Russian Bolshevism was an ideological heir to the European revolutionary passion that took place at the second stage of the French Revolution, during the Jacobine Dictatorship between 1793 and 1794. However, the Bolsheviks implemented this in a poorly-developed Russian bourgeois society at the beginning of the 20th century. The Bolsheviks, originating from the underdeveloped Russian society incapable of any reforms, introduced typically Russian elements – the violent anarchistic theory and practice devoid of any democratic traditions – into Marxism, which had started to become increasingly reformist after the end of the 19th century and had begun to abandon its idea of a revolution, at least in practice. The Russian Bolsheviks and especially their leader Lenin altered the fundamental Marx's supposition that the socialist revolution would be carried out by the industrial proletariat once it was numerous enough and as soon as it achieved a class consciousness. The Bolshevik guideline was that a small, tight-knit centrally-organised political party could replace the proletariat in the realisation of a revolution. The Bolsheviks were outright fetishists for the Revolution. At their congress in London in 1903 they therefore included a horribly unfortunate thesis in their resolution, which had severe consequences for socialism: "Salus revolutiae, ultima lex". This thesis allowed for the restriction and violation of the basic bourgeois rights, freedom, as well as human lives, should the party leaders agree to it. Such a conclusion was formulated precisely by the cult figure of the Russian Marxism, highly esteemed in the West: Georgi Plekhanov. After the Bolshevik coup on October 1917, Plekhanov abandoned this standpoint, although Lenin continued to accept and implement it in his political practice without any reservations. One of the most learned and insightful experts in the Russian history, Richard Pipers, compared Lenin to Robespierre: "He saw politics as warfare. He only distinguished between good and bad citizens, and did not believe in any compromises between them: the only possible outcome was complete capitulation or even annihilation." On such ideological grounds, in 1917 the Bolsheviks took over the power. On 25 October 1917 they toppled Kerensky's provisional government and established the revolutionary government – the Council of People's Commissars – at the all-Russian Congress of Soviets in Petrograd. The Bolsheviks stylised this act as a workers' socialist revolution. Three weeks after the successful coup-d'état, between 12 and 20 November 1917, elections for the Constitutional Assembly (the Duma) took place. The Bolsheviks organised the elections in the attempt to ensure their own legitimacy, believing that they could afford to do this now that they possessed all the power of authority. However, only 183 Bolsheviks of the 715 Members of Assembly were elected. They faced the impending removal from power. Thus Lenin opted for a Macchiavelist measure of abolishing the Duma. Lenin's argument was that the Assembly was a good institution for bourgeois states, but that in Russia the power had already been assumed by the working class and its bodies – the soviets – which no longer needed any parliaments. Due to Lenin's actions, the democratically-elected members of the abolished Duma started organising a political struggle against the Bolsheviks, which escalated into a three-year civil war in the summer of 1918. Meanwhile, in March 1918, the Left Socialist Revolutionaries (also referred to as the SRs) exited the government due to Lenin's yielding to the demands of the Central Forces at the peace conference in Brest-Litovsk, and the Bolsheviks ruled on their own. The Bolshevik regime could be labelled, in short, as universal revolutionary voluntarism carried out by a single political Bolshevik party. All other parties were forbidden. The economy was completely nationalised and centralised. The new Bolshevik economic apparatus in the field was not qualified for this task, nor was it able to cope with it. Soon after the takeover of power, the Bolsheviks established a secret state police Cheka with broad powers. Censorship and a strong ideological propaganda were introduced. Their method of governing was a total "red terror", as it has been labelled by many historians. Perhaps the most lucid assessment was given by Pipes, who wrote that this was a system, unprecedented in the world and completely unlike any of the previous patterns. "The power was twofold: an extreme form of dictatorship carried out by a private group – "the Party" – behind a facade of the people's self-government, represented by the soviets. The use of the designation totalitarianism has gradually asserted itself for this system". Such a system provoked severe criticism and total rejection in the Western bourgeois society, as well as in the reformist socialist parties. It was also criticised by the most insightful socialist theorist in the West, the German socialist Rosa Luxemburg. From her leftist socialist revolutionary standpoint, she did give the Bolsheviks – Lenin and Trotsky – the historical merit of being the first in the world to have the courage to risk a revolution and take over the power, which was supposed to enable the workers to develop socialism. However, she also critically assessed Lenin's system which "employs decree, dictatorial force of the factory overseer, draconian penalties, rule by terror – all these things are but palliatives. The only right way to a rebirth of the society is the school of public life itself, the most unlimited, the broadest democracy and public opinion." She also emphasised that the revolution was but an introductory act in the construction of the socialist society, where the revolutionary power had to observe the wishes and initiatives of the people's masses. After the uprising of sailors and workers in Kronstadt had been stifled in March 1921, the Bolshevik regime only represented the bureaucratic elite of the Party, even though it attempted to present itself, by means of cunning and intense propaganda, as a government of workers in a state of workers. Many leftist revolutionary workers as well as leftist intellectuals organised in the Communist Parties fell for it, and kept believing in the workers' nature of the Soviet system as well as adhering to the Soviet Union politics. In 1953 the German historian Hans Rothfels was the first to write that the October Revolution could be seen as the beginning of "contemporary history". His younger colleague Hagen Schulze, on the other hand, referred to the October Revolution and the entry of the United States into World War I in the same year simply as "the two global revolutions". Both of these phenomena did indeed influence the historical development in Europe and the world for decades. In certain aspects, the Russian Revolution was a positive development, though generally speaking it was negative throughout the existence of the Bolshevik system of soviets – for as long as three quarters of a century. The United States of America, on the other hand, have exerted their influence for over a hundred years, and there are no indications that their influence might wane any time soon.