Theory Discussion Group

I'm not done with the book yet - I haven't had a lot of energy to dig into the text as much as I'd like. I just finished Ch 4 - Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Two things I would like to discuss

1 - The DotP is a tool for re-education of nearly all classes: those that still have some bourgeois habits/traditions, proletarians to be able to lead the masses, petite-bourgeois for socialist mode of production. Stalin quotes Lenin

in the force of habit, in the strength of small production. For, unfortunately, small production is still very, very widespread in the world, and small production engenders capitalism and the bourgeoisie continuously, daily, hourly, spontaneously, and on a mass scale"... for "the abolition of classes means only not only driving out the landlords and capitalists-that we accomplished with comparative ease-it also means abolishing the small commodity producers, and they cannot be drive out, or crushed; we must live in harmony with them, they can (and must) be remoulded and re-educated only by very prolonged, slow, cautious organizational work.

Bolding is what I'm focusing on. This made me think of dekulakization and the Chinese Cultural Revolution. What are we to do when those that we are trying to re-educate, slowly and cautiously, are actively against our attempts? From what I know, I can see dekulakization as a necessity given the circumstances (kulaks actively rebelling against the government by destroying equipment, crops, and livelihoods of the collective farms). I'm not well versed in the cultural revolution for why the party believed it was necessary (I think because petite-bourgeois were being seen as trying to take over the party), but I know that the CPC views the cultural revolution as a failure. With the progress of the CPC up to this point, they've obviously learned from the mistakes. What did they learn so we don't repeat these same mistakes? We don't want to radicalize the population in the opposite direction.

2 - The portion on Soviets talks about them in a more general purpose way. They are how the proletarians get closer to the laboring masses to be able to lead them through class struggle by having the executive and legislative functions be combined into a single state body in the mills, mines, etc. They are how the laboring masses were able to exercise their democracy. Could someone give me an example as to what that looked like?

I think my issue is trying to showcase the difference between bourgeois parliamentarianism and soviets outside just that Soviets are proletarians in power. If there is a non-theory discussion group, then I would advocate for Soviet Democracy by Pat Sloan, as I believe reading that might answer my question.