Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. Childhood disease "leftism" in communism (№ 394079)

The dictatorship carries out organized in the Councils the proletariat headed by the Communist party of Bolsheviks, which, according to the last party Congress (IV. 1920), 611 thousand members. The number of members fluctuated until the October revolution, and after the very first it was much smaller, even in 1918 and 1919. We fear the excessive expansion of the party, because the government parties will inevitably seek to cling careerists and charlatans, who deserve only to be shot. Last time we opened wide the door of the party - only for the workers and peasants in those days (the winter of 1919) when Yudenich was a few versts from Petrograd, and Denikin Orel (approx. 350 versts from Moscow), ie, when the Soviet Republic was threatened by a desperate, mortal danger, and when adventurers, careerists, charlatans and generally unstable people in no way could count on a lucrative career (and probably could expect the gallows and torture) by joining the Communists.