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Right, a dictatorship OF the class proletariat OVER the class bourgeoisie. And can, should, or even needs to be a democracy WITHIN the proletariat.
Unfortunately, tankies turn the phrase into an excuse for authoritarianism, which they wank over.
Marx himself called the Paris Commune to be an example of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. The Commune had universal suffrage and recall of neighborhood representatives on demand.
Eh, I think Trotsky and Lenin have some responsibility. While I am in full support of October (and Leninists ideology), I think the Bolshevik repression of the 20-21 strike wave was a troubling development demonstrating separation between the party and the class. (Kronstadt began in sympathy with that strike wave.) Then in the 10th Party Congress, the Workers Opposition took up some of the workers demands and pushed a program to keep party and state separate. They urged union control of the economy and democracy. In response, Trotsky argued that unions would no longer be necessary at all! Even Lenin thought that was going too far. But this is when democracy came under attack even within the party and factions were formerly banned.
Here is the text of the Workers Opposition manifesto. https://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/1921/workers-opposition/index.htm
The text was banned in Soviet Russia in March of 1921, by resolution of the 10th Congress of the Communist Party. The headings, “individual or collective management” and “bureaucracy and self activity of the masses” seem prescient.
Trotsky became a champion of democracy a little late, only after methods of repression he himself used were turned against him.