The dying out of the State will proceed far more rapidly when a complete victory has been gained over the imperialists. To-day, when a fierce civil war is still raging, all our organisations have to be on a war footing. The instruments of the Soviet Power have had to be constructed on militarist lines. Often enough there is no time to summon the soviets, and as a rule, therefore, the executive committees have to decide everything.
This state of affairs is due to the military situation of the Soviet Republic. What exists to-day in Russia is not simply the dictatorship of the proletariat; it is a militarist-proletarian dictatorship. The republic is an armed camp. Obviously, the above-described conditions will not pass away while the need persists for the militarisation of all our organisations.
Literature
LENIN, The State and Revolution. LENIN, Will the Bolsheviks retain the Authority of the State? OSINSKY, A Democratic Republic or a Soviet Republic? LENIN, Theses concerning bourgeois and proletarian Democracy adopted by the first Congress of the Communist International. LENIN, The proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky. STUCHKA, The Constitution of the R.S.F.S.R. in Question and Answer. BUKHARIN, Parliamentarism or Soviet Republic? KARPINSKY, What the Soviet Power is. KARPINSKY and LATSIS, What the Soviet Power is and how it is built up.