The Bolsheviks specifically believed in vanguardism. This meant they not only had to suppress the 80% or so that had no interest in Bolshevism at all but also t

The Bolsheviks specifically believed in vanguardism. This meant they not only had to suppress the 80% or so that had no interest in Bolshevism at all but also the various communist, anarchist and syndicalist movements that existed alongside the Bolsheviks but did not follow the vanguardist tradition. Ironically this means one thing the "Soviets" eliminated first was the soviets, i.e. the workers councils, and the worker cooperatives. This fixation on vanguardism continued to manifest in sabotaging other communist and anarchist movements in Ukraine and even Spain where it contributed to the victory of the fascists. If there's one thing the Bolsheviks succeeded at, it's purges. I'm just not sure if that's something to be proud of as it evidently never led to anything beyond "actually existing socialism". It's also worth remembering that according to Marx, communism is a state-less and class-less society. A literal "dictatorship of the proletariat" by definition maintains a class system because the proletariat is defined by its exploitation (i.e. working but not owning - an owner who works for his own business, like an enfranchised peasant, is not proletarian). In practice this literal interpretation thus also meant that the state replaced the capitalist class (hence state capitalism) even if theoretically the state was under the democratic control of the proletariat (but again via a system of representation, not delegation, as the vanguard party needed to be able to overrule any democratic interests that would have been deemed counter-revolutionary).