the party leaders believed that universal mass participation and true democracy could only take form in the last stage, if only because of Russia's current conditions at the time. In early Bolshevik discourse, the term "dictatorship of the proletariat" was of little significance; the few times it was mentioned, it was likened to the form of government which had existed in the Paris Commune. With the ensuing Russian Civil War and the social and material devastation that followed, however, its meaning was transformed from communal democracy to disciplined totalitarian rule. By now, Lenin had concluded that only a proletarian regime as oppressive as its opponents could survive in this world. The powers previously bestowed upon the soviets were now given to the Council of People's Commissars; the central government was in turn to be governed by "an army of steeled revolutionary Communists [by Communists he referred to the Party]". In a letter to Gavril Myasnikov, Lenin in late 1920 explained his new reinterpretation of the term "dictatorship of the proletariat"; Dictatorship means nothing more nor less than authority untrammelled by any laws, absolutely unrestricted by any rules whatever, and based directly on force. The term 'dictatorship' has no other meaning but this. Lenin justified these policies by claiming that all states were class states by nature, and that these states were maintained through class struggle. This meant that the dictatorship of the proletariat in the Soviet Union could only be "won and maintained by the use of violence against the bourgeoisie". The main problem with this analysis is that the Party came to view anyone opposing or holding alternate views of the party as bourgeoisie. The worst enemy remained the moderates, however, which were "objectively" considered to be "the real agents of the bourgeoisie in the working class movement, the labour lieutenants of the capitalist class". Consequently, "bourgeoisie" became synonymous with "opponent" and with people who disagreed with the party in general. These oppressive measures led to another reinterpretation of the dictatorship of the proletariat and socialism in general; it was now defined as a purely economic system. Slogans and theoretical works about democratic mass participation and collective decision-making were now replaced with texts which supported authoritarian management. Considering the situation, the party believed it had to use the same powers as the bourgeoisie to transform Russia, for there was no other alternative. Lenin began arguing that the proletariat, similar