III
THE POLITICAL FOUNDATION: WAR AGAINST
DEMOCRACY
Bolshevism arose as a repudiation of democracy, when Lenin employed a company of armed sailors to disperse the Constitutional Assembly—which had been deliberately and fairly elected by the entire Russian people. The Bolshevists have never held one election under universal suffrage in Russia since that day. Far from apologizing, they have boasted of their action in overthrowing the constituent assembly. Their printing presses have been occupied not with apologies, but with seeking plausible phrases with which to cover their reactionary despotism, such as "dictatorship of the proletariat," "Soviets," "the rule of the workmen and peasants."
At first Lenin endeavored also to distort and twist the word "democracy" to his purposes, but the Soviet régime was steadily becoming more and more anti-democratic and the effort was soon abandoned. It has been widely claimed that at the Soviet Congress in December, 1920, and in the Communist Party Congress in March, 1921, the Bolshevists abandoned a large part of their practices and doctrines, threw communism overboard and adopted capitalism. The fact is that one steady and ceaseless change in the Bolshevist position has been to get farther and farther away from democracy
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