Page 20 - The Basic Conflict between Christianity and Communism

Czar’s palace was fired on by the police. The resultant disturbances were quieted by

concessions made by the Czar to create a parliament and grant a constitution. Lenin
was not actually in Russia at the time of this outbreak, but returned in November, too
late to influence the course of events into total revolution and the unseating of the
Czarist government. Lenin was compelled to leave Russia in April, 1908, and did not

return again until April, 1917 after the abdication of the Czar, which had occurred on
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March 15 . A provision government was formed which lasted until October, during
which time the moderate Mensheviks and Lenin’s more radical Bolsheviks were
jockeying for power within the Party. The former, which then included Stalin,

Kamenev and Molotov, were busy forming Soviets (party councils) in every town and
village and were trying to make the party slogan “All power to the Soviets,” but Lenin
moved in with the slogan “The dictatorship of the proletariat and the poor peasantry.”

There was an upsurge of the peasantry and a mutiny in the army in which Soviet
had also been planted, and the Bolsheviks seized power in a practically bloodless
revolution.

It was comparatively bloodless as far as the immediate turnover of power was
concerned, but history has little record of such murders and cruelties as succeeded in
the next few months to crush, intimidate and eliminate any opposition. We can never
forget the stark terror written on the faces of those White Russian refugees in the Far

East as they told of how the Bolsheviki had entered their homes and murdered parents
and children and other relatives in their beds, as they barely escaped with their lives.

Lenin admitted that “The dictatorship of the proletariat” is a transitional phase and

moves on to the attainment of real Socialism and the elimination of the State. But he
soon found that “The dictatorship of the proletariat” itself is an impossible thesis to
work, and that a faceless mass of people without experience in government or
administration cannot dictate anything. He had to formulate the theory of “The Party

as the vanguard of the proletariat” which means that all real authority resides in the
Party and includes as much of bourgeois “knowhow” as possible.

Marx’ optimistic theory of “The Dictatorship of the proletariat” has gone out of the

window since Lenin and then Stalin have been up against establishing some kind of
government that can carry in at all. With near to two hundred million population in
Russia the maximum number of those who are even members of the Communist Party
has never exceeded six million and only those who were in the inner circle close

enough to sense every whim of Dictator Stalin have any power at all. To be sure that

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