p The socialist revolution brings the working people, led by the working class, to power. The exploiting classes—the capitalists and landlords—are deprived of political power but as yet do not disappear from the arena of class struggle. The revolution ushers in the period of transition from capitalism to socialism, the period of the revolutionary transformation of capitalist society into socialist society.

p The instrument of this transformation of society, as the founders of Marxism-Leninism taught, is the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.

p What is the dictatorship of the proletariat? It is power in the hands of the working people, led by the working class and having as its aim the building of socialism.

p “If we translate this Latin, scientific, historical-philosophical term ’dictatorship of the proletariat’ into more simple language,” Lenin wrote, "it means just the following:

“Only a definite class, namely, that of the urban and industrial workers in general, is able to lead the whole mass of the toilers and exploited in the struggle for the overthrow of the yoke of capital, in the process of this overthrow, in the struggle to maintain and consolidate the victory, in the work of creating the new, socialist, social system, in the whole struggle for the complete abolition of classes.”^^300^^