Gustavo Wati, a representative of the National Committee of the International Committee of the Fourth International, speaks to delegates at the Congress of the International Committee of the Fourth International in Moscow in the second week of October 1917. (Photo: Krasnushkin Archive/AP/Getty Images)

On October 4, 1917, in the first week of October 1917, a great new party came into existence, the Bolshevik Party. It represented, for example, Lenin’s followers, some supporters of the Russian Communist Party, and the Mensheviks. It also represented sections of the Russian peasantry, the poor workers, and other working people. This new party, formed in the depths of the revolution and coming to power with the help of Russian Social-Democrats, became the embryo of the international Communist movement, as well as of the new Social-Democratic International.

For the rest of history, it will be known as the Communist Party (C.P.) of Lenin (hereafter Communist Party of Lenin). While the Bolshevik Party in its first days was small, it soon surpassed in size the Mensheviks. It played a prominent role in the revolution. It played a leading role in building the international Communist movement, which has lasted more than two hundred years. The Communist Party is the largest party today in the world with at least one million members.

We need not make much of differences in the language of the two parties, but they were two sides of the same coin—the socialist revolution, which was proclaimed by Lenin and his followers, and which came into reality after the October Revolution by the Bolsheviks. The Communists, who called themselves the “vanguard of the working class,” came to power and organized the workers into a new political force in the process of the revolution. They formed the first Communist State in the entire history of the world.

It is necessary first of all to clear up a misconception. The slogan “All Power to the Soviets” is a Marxist phrase. But this phrase (to be precise: phrase of October 7, 1917) was not a statement of principle, but an expression of the immediate class interests of the workers. It was a slogan meant to show that the Soviets formed immediately after the November Revolution became the most powerful revolutionary factor in the power structure.

The Bolsheviks, and the party of Lenin, used the term “Soviet republic” not to express an ideological or legal position or to refer to such a