peacefully, without sharp conflicts6 -ad he not held out, in his theory of the &oviet
&tate, the promise of a form of political organi4ation entirely different from the old bourgeois
&tates, with 3no functionaries and no policemen, apart from the people themselves36Ba &tate in
which the wor$ers would exercise power directly through their own militia system6 'hat with the
monopoly of power, the (he$a, and the ed Army, all that was left of this dream of a .&tate%
(ommune. was a myth, of interest only to theologians. 'ar, measures of internal defense against
counter%revolution, and famine @leading to creation of a bureaucratic machine to ta$e care of
rationingA had put an end to &oviet democracy. -ow and when would it be reborn6 The party
nourished itself precisely on the belief that the slightest relaxation of its grip on power would give
the reaction the opportunity it was waiting for.

The Totalitarian Potential
In addition to these historical factors, there were important psychological factors. !arxism has
meant different things in different periods. The child of bourgeois science and philosophy on the
one hand and the revolutionary aspirations of the proletariat on the other, it ma$es its appearance at
a time when capitalism is entering upon its decline. It puts itself forward as the natural heir of the
society which gave birth to it. *ust as capitalist%industrialist society tends to draw the entire world
into its orbit, and to bring each and every aspect of life into conformity with its value, so the
!arxism of the beginning of the twentieth century see$s to re%ma$e everythingBthe system of
property holding, the way production is organi4ed, the map of the world @abolition of frontiersA,
even man.s inner life @displacement of religionA. &ince its ob=ective was a total transformation it
was, etymologically spea$ing, totalitarian. It included within itself both aspects of the society that
was coming into being: the democratic and the authoritarian. The <erman &ocial%1emocratic party,
largest of the !arxist parties through the period 122K%1"#K adopted a bureaucratic form of
organi4ation modeled upon the &tate itself. It devoted itself to the con8uest of power within the
bourgeois &tate, and wound up thin$ing in terms of &tate &ocialism.
Bolshevi$ thought ta$es it for granted that truth is its peculiar possession. To )enin, to Bu$harin, to
Trots$y, to /reobra=ens$y, to many another thin$er I could mention, the materialist dialectic of
!arx and 9ngels was at one and the same time the law of human thought and the law of the natural
development of societies. The party, 8uite simply, is the custodian of truth> any idea at variance with
party doctrine is either pernicious error or bac$sliding. -ere, then, is the source of the party.s
intolerance. Because of its unsha$able conviction of its exalted mission, it develops astonishing
reserves of moral energyBand a theological turn of mind which easily becomes in8uisitorial.
)enin.s .proletarian *acobinism., with its disinterestedness, its discipline in both thought and action,
was grafted upon the psychology of cadres whose character had been formed under the old regime
Bthat is to say, in the course of the struggle against despotism. It seems to be un8uestionable that
)enin chose as his co%wor$ers men whose temperament was authoritarian. The final triumph of the
revolution eased the inferiority%complex of the massesBthe always bullied and always
downtrodden masses. At the same time, however, it awa$ened in them a desire for retaliation> and
this desire tended to ma$e the new institutions despotic also. I have seen with my own eyes how a
man who only yesterday was a wor$er or sailor gets drun$ on the exercise of powerBhow he
delights in reminding others that from now on he.s giving the orders.

)The .anger "as "ithin)
These same considerations explain some of the contradictions with which the leaders themselves
@despite the verbal and sometimes demagogic solutions which the dialectic enables them to put
forwardA have wrestled in vain. Dn a hundred different occasions )enin paid democracy high praise,
and insisted that the dictatorship of the proletariat is both 3a dictatorship against the expropriated
expropriators3 and 3the broadest wor$ers. democracy3. -e believed it, wanted it to be true. -e went
into the factories to give an account of his stewardship. -e wanted to face all%out criticism from the
wor$ers... But he wrote in 1"12 that the dictatorship of the proletariat was by no means
incompatible with personal power, and by doing so =ustified in advance some $ind of Bonapartism.
'hen his old friend and co%wor$er Bogdanov came forward with embarrassing ob=ections, )enin
had him loc$ed up. -e outlawed the !enshevi$s on the grounds that they were .petit%bourgeois.
socialists who made themselves nuisances by always being wrong. -e welcomed the Anarchist
spo$esman !a$hno, and tried to convince him of the validity of !arxist doctrine> nevertheless,
Anarchism was outlawed tooBif not on )enin.s initiative, at least with his consent. -e ordered a
hands%off policy towards the churches, and promised believers a truce> but he $ept on saying that
3religion is the opium of the people3. 'e were advancing towards a classless society, a society of
free men> but the party never missed an opportunity to remind people that 3the reign of the wor$ers
will never end3. Dver whom were the wor$ers to reign then6 And that word .reign.Bwhat does it
mean anyhow6 TotalitarianismBand within ourselves7