What, then, is the further task of our party? Our common course is clear. Our party has to realise proletarian democracy to a greater and ever greater extent; to bring about an increasingly close contact between delegates or elected persons (those deputed to perform various tasks) and the masses; to induce the workers to participate more and more effectively in the work of administration; finally, to ensure that millions of eyes shall watch the delegates and control their work. Everything possible must be done to see to it that all persons entrusted with authority shall be held responsible and shall frequently be called to account.
The carrying out of these tasks is a great undertaking. There are many obstacles to be overcome. The obstacles must be surmounted. We must achieve a full and inseparable union of three elements: the State apparatus; the active masses of the proletariat, the builders of communism; and the poor peasants.
52. The Army and the Soviet Power.
Proletarian democracy, like every other State authority, has its armed forces — its army and its navy. In the bourgeois democratic State, the army is used to keep down the workers and to defend the capitalists’ money-bags. The proletarian army, the Red Army of the Soviet Republic, is used for the class purposes of the proletariat and for the struggle against the bourgeoisie. Consequently, in respect of the conditions of service and in respect of political rights, there is a vast difference between a bourgeois army and a proletarian army. The bourgeoisie finds it expedient to pretend that its army is “above politics.” In reality, it uses the army as a means for promoting its predatory and counter-revolutionary policy under the flag of the defence of “national interests.” It does everything in its power to sow division between the army and the people. By a thousand subterfuges, it deprives soldiers of the possibility of utilising their political rights. Things are very different