That said, the Bolsheviks’ dictatorship did not arise automatically, even in the parts of imperial Russia that nominally fell under their jurisdiction. The dictatorship was an act of creation. That creation, in turn, was not a reaction to unforeseen crisis, but a deliberate strategy, and one that Lenin pursued against the objections of many top Bolsheviks. The drive for dictatorship began well before the full-scale civil war—indeed, the dictatorial drive served as a cause of the armed conflict (a fact universally noted by contemporaries). But in no way should any of this be taken to mean the
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