Russian Revolution Part V: The Bolsheviks, Victor Serge, and the Myth of the Commune-State

It has been argued, and believed by some groups on the left, that the Bolsheviks intended to, and did, maintain these [popular, working class] organizations in their revolutionary-democratic form as the institutional framework for discussion among the workers and poor peasants over the “dictatorship of the proletariat” in Russia. This claim is a myth, a fantasy that completely obscures: (1) the kind of state Lenin and his allies in the Bolshevik Party intended to establish in the event of their seizure of state power in Russia; and (2) the nature of the regime the Bolsheviks actually established when they did take power.