This article is about political theory developed originally by Lenin. For the political theory and state ideology developed by Joseph Stalin, seeMarxism–Leninism. For Trotsky's ideology, seeTrotskyism.
Leninist revolutionary leadership is based uponThe Communist Manifesto (1848), identifying thecommunist party as "the most advanced and resolute section of the working class parties of every country; that section which pushes forward all others." As the vanguard party, theBolsheviks viewed history through the theoretical framework ofdialectical materialism, which sanctioned political commitment to the successful overthrow of capitalism, and then to institutingsocialism; and, as the revolutionary national government, to realise the socio-economic transition by all means.[3]
As revolutionarypraxis, Leninism originally was neither a proper philosophy nor a discrete political theory. Leninism comprises politico-economic developments oforthodox Marxism and Lenin's interpretations of Marxism, which function as apragmatic synthesis for practical application to the actual conditions (political, social, economic) of the post-emancipation agrarian society of Imperial Russia in the early 20th century.[2] As a political-science term, Lenin's theory ofproletarian revolution entered common usage at the fifth congress of theCommunist International (1924), whenGrigory Zinoviev applied the termLeninism to denote "vanguard-party revolution."[2]Leninism was accepted as part ofCPSU's vocabulary and doctrine around 1922, and in January 1923, despite objections from Lenin, it entered the public vocabulary.[6]
In the early 20th century, the socio-economic backwardness ofImperial Russia (1721–1917) — characterized bycombined and uneven economic development — facilitated rapid and intensive industrialisation, which produced a united, working-classproletariat in a predominantly agrarian society. Moreover, because industrialisation was financed chiefly with foreign capital, Imperial Russia did not possess a revolutionarybourgeoisie with political and economic influence upon the workers and the peasants, as had been the case in theFrench Revolution (1789–1799) in the 18th century. Although Russia'spolitical economy was agrarian andsemi-feudal, the task of democratic revolution fell to the urban, industrial working class as the onlysocial class capable of effectingland reform and democratisation, in view that the Russianbourgeoisie would suppress any revolution.
In theApril Theses (1917), the political strategy of theOctober Revolution (7–8 November 1917), Lenin proposed that the Russian revolution was not an isolated national event but a fundamentally international event—the first socialist revolution in the world. Lenin's practical application ofMarxism andproletarian revolution to the social, political, and economic conditions of agrarian Russia motivated and impelled the "revolutionary nationalism of the poor" to depose theabsolute monarchy of the three-hundred-year dynasty of theHouse of Romanov (1613–1917), astsars of Russia.[8]
InImperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916), Lenin's economic analyses indicated that capitalism would transform into aglobal financial system, by which industrialised countries exportedfinancial capital to theircolonies and so realise theexploitation of the labour of the natives and the exploitation of the natural resources of their countries. Suchsuperexploitation allows wealthy countries to maintain a domesticlabour aristocracy with a slightly higher standard of living than most workers, ensuring peaceful labour–capital relations in the capitalist homeland. Therefore, aproletarian revolution of workers and peasants could not occur in capitalist countries whilst the imperialist global-finance system remained in place. The first proletarian revolution would have to occur in an underdeveloped country, such as Imperial Russia, the politically weakest country in the capitalist global-finance system in the early 20th century.[9] In theUnited States of Europe Slogan (1915), Lenin wrote:
Workers of the world, unite!—Uneven economic and political development is an absolute law of capitalism. Hence the victory of socialism is possible, first in several, or even in one capitalist country taken separately. The victorious proletariat of that country, having expropriated the capitalists and organised its own socialist production, would stand up against the rest of the world, the capitalist world.
The more powerful enemy can be vanquished only by exerting the utmost effort, and by the most thorough, careful, attentive, skillful and obligatory use of any, even the smallest, rift between the enemies, any conflict of interests among the bourgeoisie of the various countries and among the various groups or types of bourgeoisie within the various countries, and also by taking advantage of any, even the smallest, opportunity of winning a mass ally, even though this ally is temporary, vacillating, unstable, unreliable and conditional. Those who do not understand this reveal a failure to understand even the smallest grain of Marxism, of modernscientific socialism in general. Those who have not proved in practice, over a fairly considerable period of time and in fairly varied political situations, their ability to apply this truth in practice have not yet learned to help the revolutionary class in its struggle to emancipate all toiling humanity from the exploiters. And this applies equally to the period before and after the proletariat has won political power.
