<P>--Lenin, claiming that people had only two choices; a choice between two different, but distinct class dictatorships . </P> <P> Lenin, according to his interpretation of Marx's theory of the state, believed democracy to be unattainable anywhere in the world before the proletariat seized power . According to Marxist theory, the state is a vehicle for oppression and is headed by a ruling class, an "organ of class rule". He believed that by his time, the only viable solution was dictatorship since the war was heading into a final conflict between the "progressive forces of socialism and the degenerate forces of capitalism". The Russian Revolution of 1917 was already a failure according to its original aim, which was to act as an inspiration for a world revolution . As a result, the initial anti-statist posture and the active campaigning for direct democracy was replaced with dictatorship . From the perspective of the Bolsheviks, the rationale for this change was Russia's lack of development, its status as the sole socialist state in the world, its encirclement by imperialist powers, and its internal encirclement by the peasantry . </P> <P> Marx, similar to Lenin, considered it fundamentally irrelevant whether a bourgeois state was ruled according to a republican, parliamentarian or constitutionally monarchic political system because this did not change the mode of production itself . These systems, regardless of whether they are ruled by an oligarchy or by mass participation, were ultimately all a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie by definition because the bourgeoisie, by the very condition of their class and its interests, would promote and implement policies in their class interests and thus in defense of capitalism . There was a difference, though; Lenin, after the failures of the world revolutions, argued that this did not necessarily have to change under the dictatorship of the proletariat . The reasoning came from wholly practical considerations: the majority of the country's inhabitants were not communists and the party could not introduce parliamentary democracy since that was inconsistent with their ideology and would lead to the party losing power . He therefore concluded that "(t) he form of government has absolutely nothing do to with" the nature of the dictatorship of the proletariat . Bukharin and Trotsky agreed with Lenin, both claiming that the revolution had only destroyed the old, but failing completely in creating anything sort of new . Lenin had now concluded that the dictatorship of the proletariat would not alter the relationship of power between persons, but rather "transform their productive relations so that, in the long run, the realm of necessity could be overcome and, with that, genuine social freedom realised". </P> <P> It was in the period of 1920--1921 that Soviet leaders and ideologists began differentiating between socialism and communism; hitherto the two terms had been used to describe similar conditions . From then, the two terms developed separate meanings . According to Soviet ideology, Russia was in the transition from capitalism to socialism (referred to interchangeably under Lenin as the dictatorship of the proletariat), socialism being the intermediate stage to communism, with the latter being the final stage which follows after socialism . By now, the party leaders believed that universal mass participation and true democracy could only take form in the last stage, if only because of Russia's current conditions at the time . </P>

The first russian revolution was shaped by what political ideology