p The entire experience of socialist construction demonstrates that the transition period is historically inevitable. Soviet science wages a struggle against all who refute this thesis or misrepresent the substance of the transition period. In this struggle it is guided by the theoretical propositions concerning the period of transition from capitalism to socialism formulated by Marx and Engels as a result of their analysis of capitalist society and study of the contradictions of bourgeois economic relations and the experience of the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat.

p In determining the laws of the transition period Marx and Engels proceeded from the assumption that the socialist revolution would triumph in all the leading countries of the world in relatively one and the same time. They therefore spoke of the transition period as of a more or less simultaneous process for all peoples, as of the concluding period of the epoch of the world-wide socialist revolution. They considered that in this case the victorious revolution would create a world dictatorship of the proletariat, a world republic uniting all socialist countries.

p In a new historical situation Lenin used the ideas of Marx and Engels to evolve his teaching of the transition period. According to this teaching the transition period must, at a certain stage, be regarded as a process of transition from capitalism in one or several countries. This has 224 been fully borne out by the experience of the contemporary epoch. The transition to socialism constitutes an historical epoch embracing different countries—from countries with capitalist or even pre-capitalist relations to countries at different stages of socialist development.

p The CPSU and other Communist parties have enlarged on the Marxist-Leninist teaching of the transition period and worked out a number of new propositions which mirror the experience of socialist construction. Valuable ideas are to be found in numerous documents of the fraternal parties of the socialist countries on the theory and practice of the transition period. The programme documents of the Communist parties of the capitalist countries also deal at length with the problems of the transition from capitalism to socialism. The collective experience in the study of these problems is generalised and deepened in the documents of the 1957, 1960 and 1969 International Meetings of Communist and Workers’ Parties.

p Each new socio-economic system was consolidated in the course of a more or less long period of transition, in which the relations and features of the old formation were destroyed and the new system gained strength.

p This fully concerns socialism. Rejecting Rykov’s assertion that no transition period existed between capitalism and socialism, Lenin said at the 7th All-Russia Conference of the RSDLP(B) in April 1917: “That is not so. It is a break with Marxism.”  [224•* 

p A period of transition to socialism is inevitable because many of the prerequisites of socialism cannot take shape even in the most developed capitalist society. They arise only in the process of transition from capitalism to socialism. Among them are radical changes in the forms of ownership and social relations, in the relations between classes and nations, the abolition of exploiters and of unemployment, and so on.

p Lenin by no means limited socialism to the one act of socialisation of production regardless of concrete material and technical conditions, as some Leftist elements are trying to do. For Lenin socialism was always a system of social relations, and its substance was the transfer of the means 225 of production to public ownership, the organisation of production in accordance with a general plan in the interests of all members of society, and the guarantee of their welfare and free, all-round development.

p Formerly operating laws of social development undergo a certain modification and new laws appear during the transition period. The destiny of the revolution and the prospects for the development of all mankind depend on how correctly these laws are understood and applied, and on the content and forms of society’s economic, political and other activity.

p The transition period is characterised by a sharp struggle between different social forces. For instance, capitalism was established in the course of a relentless struggle against the classes upholding feudalism. The cardinal task of this struggle was to demolish feudal social relations, which were fettering the development of the already existing capitalist social relations. The period of transition from capitalism to socialism is needed to uproot the old capitalist social relations and suppress the resistance of the bourgeoisie. In 1916 Lenin wrote: “And from a scientific point of view it would be utterly wrong—and utterly unrevolutionary—for us to evade or gloss over the most important thing: crushing the resistance of the bourgeoisie—the most difficult task, and one demanding the greatest amount of fighting, in the transition to socialism.”  [225•* 

p In their desperate resistance to the revolution the exploiters use all the means at their disposal, including armed violence. History has convincingly shown that nowhere has the exploiting class voluntarily relinquished power. On the contrary, it continues, as it has always done, to do everything to preserve and perpetuate its rule, not scrupling to resort to the most extreme measures. This is all the more true in the imperialist epoch when the bourgeoisie has a powerful apparatus of class suppression, namely, an army, a gendarmerie, a police force and so on. That is why power can be wrested from the exploiters and the transition from capitalism to socialism started only as a result of a persevering and bitter class,struggle, which in some cases is 226 protracted and entails bloodshed. This struggle is crowned by the socialist revolution.

p After the October Revolution the capitalists and landowners unleashed a civil war against the power of the working class. In this they were helped by foreign capital. Following the defeat of the counter-revolution some two million members of the former ruling classes left Russia and continued their fight against her. The world bourgeoisie waited (it is still waiting) for an opportune moment to strike a blow at socialism. “It is not dead; it is alive. It is lurking nearby and watching,”  [226•*  Lenin wrote. To this day, despite the fact that socialism’s frontiers have been extended and its forces have grown stronger, the world bourgeoisie does not relinquish its hope of restoring capitalism and uses every opportunity to attack the gains of the proletariat.

p In the transition period the principal constructive task is to create the relations of production and other social relations of socialism. The fact that power is taken over by the people for the first time fundamentally alters the content of the transition period. Lenin wrote: “To defeat capitalism in general, it is necessary, in the first place, to defeat the exploiters and to uphold the power of the exploited, namely, to accomplish the task of overthrowing the exploiters by revolutionary forces; in the second place, to accomplish the constructive task, that of establishing new economic relations, of setting an example of how this should be done. These two aspects of the task of accomplishing a socialist revolution are indissolubly connected, and distinguish our revolution from all previous ones, which never went beyond the destructive aspect.”  [226•** 

p By resolving the task of transferring state power to the workers and peasants, the socialist revolution thereby does not achieve the replacement of capitalism by socialism. From the very beginning, it will be remembered, Soviet Russia called herself a socialist republic. This, as Lenin emphasised, signified “the determination of Soviet power to achieve the transition to socialism, and not that the new economic 227 system is recognised as a socialist order”.  [227•*  A more or less long period, in fact, an entire transition period is required for the socialist remaking of the economy after the dictatorship of the proletariat is established. As Lenin put it, this transition period signified that in the economy there were elements, particles and fragments of both capitalism and socialism.  [227•**  In that period the main contradiction and struggle is between incipient socialism and dying capitalism. This contradiction is resolved when capitalism is completely uprooted in the given period and socialism becomes the universal and mature form of social production.

p In each country the historical complexity and forms of the transition period are naturally different and are determined by the substance of the historical process itself, the extent of the people’s participation in the building of socialism, the strength of the party and its leaders, and the degree to which the laws governing the building of the new society are understood. Moreover, they depend on the development level of the productive forces and on other factors, and also, of course, on developments in the world. Taken together these factors determine the duration of the transition period in each country. When the Soviet Union was the only country building socialism and had to withstand the pressure of the capitalist states encircling it, the problem of the duration of the transition period was different from what it is today when a country building socialism can count on assistance from the socialist community.

p The duration of the transition period is, of course, different for an industrially developed and ^n economically undeveloped country. In principle, the higher the development level of a country and the greater the maturity of the material prerequisites of socialism, the less is this country in need of special state transitional measures. This was stressed by Lenin in his notes on the theses of the French Communist Party on the agrarian problem. He wrote that in the case of France, where the small peasants were predominant in the countryside, there was a need for a “‘programme of transitional measures’ ... to communism, adapted to the peasants’ voluntary transition to the 228 socialisation of farming, that will, at the same time, ensure an immediate improvement in the condition of the vast majority of the rural population, the hired labourers and small peasants”.  [228•*  He made the point that “the vast majority of the rural population of France would gain at once, immediately and very considerably from a proletarian revolution”.  [228•** 

p For each country the duration of the transition period is unquestionably linked with the specifics of its development, with the features intrinsic to it. The distinctions in the duration of this period mirror the diversity of the political forms of transition, although the historical content of the transition remains immutable.

p The possible length of the transition period has been prompted by history.

p In the Soviet Union socialism was built by 1936, i.e., in twenty years. In the countries of Central and Southeastern Europe, where the building of socialism proceeded under more favourable conditions, with support from the USSR, the transition period was shorter. For instance, it ended by 1958 in Bulgaria, by 1960 in Czechoslovakia and Rumania and by 1962 in the German Democratic Republic.

p The Marxist-Leninist teaching of the transition period is attacked from two sides. The reformists reject the need for fundamental changes in all spheres of social life and for the conquest of power by the proletariat. It regards the transition period as a gradual reorganisation of capitalism into socialism while retaining all the basic attributes of capitalism: private ownership of the means of production, political “pluralism” under which the working class and its party are accorded solely the role of an equal partner with other social forces and, lastly, “coexistence” of socialist and bourgeois ideology. As a matter of fact, the Social- Democrats of a number of countries, where they have been or are in power (and where they have not even touched the foundations of capitalism), consider that under their rule society is no longer capitalist, but is in the stage of transition from capitalism to socialism.

p The Left extremists, on the other hand, hold that as long as there are countries that have not shaken off the 229 chains of capitalism, neither socialism nor communism can be built in countries where a revolution has already taken place. This tenet is at variance with objective historical laws and shows incomprehension of the substance of the transition from capitalism to socialism and communism. It reflects an aspiration to hold up the development of other countries artificially, to slow down the inexorable course of history and keep all countries and peoples at one stage, at the stage of transition. This is a reactionary stand, of course, because far from encouraging it only keeps the energy and initiative of the masses in the capitalist and dependent countries in check. This is nothing but historic pessimism because the Left extremists have no desire to go beyond the transition period with its prospect of building socialism.

p The thesis of a simultaneous period of transition, of a simultaneous triumph of socialism turns upside down the theory of the simultaneous triumph of the revolution in an epoch and under historical conditions when no objective prerequisites exist for accomplishing the revolution. The theory and practice of the extremists run counter to the interests of most nations, the interests of all the Communist parties.

p The dictatorship of the proletariat is unquestionably prominent among the problems of the transition period over which the ideological struggle is particularly sharp. This is not accidental. The dictatorship of the proletariat is the chief instrument for carrying out all the tasks of the transition period. Socialism cannot be built without such a dictatorship. “World history,” Lenin wrote, “is leading unswervingly towards the dictatorship of the proletariat, but is doing so by paths that are anything but smooth, simple and straight."  [229•* 

p No sooner was the idea of the proletarian dictatorship expounded by Marxism than it was attacked by bourgeois ideology. It is precisely in this issue that the bourgeoisie glaringly reveals its class positions and interests. It hurls a torrent of accusations at socialism, alleging that it is not democratic, that Marxist ideology is anti-democratic and anti-humane and that the Marxist parties represent a 230 dictatorship of a narrow circle of persons standing above the party, above the class and above the people. The debate and struggle between revolutionary, creative MarxismLeninism and opportunism is most bitter precisely over the questions of democracy and dictatorship. The answer to these questions is the criterion for determining who is an opportunist and who a Marxist-Leninist. These were the questions that were in the centre of the events in Czechoslovakia in 1968-1969.

p The idea of the proletarian dictatorship is most intensively criticised on two counts. In the first place, attempts are being made to repudiate the proposition on the leading role of the working class. It is asserted that the scientific and technological revolution has modified the proletariat’s role in society, that it is no longer a revolutionary class and there is, therefore, no reason for raising the question of its political power. Moreover, it is maintained that in the epoch of the scientific and technological revolution increasing importance is acquired by the leadership of all social processes by an elite consisting of technocrats, that classes, the class division, the class struggle and society’s leadership from class positions are losing their significance.”  [230•* 

p The reason that in the transition period the dictatorship of the proletariat and no other class is established is because it is the leading class numerically and for its place in production and social life. After the October Revolution Lenin underscored the special role of the proletariat, noting that “classes can be abolished only by the dictatorship of that oppressed class which has been schooled, united, trained and steeled by decades of the strike and political struggle against capital—of that class alone which has assimilated all the urban, industrial, big-capitalist culture and has the determination and ability to protect it and to preserve and further develop all its achievements, and make them available to all the people, to all the working people—of that class alone which will be able to bear all the hardships, trials, 231 privations and great sacrifices which history inevitably imposes upon those who break with the past and boldly hew a road for themselves to a new future—of that class alone whose finest members are full of hatred and contempt for everything petty-bourgeois and philistine, for the qualities that flourish so profusely among the petty bourgeoisie, the minor employees and the ‘intellectuals’—of that class alone which ’has been through the hardening school of labour’ and is able to inspire respect for its efficiency in every working person and every honest man”.  [231•* 

p Lenin showed that it was necessary to consolidate the role of the working class, saying that socialism could not triumph without working-class leadership. He enlarged on the Marxist proposition on the need for a strong alliance between the proletariat and the peasants with the working class playing the chief role in that alliance. Class-conscious and disciplined, the proletariat is the only class that can win over the majority of the working and exploited people, the majority of the poor to the building of socialist society. Moreover, Lenin pointed out that the proletariat would not be satisfied with just any alliance with the peasants, that it needed an alliance that would give it the leading role and enable it to strengthen its position in regard to the bourgeoisie, build socialism and abolish classes.

p Another method used by the enemies of socialism in their attacks on the theory of the proletarian dictatorship is to set it off against the democratic dictatorship with the assertion that the proletarian dictatorship signifies the end of all democracy. These were the arguments of Eduard Bernstein, Karl Kautsky and others, and they were utterly disproved by the Marxists-Leninists. As the dictatorship of any class, the proletarian dictatorship is of a class nature and thereby signifies the limitation of democracy for those who go against the power of the working people, against socialism. “All talk of independence or democracy in general, no matter what sauce it may be served up with, is a sheer fraud and a downright betrayal of socialism,”  [231•**  Lenin wrote.

p Bourgeois and socialist society cannot be compared 232 mechanically or abstracted from the class nature of society. Socialist democracy is not a formal category. It is a democracy for the workers, peasants and intellectuals. Its aim is to draw millions of people into the administration of the state, into economic management, into the direction of all social affairs. Bourgeois democracy is, in fact, a democracy for -the select and accords the real right to administer society only to those who have economic power. “Freedom of speech”, “freedom of assembly" and other “rights” proclaimed by the bourgeoisie are formal categories (and even they are being constantly curtailed) because they are implemented according to the “rules of the game”, which safeguard the power of the capitalists and ward off any threat to private ownership, the holy of holies of capitalism. The thousands of volumes written by Western propagandists about the blessings of their democracy cannot obviate the fact that the working people, who comprise the overwhelming majority of the population in capitalist countries, do not play the decisive role in the socio-political life of these countries.

p Lenin had, therefore, every reason for declaring that proletarian socialist democracy is a thousand times more democratic than any bourgeois democracy. This is borne out by the flourishing socialist democracy in the Soviet Union and other socialist countries.

p In their attacks on the proletarian dictatorship the enemies of Marxism-Leninism seek to drive a wedge between the party and the class. They assert that the party does not mirror the interests of the proletariat, that it stands above the working people, that there is an abyss between the party’s policy and the will of the working class, and so on. Assertions of this kind have been convincingly refuted by the entire history of the communist movement. By playing the leading role in socialist society the party makes it possible to achieve the efficient organisation of socialist construction, foster economic and cultural development and promote broad democracy as a vital element strengthening the power of the people.

p Todor Zhivkov, First Secretary of the CC of the Bulgarian Communist Party, told the 1969 International Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties: “What we need is not formal democracy, but the conditions necessary for 233 the development of real socialist democracy, that is, an increasingly broader participation of the working class, of all working people, in running the country, in guiding sociopolitical, economic and cultural life, which are, indeed, the serious questions that the Communist parties are working on in the socialist countries.”  [233•* 

p Advocates of “pure” democracy are trying to bring into the theory of the transition period a thesis calling for a “free play" of political forces and for the renunciation by the Communist party of its leading role. They contend that in the socialist countries the political system lags behind the level of economic development.

p The attempts to change the policy of a socialist state in accordance with these views conform, as the experience of Czechoslovakia has shown, with the interests of the reactionary forces and menace all the achievements of socialism.

p The duration of the transition period is also a bone of contention. On this point there are two extremes. One is the tendency, unfoundedly, to shorten the transition to socialism, to leap over unavoidable stages of development. This tendency is manifested in hasty statements about the complete triumph of socialism, the abolition of all antagonistic contradictions, the homogeneity of society and the establishment of a socialist state of the whole people. These misguided views were propounded by some theorists in Czechoslovakia. At a plenary meeting of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in September 1969 Gustav Husak said that as a result of a subjectivist approach “social development was idealised and unrealistic slogans were proclaimed which anticipated a whole stage of historical development in substance and time. And all this was done in a period when the problems and difficulties lying on the shoulders of rank-and-file party members and other honest citizens were still awaiting their solution.”  [233•** 

p The other extreme is to lengthen the transition period indefinitely. The Chinese “theorists” say that the transition period must last ten thousand or tens of thousands of years, or even a hundred thousand years. But this understanding 234 of the period of transition from capitalism to socialism has nothing in common with the Marxist-Leninist theory of the socialist revolution, with the Marxist-Leninist understanding of the transition period. It is an expression of petty-bourgeois confusion and fear of the difficulties of the transition period, of the complexities involved in the building of socialism.

The various deviations from the Marxist-Leninist teaching of the transition period are prejudicial to the practice of socialist construction and obstruct the Communist Party’s leadership of social development. History has shown that Communists achieve their greatest successes only when they steadfastly follow the teaching of the transition period. The substance of that period is inevitably the dictatorship of the proletariat, which builds a new society and cuts short the intrigues of its enemies.