In Chapter II, "Proletarians and Communists", ofThe Communist Manifesto (1848), Marx and Engels present the communist party as the political vanguard solely qualified to lead the proletariat in revolution:
The Communists, therefore, are, on the one hand, practically the most advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the lines of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement. The immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of all other proletarian parties: Formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat.
The revolutionary purpose of the Leninistvanguard party is to establish thedictatorship of the proletariat with theworking class's support. The communist party would lead the popular deposition of theTsarist government and then transfer government power to the working class; that change of the ruling class—from thebourgeoisie to theproletariat—makes establishingsocialism possible.[12] InWhat Is To Be Done? (1902), Lenin said that a revolutionary vanguard party, recruited from the working class, should lead the political campaign because only in that way would the proletariat successfully realise their revolution; unlike the economic campaign of trade-union-struggle advocated by other socialist political parties and theanarcho-syndicalists. Like Marx, Lenin distinguished between the aspects of a revolution, the "economic campaign" (labour strikes for increased wages and work concessions) that featured diffused plural leadership; and the "political campaign" (socialist changes to society), which required the decisive, revolutionary leadership of the Bolshevik vanguard party.
Based upon theFirst International (IWA, International Workingmen's Association, 1864–1876), Lenin organised the Bolsheviks as ademocratically centralised vanguard party; wherein free political speech was recognised as legitimate until policy consensus; afterwards, every member of the party was expected to abide by the agreed policy. Democratic debate was Bolshevik practice, even after Lenin banned factions among the Party in 1921. Despite being a guiding political influence, Lenin did not exercise absolute power and continually debated to have his points of view accepted as a course of revolutionary action. InFreedom to Criticise and Unity of Action (1905), Lenin said:
Of course, the application of this principle in practice will sometimes give rise to disputes and misunderstandings; but only on the basis of this principle can all disputes and all misunderstandings be settled honourably for the Party. ... The principle of democratic centralism and autonomy for local Party organisations implies universal and full freedom to criticise, so long as this does not disturb the unity of a definite action; it rules out all criticism which disrupts or makes difficult the unity of an action decided on by the Party.[13]
Before theOctober Revolution, despite supporting moderate political reform—includingBolsheviks elected to theDuma when opportune—Lenin said thatcapitalism could only be overthrown withproletarian revolution, not with gradual reforms—from within (Fabianism) and from without (social democracy)—which would fail because the bourgeoisie's control of themeans of production determined the nature of political power in Russia.[14] As epitomised in the slogan "For a Democratic Dictatorship of the Proletariat and Peasantry", a proletarian revolution in underdeveloped Russia required a united proletariat (peasants and industrial workers) to assume government power in the cities successfully. Moreover, owing to themiddle-class aspirations of much of the peasantry,Leon Trotsky said that the proletarian leadership of the revolution would ensure truly socialist and democratic socio-economic change.
InBolshevik Russia, government bydirect democracy was realised and effected by thesoviets (elected councils of workers), which Lenin said was the "democratic dictatorship of the proletariat" postulated inorthodox Marxism.[15] The soviets comprised representative committees from the factories and the trade unions but excluded the capitalist social class to establish a proletarian government by and for the working class and the peasants. Concerning the political disenfranchisement of the capitalist social class in Bolshevik Russia, Lenin said that "depriving the exploiters of the franchise is a purely Russian question, and not a question of the dictatorship of the proletariat, in general. ... In which countries ...democracy for the exploiters will be, in one or another form, restricted ...is a question of the specific national features of this or that capitalism."[3] In chapter five ofThe State and Revolution (1917), Lenin describes the dictatorship of the proletariat as:
the organisation of the vanguard of the oppressed as the ruling class for the purpose of crushing the oppressors. ... An immense expansion of democracy, which, for the first time, becomes democracy for the poor, democracy for the people, and not democracy for the rich ... and suppression by force, i.e. exclusion from democracy, for the exploiters and oppressors of the people—this is the change which democracy undergoes during the 'transition' from capitalism to communism.[16]
