The Constituent Assembly was not a “free and fair election,” it was largely a petite bourgeois institution used to placate the liberals in Russia. The peasantry and huge portions of the proletariat did not participate in it, because they recognized the soviets as the legitimate government. The Bolsheviks had broad support among both the proletarian and peasant Soviets.
Further, the state capitalist period referred to the New Economic Policy, which predated collectivization. Even then, Lenin considered the state itself to be socialist even in the NEP, as the working classes ran the state and the large firms and key industries were publicly owned. The NEP was a necessary move after War Communism had destroyed the peasantry due to needing rations to fuel the war effort, and by the 1930s the economy was overwhelmingly state owned and run in a manner that could not possibly be confused as the “State Capitalism” of the NEP.
The Constituent Assembly was not a “free and fair election,” it was largely a petite bourgeois institution used to placate the liberals in Russia. The peasantry and huge portions of the proletariat did not participate in it, because they recognized the soviets as the legitimate government. The Bolsheviks had broad support among both the proletarian and peasant Soviets.
Further, the state capitalist period referred to the New Economic Policy, which predated collectivization. Even then, Lenin considered the state itself to be socialist even in the NEP, as the working classes ran the state and the large firms and key industries were publicly owned. The NEP was a necessary move after War Communism had destroyed the peasantry due to needing rations to fuel the war effort, and by the 1930s the economy was overwhelmingly state owned and run in a manner that could not possibly be confused as the “State Capitalism” of the NEP.