(agriculture) at the present time. This theory is not only the one reason for the dictatorship of the proletariat, as we have pointed out, but it is also the sole reason for the establishment of the Soviet form of government as opposed to the democratic Constitutional Assembly.
The advocates of friendly relations with the Soviets, approaching or actually amounting to their official recognition, have not been satisfied with hailing every petty advance of Bolshevism in the direction of more practical methods of oppression as a final abandonment of Communism. They have also seized upon every new theoretical formulation by Lenin as a surrender to capitalism—in spite of the fact that new encyclicals by the Bolshevist high priest have been handed down to his disciples several times each year ever since 1917. No close or persistent student of these pronouncements has missed or could miss the fact that all the essential foundations of Soviet rule, as interpreted by Lenin, remain now what they were in 1917. But journalists and others who are either totally ignorant of the Soviet leader's thought or know it only at second hand easily find in each new formulation phrases with which they are unfamiliar or expressions they do not understand. This is why it happens so frequently that some theory which is the strongest possible reaffirmation of Bolshevism is interpreted as a compromise or surrender.
An excellent illustration is the long article in the Pravda of May 3d, in which Lenin explains to his followers the theoretical foundation of those widely discussed tactical changes made by the Bolshevists—for the purpose of strengthening their despotic power—at the