Concerning the disenfranchisement from democracy of the capitalist social class, Lenin said: "Democracy for the vast majority of the people, and suppression by force, i.e. exclusion from democracy, of theexploiters and oppressors of the people—this is the change democracy undergoes during the transition from capitalism to communism."[17] The dictatorship of the proletariat was effected with sovietconstitutionalism, a form of government opposite to the dictatorship of capital (privately owned means of production) practised in bourgeois democracies. Under soviet constitutionalism, the Leninist vanguard party would be one of many political parties competing for election to government power.[2][15][18] Nevertheless, because of theRussian Civil War (1917–1924) and the anti-Bolshevik terrorism of opposing political parties aiding theWhite Armies' counter-revolution, the Bolshevik government banned all other political parties, which left the Leninist vanguard party as the only political party in Russia. Lenin said that such political suppression was not philosophically inherent to the dictatorship of the proletariat.[19][18][20]
The Bolshevik government nationalised industry and established a foreign-trade monopoly to allow the productive coordination of the national economy and so prevent Russian national industries from competing against each other. To feed the populaces of town and country, Lenin institutedwar communism (1918–1921) as a necessary condition—adequate supplies of food and weapons—for fighting theRussian Civil War.[18] In March 1921, theNew Economic Policy (NEP, 1921–1929) allowed limited local capitalism (private commerce and internal free trade) and replaced grain requisitions with an agricultural tax managed by state banks. The NEP was meant to resolve food-shortage riots by the peasantry and allowed limited private enterprise; theprofit motive encouraged farmers to produce the crops required to feed town and country; and to economically re-establish the urban working class, who had lost many workers to fight thecounter-revolutionary Civil War.[21][22] The NEP nationalisation of the economy then would facilitate the industrialisation of Russia, politically strengthen the working class, and raise the standards of living for all Russians. Lenin said that the appearance of new socialist states was necessary for strengthening Russia's economy in establishing Russian socialism. Lenin's socio-economic perspective was supported by theGerman Revolution of 1918–1919,the Italian insurrection and general strikes of 1920, and worker wage-riots in the UK, France, and the US.
In recognising and acceptingnationalism among oppressed peoples, Lenin advocated their national right toself-determination and so opposed Russian chauvinism because suchethnocentrism was a cultural obstacle to establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat in every territory of the deposed Russian Empire (1721–1917).[23][24] InThe Right of Nations to Self-determination (1914), Lenin said:
We fight against the privileges and violence of the oppressor nation, and do not in any way condone strivings for privileges on the part of the oppressed nation. :... The bourgeois nationalism of any oppressed nation has a general democratic content that is directed against oppression, and it is this content that we unconditionally support. At the same time, we strictly distinguish it from the tendency towards national exclusiveness. ... Can a nation be free if it oppresses other nations? It cannot.[25]
Thesocialist internationalism of Marxism and Bolshevism is based uponclass struggle and a people's transcending nationalism,ethnocentrism, and religion—theintellectual obstacles to progressiveclass consciousness—which are theculturalstatus quo that the capitalist ruling class manipulates in order to divide the working classes and the peasant classes politically. To overcome that barrier to establishing socialism, Lenin said that acknowledging nationalism, as a people's right of self-determination and right of secession, naturally would allow socialist states to transcend the political limitations of nationalism to form afederation.[19] InThe Question of Nationalities, or 'Autonomisation' (1923), Lenin said:
[N]othing holds up the development and strengthening of proletarian class solidarity so much as national injustice; "offended" nationals are not sensitive to anything, so much as to the feeling of equality, and the violation of this equality, if only through negligence or jest – to the violation of that equality by their proletarian comrades.[26]
The role of the Leninist vanguard party was to politically educate the workers and peasants to dispel the societalfalse consciousness of religion and nationalism that constitute theculturalstatus quo taught by thebourgeoisie to the proletariat to facilitate their economicexploitation of peasants and workers. Influenced by Lenin, theCentral Committee of the Bolshevik Party stated that the development of the socialist workers' culture should not be "hamstrung from above" and opposed theProletkult (1917–1925) organisational control of the national culture.[27]
The counter-action against Stalin aligned with Lenin's advocacy of the right ofself-determination for the national and ethnic groups of the deposedTsarist Empire.[29] Lenin warned the Party that Stalin had "unlimited authority concentrated in his hands, and I am not sure whether he will always be capable of using that authority with sufficient caution" and formed a faction withLeon Trotsky to remove Stalin as the General Secretary of the Communist Party.[20][30]
To that end followed proposals reducing the administrative powers of party posts to reduce bureaucratic influence upon the policies of the Communist Party. Lenin advised Trotsky to emphasise Stalin's recent bureaucratic alignment in such matters (e.g. undermining the anti-bureaucratic workers' and peasants' Inspection) and argued to depose Stalin as General Secretary. Despite advice to refuse "any rotten compromise", he did not heed Lenin's advice and General Secretary Stalin retained power over the Communist Party and the bureaucracy of the Soviet government.[20]
Leon Trotsky was exiled from Russia after losing to Stalin in the factional politics of the Bolsheviks.
