The Spectator

Inverted Tsarism

From ‘News of the week’, 1 June 1918: Bolshevism is the negation of democratic government. There is no pretence on the part of M. Lenin and M. Trotsky that they wish the will of the people to prevail. What they say is that the proletariat must rule, and must crush both capitalism and the bourgeoisie. They are opposed to the existence of everybody who does not agree with them… Even the Russian peasants in the mass are not Bolshevik by conviction. Bolshevism, now that its principles are thoroughly understood, turns out to be nothing but an autocracy ‘by the proletariat’ — and not even by the proletariat, but by that part of the proletariat which believes in Bolshevism. All the bloody upheaval of the Revolution has occurred in order that a kind of inverted Tsarism might be enthroned.

 

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