and nearer and nearer to the absolute dictatorship of Lenin and those about him.
At the outset Lenin made a strained effort to claim that the Bolshevist régime was democratic. In order to do this he made use of the favorite Bolshevist propaganda trick of employing a word to mean the very opposite of what it does mean. Nevertheless at that time he did wish the world to believe that the Bolshevists, in some sense, represented the Russian people.
The Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Delegates constitutes the form of government by the workers, and represents the interest of all the poorest of our people, of nine-tenths of the population, aiming to secure peace, bread and liberty. … (Nicolai Lenin in a book entitled "The Proletarian Revolution in Russia," edited by Louis C. Fraina, pp. 24–25).
In the Die Kommunistische Internationale in 1919 Lenin similarly wrote:
So Soviet or proletarian democracy has its birthplace in Russia. It represents another stage in evolution following upon the Paris Commune. … For the first time in the history of the world a Soviet or proletarian democracy has created a democracy of the masses of the working people, of the laborers and the small peasantry.
Never before in history has there been a government truly representing the majority of the people and rendering effective the actual power of this majority except the Soviet.
So anxious was the Bolshevist dictator to claim that he had the support of the Russian people and so con-
