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power only in alliance with the peasantry. For this period he put forward the slogan: Dictatorship of the proletariat in reliance upon the peasantry. Only a Party like the Bolshevik Party could carry out this dictatorship. But to achieve it the Russian Communist Party had to link up closely with the peasantry and prove to it that only in alliance with the working class through the proletarian revolution could the peasant, once and for all, throw the landlord from his back. By this means, the Party is able to win a reliable ally in the fight to establish and consolidate the proletarian dictatorship. Lenin and the Bolshevik Party devoted considerable attention to this. Organizationally, the Party strengthened its influence in the villages by establishing Communist nuclei among the peasantry and among the Red Army men in the Red Army, the majority of whom are peasants temporarily removed from the land, and by means of Communist fractions in non-Party peasant organizations and various organs like the Soviets, Peasant Mutual Aid Committees, cooperative societies, in which the peasants are organized.

The dictatorship of the proletariat is exercised through the Soviet government of workers and peasants the general guidance of which is in the hands of the Party, exercised through the various Communist fractions.

In the last years of his life, being absorbed entirely in the general political leadership of the Party and the Soviet government, Comrade Lenin was able to devote little attention to the special question