In 1922, Lenin allied withLeon Trotsky against the party's growingbureaucratisation and the influence ofJoseph Stalin.[31][32][33][34][35] Lenin himself never mentioned the concept of "Trotskyism" after Trotsky became a member of the Bolshevik party but the term was employed by Stalin and the troika to present Trotsky's views as factional and anathematical to Leninist thought.[36]
After Lenin's death (21 January 1924), Trotsky ideologically battled the influence of Stalin, who formed ruling blocs within the Russian Communist Party (withGrigory Zinoviev andLev Kamenev, then withNikolai Bukharin and then by himself) and so determined soviet government policy from 1924 onwards. The ruling blocs continually denied Stalin's opponents the right to organise as an opposition faction within the party—thus, the reinstatement ofdemocratic centralism andfree speech within the Communist Party were key arguments of Trotsky'sLeft Opposition and the laterJoint Opposition.[20][37]
In instituting government policy, Stalin promoted the doctrine ofsocialism in one country (adopted 1925),[38] wherein the Soviet Union would establishsocialism upon Russia's economic foundations (and support socialist revolutions elsewhere).[39] In a 1936 interview with journalistRoy W. Howard, Stalin articulated his rejection ofworld revolution and stated that “We never had such plans and intentions” and that “The export of revolution is nonsense”.[40][41][42]
Conversely, Trotsky held that socialism in one country would economically constrain the industrial development of the Soviet Union and thus required assistance from the new socialist countries in the developed world—which was essential for maintaining soviet democracy—in 1924, much undermined by theRussian Civil War of White Army counter-revolution. Trotsky's theory ofpermanent revolution proposed that socialist revolutions in underdeveloped countries would further dismantlefeudal régimes and establish socialist democracies that would not pass through a capitalist stage of development and government. Hence, revolutionary workers should ally politically with peasant political organisations, not capitalist political parties. In contrast, Stalin and his allies proposed that alliances with capitalist political parties were essential to realising a revolution where communists were too few.[38] Said Stalinist practice failed, especially in theNorthern Expedition, which resulted in theright-wingKuomintang's massacre of theChinese Communist Party. Despite the failure, Stalin's policy of mixed-ideology political alliances nonetheless becameComintern's policy.
Until exiled from Russia in 1929, Trotsky developed and led the Left Opposition (and the later Joint Opposition) with members of theWorkers' Opposition, the Decembrists and (later) the Zinovievists.[20] Trotskyism predominated the politics of the Left Opposition, which demanded the restoration ofsoviet democracy, the expansion of democratic centralism in the Communist Party, national industrialisation, internationalpermanent revolution and socialist internationalism. According to historianSheila Fitzpatrick, the scholarly consensus was that Stalin appropriated the position of the Left Opposition on such matters asindustrialisation andcollectivisation.[43]
The Trotskyist demands countered Stalin's political dominance of the Communist Party, which was officially characterised by the "cult of Lenin", the rejection of permanent revolution, and advocated the doctrine ofsocialism in one country. The Stalinist economic policy vacillated between appeasing the capitalist interests of thekulak in the countryside and destroying them as a social class. Initially, the Stalinists also rejected the national industrialisation of Russia but then pursued it in full, sometimes brutally. In both cases, the Left Opposition denounced the regressive nature of Stalin's policy towards the wealthy kulak social class and the brutality of forced industrialisation. Trotsky described Stalinist vacillation as a symptom of the undemocratic nature of a ruling bureaucracy.[44]
During the 1920s and the 1930s, Stalin fought and defeated the political influence of Trotsky and the Trotskyists in Russia using slander,antisemitism,censorship, expulsions, exile (internal and external), and imprisonment. The anti-Trotsky campaign culminated in the executions (official and unofficial) of theMoscow Trials (1936–1938), which were part of theGreat Purge ofOld Bolsheviks who had led the Revolution.[20][45]
"I cannot perceive that Russian Communism has made any contribution to our economic problems of intellectual interest or scientific value. I do not think that it contains, or is likely to contain, any piece of useful economic technique which we could not apply, if we chose, with equal or greater success in a society which retained all the marks, I will not say of nineteenth-century individualistic capitalism, but of British bourgeois ideals. Theoretically at least, I do not believe that there is any economic improvement for which Revolution is a necessary instrument. On the other hand, we have everything to lose by the methods of violent change. In Western industrial conditions the tactics of Red Revolution would throw the whole population into a pit of poverty and death."[46]
