greatest and most efficient "borer-from-within" known to history; it has the whole Russian society honeycombed with its yatchaykas. And when this vast and complicated mechanism moves, containing as it does almost a monopoly of natural social leadership, its power is irresistable.
A further factor in the wonderful power of the Russian Communist Party is the organization's keen consciousness of its role in the revolution. It fully realizes that it is the thinking and doing part of the proletariat, and it boldly claims the right to direct the ignorant, sluggish masses. It systematically and energetically takes charge of all social institutions, so that it may spur them into revolutionary activity. A resolution of the Eighth Congress of the Party says: "The aim of the Communist Party is to obtain a preponderating influence and complete control of all the workers' organizations, the trade unions, co-operatives, rural communes, etc. The Communist Party strives especially to introduce its program into the actual organizations of State—the Soviets—and to obtain complete control there." When he was in hiding during the Kerensky period, Lenin asked this pertinent question (Galin, P. 15, "Sowjet Russland"): "If under the imperial regime 130,000 nobles could govern Russia, why should not 200,000 organized Bolsheviki be able to do it also?" Experience has proved that they are; and the yatchayka system, with its practical monopoly of working-class intelligence, is the explanation. Contrary to the assertions of critics unfriendly to Soviet Russia, force and terrorism are not the decisive factor in maintaining the supremacy of the Communist Party in Russia.
A cardinal principle of the Communist Party is to place its militants in all the strategic points of the social organism. Naturally the Government is thoroughly occupied by the Communists, and the higher and more important the type of Government institution the more complete this occupation. This is well illustrated by the following tables, taken from the statistical exhibition at the recent Congress of the Third International in Moscow:
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