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we ty ws Gee peibeneden Wao satiluly appiea ba KUSsid. “Luis, in passing, explains why the revolution in Russia brought the proletariat to power. In previous revolutions it usually happened that the workers did all the fighting at the barricades, shed their blood and overthrew the old order, but power passed into the hands of the bourgeoisie, which oppressed and exploited the workers, That was the case in England and in France. That was the case in Germany. In Russia, however, things took a different turn. In Russia, the workers did not merely represent the shock troops of the revolution. While serving as the shock troops of the revolution, the Russian proletariat at the, same time strove for hegemony, for the political leadership of all the exploited masses of town and country, rallying them around itself, detaching them from the bourgeoisie and politically iso lating the bourgeoisie. Being the leader of the exploited masses, the Russian proletariat all the time waged a fight to seize power sin its own hands and utilize it in its own interests against the bourgeoisie and against capitalism. This explains why every powerful outbreak of the revolution in Russia, as in October 1905, and in February 1917, gave rise to Soviets of Workers’ Deputies as the embryo of the new apparatus of power—the function of which would be to crush the bourgeoisie~as against the bourgeois parliament, the old apparatus of power—the func- tion of which was to-crush the’proletariat. On two occasions the bourgeoisie in Russia tried to restore the bourgeois parliament and put an end to the soviets: in August 1917, at the time of the “Preliminary Parliament” prior to the capture of power by the Bolsheviks, and in January 1918, at the time of the “Constituent Assembly” after power had been seized by the proletariat. On doth occasions these efforts failed. Why? Because the bourgecisie was already politically isolated. The vast masses of the toilers regarded the proletariat as the sole leader of the revolution and the soviets had already been tried and tested by the masses as their own workers’ government. For the proletariat to have sub- stituted these soviets by a bourgeois parliament would have been tantamount to committing suicide. It is not surprising, therefore, that bourgeois parliamentarism did not take root in Russia. That is why the revolution in Russia led to the establishment of the tule of the proletariat. These were the results of the application of the Leninist system of the hegemony of the proletariat in revolution. ; 3o Fifth: the national and colonial question. In analyzing the events in Ireland, India, China and the Central European coun- tries like Poland and Hungary, in their time, Marx and Engels developed the basic, initial ideas of the national and colonial question. In his works Lenin based himself on these ideas. Lenin's new contribution in this field was: (a) that he gathered these ideas into one symmetrical system of views on national and colonial revolutions in the epoch of imperialism; (b) that he connected the national and colonial question with the question of overthrowing imperialism, and (c} that he declared the nation- al and colonial question to be a component part of the general question of international proletarian revolution. Finally: the question of the party of the proletariat. Marx and Engels gave the main outlines of the idea of the Party as being the vanguard of the protetariat, without which (the party), the proletariat could not achieve its emancipation, could not cap- ture power or reconstruct capitalist society. Lenin's new contribu- tion to this theory was that he developed these outlines further and applied them to the new conditions of the proletarian strug- gle in the period of imperialism and showed: (a) that the party is a higher form of the class organization of the proletariat as compared with the other forms of proletarian organization (labor unions, co-operative societies, state Organization) and, more- over, its function is to generalize and direct the work of these or- ganizations; (b) that the dictatorship of the proletariat may be realized only through the party as its directing force; (c) that the dictatorship of the proletariat can be complete only if it is led by a single party, the Communist Party, which does not and must not share leadership with any other party; and (d) chat without iron discipline in the party, the tasks of the dictatorship of the proletariat to crush the exploiters and to transform class society into socialist sociery cannot be fulfilled. This, in the main, is the new contribution which Lenin made in his works; he developed and made more concrete the doctrines of Marx in a manner applicable to the new conditions of the pro- letarian struggle in the period of imperialism. That is why we say that Leninism is Marxism of the epoch of imperialism and proletarian revolutions, From this it is clear that Leninism cannot be separated from Marxism, still less can it be contrasted wich Marxism. Karl Marx, Selected Works, Vol. I, PP. 74-79. . 383i ne ape meet mom, me teres) ee ep ee wee rey oe Faction ™ : fern uibhanbirs , wha 1 ate anne me ete oy ae ee ee ee ee >