The creation of the Checka acted as ‘revolutionary justice’, eliminating anyone opposing the party. Red Terror was practical implementation of dictatorship of the proletariat as explained by Lenin in The State and Revolution (1918). Lenin argued that the people they were dealing with were trying to re-establish into power those who had abused and exploited others in pre-revolutionary Russia. The Cheka, in pursuit of its own power, succeeded in bringing many of these divergent institutions under its authority, and therefore can be further seen as a mechanism for solidifying Lenin’s political leadership. Above all else Lenin wanted to keep what had been won during the months of 1917. Historian Jamie Bisher said “Bolshevik terror crept out of European Russia like a biblical pestilence, months before publicly declare We stand for organised terror”.