"_Just as one hundred and fifty thousand
lordly landowners under Czarism dominated the one hundred and thirty
millions of Russian peasants, so two hundred thousand members of the
Bolshevik party are imposing their proletarian will on the mass, but this
time in the interest of the latter._"[23]
Lenine's figures probably exaggerate the Bolshevik numbers, but, assuming
them to be accurate, can anybody in his right mind, knowing anything of the
history of the Russian revolutionary movement, believe that the
substitution of a ruling class of one hundred and fifty thousand by one of
two hundred thousand, to govern a nation of one hundred and eighty
millions, was the end to which so many lives were sacrificed? Can any sane
and sincere person believe that the class domination described by the great
arch-Bolshevik himself comes within measurable distance of being as much of
a realization of the ideals of the Revolution as did the Constituent
Assembly plan with its basis of political democracy, universal, equal,
direct, secret, all-determining suffrage? We do not forget Lenine's
statement that this new domination of the people by a ruling minority
differs from the old regime in that the Bolsheviki are imposing their will
upon the mass "_in the interest of the latter_.
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