Lenin und die Diktatur des Proletariats – Begriff, Konzeption, Ermöglichung

The contribution focuses on the dictatorship of the proletariat which Lenin exploited as a legitimacy resource, in particular on the concept of the “avant-garde”-party, the aspect of minority dictatorship and the specific role of violence. Lenin‘s attempt to integrate the “peasant factor” into his concept of a dictatorship is also discussed in detail. Soon it was clear that Lenin wanted to establish this dictatorship by help of the Party, the Councils and, most of all, the executive, and that he was out for radical change. Already in the course of the first year after having established his rule (1917/18) it became obvious that this new dictatorship leaned primarily onto the Party, the executive and special state institutions, however hardly onto the Councils which served only as a façade. All promises of a new state with reduced bureaucracy proved to be empty promises