dictatorship would last twenty-five years to fifty years. The Second Communist Internationale concludes its discussion of the dictatorial role of the Communist Party (above quoted) as follows:
The aim of a political party of the proletariat disappears only with the complete destruction of classes. In the process of achieving this final victory of Communism it is possible that the specific gravity of the three fundamental proletarian organizations of our time, the party, the Soviet, and the productive unions, will undergo changes, and that eventually a unified type of labor organization will become crystallized. But the Communist Party will become dissolved completely in the working class at the time when Communism will cease to be the aim of the struggle, and when the whole working class will become communistic.
The fact that the dictatorship of the proletariat is not regarded as a rapidly passing phase was again brought out by Lenin at the Congress of the Communist Party in March, 1920—when the Bolshevist leader said:
We must base our activities with regard to class relations in our country and in other countries, so as to retain the dictatorship of the proletariat for a prolonged period and to extricate ourselves if only gradually from the misfortunes and crises which have come upon us.
Not only do the Bolshevists promulgate for all countries a long period of dictatorship similar to what we now see in Russia, but they believe that this will be a period of civil war justifying all manner of terrorism, violence and extreme measures. As the resolution above cited frequently says, a long period of civil war
