stood. Power, to be gained at any cost, and ruthlessly
applied, by the proletarian minority, is the basic principle of Bolshevism
as a distinct form of revolutionary movement. Of course, the Bolshevik
leaders sought this power for no sordid, self-aggrandizing ends; they are
not self-seeking adventurers, as many would have us believe. They are
sincerely and profoundly convinced that the goal of social and economic
freedom and justice can be more easily attained by their method than by the
method of democratic Socialism. 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. In less critical circumstances they themselves
resorted to forced conscription. They condemned Kerensky and his colleagues
for "interfering with freedom of speech and press." When they came into
power they suppressed all non-Bolshevist papers and meetings in a manner
differing not at all from that of the Czar's regime, forcing the other
Socialist parties and groups to resort to the old pre-Revolution
"underground" methods.

The evidence of all these things, and things even worse than these, is
conclusive and unimpeachable. It is contained in the records of the
Bolshevik government, in its publications, and in the rep