Still, the fact remains that what social
ideals they hold are no part of Bolshevism. They are Socialist ideals.
Bolshevism is a distinctive method and a program, and its essence is the
relentless use of power by the proletariat against the rest of society in
the same manner that the bourgeois and military rulers of nations have
commonly used it against the proletariat. Bolshevism has simply inverted
the old Czarist regime.
The fairness and justice of this judgment are demonstrated by the
Bolsheviki themselves. They denounced Kerensky's government for not holding
the elections for the Constituent Assembly sooner, posing as the champions
of the Constituante. When they had themselves assumed control of the
government they delayed the meeting of the Constituent Assembly and then
suppressed it by force of arms! They denounced Kerensky for having
restored the death penalty in the army in cases of gross treachery,
professing an intense horror of capital punishment as a form of "bourgeois
savagery." When they came into power they instituted capital punishment for
_civil_ and _political offenses_, establishing public hangings and
floggings as a means of impressing the population![24] They had bitterly
assailed Kerensky for his "militarism," for trying to build up the army and
for urging men to fight.
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