Ossinsky, a prominent Communist, sums up the anti-democratic retrogression of the Bolshevist régime in Pravda, December 20, 1920, as follows:
For three years the Soviet Government has seriously turned aside from the principles of proletarian democracy, and from the spirit of the Soviet Constitution. On the one hand, there have been created two legislative bodies, not provided by our constitution—the Council of Defense and the Military Revolutionary Council; on the other, all constitution organs (legislative as well as executive) have virtually disappeared.
The eclipse of the Central Executive Committee is generally known. But even the Council of People's Commissars and the Council of Defense, which have ostensibly replaced the Central Executive Committee, have been, in their turn, eclipsed by still another body.
In reality the centre of political leadership has been shifted to the Central Committee of the Communist party, and even here to a smaller body, the "Political Bureau" of this committee.
Legislative measures, diplomatic acts, and military plans decided by this "Politik-Bureau" are formally sanctioned and issued in the name either of the People's Commissars or the Council of Defense. Diplomatic notes and military plans do not need even such formal sanction of any of the existing legislative or executive organs of the State.
In describing the steady reactionary trend toward the dictatorship of a smaller and smaller number of men, we cannot stop with the assertion that it is the Communist Party that controls, for the question arises, who controls the Communist Party? This is easily answered. At a special meeting of the Soviet Economic Conference in January, 1920, Lenin said:
