[reached under the democratic dict'atorship, argued Lenin. That…]

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reached under the democratic dict'atorship, argued Lenin. That slogan was therefore of no further use. It must be consigned, along with anyone who supported it, to the museum of 'Old Bolshevism' The revolution was only partially complete, however, and only the dictatorship of the proletariat could complete it. The slogans, said Lenin, must now be "All Power to the Soviets!" and "Down With the Provisional Government!"

Trotsky too, from exile, saw that it would be a betrayal of the working class to support the provisional government, while the workers, peasants and soldiers were themselves forming Soviets which constituted a dual power alongside that of the provisional government.

In such situation the democratic revolution could only be defended and extended through the establishment of the dictator ship of the proletariat supported by the peasantry. This would then pose the question of socialism.

For Trotsky then, 1917 was the year when his theory of Permanent Revolution was confirmed in practice. Having long ago abandoned his mistaken attempts to unite the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks, he joined the Bolsheviks shortły before they took power in October 1917 and his theory of Permanent Revolution was incorporated into the theory and programme of Bolshevism.

The following years proved the second part of Trotsky's theory correct as well. The dictatorship of the proletariat had indeed posed tasks going beyond those of the democratic revolution as the Comm unist Party set about destroying the power of the capitalists by nationalising industry and the banks Just as the law of uneven development had permitted the working class in backward Russia to come to power before the workers of advanced capitalist countries like Britain, so now that law ceased to apply and instead the many threads that linked the Russian economy to world capitalism began to assert themselves.

Politically and economically isolated from the rest of the world, Russia could only progress to socialism with the timely assistance of the working class of advanced capitalism.

None of the Bolshevik leaders in the period after the revolution thought that Russia could build socialism by itself. However, the defeats of the German Revolutions of 1919, 1921 and 1923, WILD LIE to a feeling inside sections of the Communist Party leadership that aid from the proletariat was now postponed to the indefinite future. of the rest of the world. It was Stalin who developed this idea into: his 'theory' of Socialism in one country.

This theory was in complete opposition to the theory of Permanent Revolution which the Bolsheviks had accepted in 1917. Trotsky, as the author of the theory