No matter what domain of Soviet activity we turn to, we see a small portion of the conscious proletariat, a still greater number of the less conscious, and then at the very foundation, an enormous mass of peasants who have all retained their individual economic habits of free commerce and speculation. Such are the conditions under which we must act and which determine appropriate methods of action. …
In the autocracy of the chiefs of communism and the communist domination of the people lies the pledge of our success.
What we really have in Soviet Russia is the rule of the chiefs of the Bolshevist Party, the congresses of that organization being cut and dried affairs. We must not forget that the Commissars in control of the Bolshevist Government are able to apply their dictatorial power over Communist party members, using not only rewards and punishments for their purposes but also the frightful "Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution." Furthermore the Executive of the Party reserves the right of purging it from time to time of unsatisfactory members and thousands upon thousands have been put out in this way. At the same time entrance is made extremely difficult and is controlled by the central committee. The excuse for all this centralization within the Party is, of course, the necessities of the revolutionary civil war that is still raging and, as we show below, is expected to continue to rage for the next twenty-five or fifty years.
The following paragraphs from the long resolution of the Second Congress of the Communist Internationale already quoted sufficiently indicate the power