Noam Chomsky interviewed in 2013 noted the outcome of Leninsim:
"When he became the leader, he didn’t waste much time, and Trotsky helped him, in instituting a pretty repressive regime with the basic elements of Stalinism. They moved pretty quickly to dismantle most of the organs of popular power. Not over night, but over a short time they were able to basically dismantle the soviets, the factory councils, to convert the labor force into a labor army. The peasant revolutionary forces were very much opposed to this incidentally. As distinct from Marx who saw revolutionary potential in the Russian peasantry, the urban communists, like Lenin were strongly opposed to that."[47]
As a form of Marxism, revolutionary Leninism was criticised as an undemocratic interpretation ofsocialism. InThe Nationalities Question in the Russian Revolution (1918),Rosa Luxemburg criticised the Bolsheviks for the suppression of theAll Russian Constituent Assembly (January 1918); thepartitioning of thefeudal estates to the peasant communes; and the right of self-determination of every national people of the Russias. That the strategic (geopolitical) mistakes of the Bolsheviks would create significant dangers for theRussian Revolution, such as thebureaucratisation that would arise to administrate the large country that was Bolshevik Russia.[48] In defence of the expedient revolutionary practice, in"Left-Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder (1920), Lenin dismissed the political and ideological complaints of the anti-Bolshevik critics, who claimed ideologically correct stances that were to the political left of Lenin. In Marxist philosophy,left communism is a range of left-wing political perspectives among communists. Left communism criticizes theBolshevik Party's ideology as the revolutionary vanguard. Ideologically, left communists present their perspectives and approaches as authenticMarxism and thus more oriented to theproletariat than the Leninism of theCommunist International at theirfirst (1919) andsecond (1920) congresses. Proponents of left communism includeAmadeo Bordiga,Herman Gorter,Paul Mattick,Sylvia Pankhurst,Antonie Pannekoek andOtto Rühle.[49]
Historically, theDutch-German communist left has been most critical of Lenin and Leninism,[50][51][52] yet theItalian communist left remained Leninist. Bordiga said: "All this work of demolishing opportunism and 'deviationism' (Lenin:What Is To Be Done?) is today the basis of party activity. The party follows revolutionary tradition and experiences in this work during these periods of revolutionary reflux and the proliferation of opportunist theories, which had as their violent and inflexible opponents Marx, Engels, Lenin, and the Italian Left."[53] InThe Lenin Legend (1935), Paul Mattick said that thecouncil communist tradition, begun by the Dutch-German leftists, also is critical of Leninism.[54] Contemporary left-communist organisations, such as the Internationalist Communist Tendency and theInternational Communist Current, view Lenin as an essential and influential theorist but remain critical of Leninism as political praxis for theproletarian revolution.[55][56][57]
Nonetheless, theBordigism of theInternational Communist Party abides Bordiga's strict Leninism. Ideologically aligned with the Dutch-German left, among the ideologists of contemporarycommunisation, the theoristGilles Dauvé criticised Leninism as a "by-product ofKautskyism".[58] InThe Soviet Union Versus Socialism (1986),Noam Chomsky said that Stalinism was the logical development of Leninism and not an ideological deviation from Lenin's policies, which resulted incollectivisation enforced with apolice state.[59][60] He also argued, in light of the tenets of socialism, Leninism was a right-wing deviation from Marxism.[61]
Thevanguard-party revolution of Leninism became the ideological basis of the communist parties in the socialist political spectrum. In the People's Republic of China, the Chinese Communist Party organised itself withMaoism (the Thought of Mao Zedong),socialism with Chinese characteristics.[62] In Singapore, thePeople's Action Party (PAP) featured internal democracy and initiated single-party dominance in the government and politics of Singapore.[63] In the event, the practical application of Maoism to the socio-economic conditions ofThird World countries produced revolutionary vanguard parties, such as theCommunist Party of Peru – Red Fatherland.[64]
Some historians such asRichard Pipes considerStalinism as the natural consequence of Leninism, that Stalin "faithfully implemented Lenin's domestic and foreign policy programs".[65]Robert Service notes that "institutionally and ideologically Lenin laid the foundations for a Stalin ... but the passage from Leninism to the worse terrors of Stalinism was not smooth and inevitable."[66] Historian and Stalin biographerEdvard Radzinsky believes that Stalin was a genuine follower of Lenin, exactly as he claimed himself.[67] Proponents ofcontinuity cite a variety of contributory factors, in that it was Lenin, rather than Stalin, whosecivil war measures introduced theRed Terror with its hostage-taking andinternment camps; that it was Lenin who developed the infamousArticle 58 and who established the autocratic system within theRussian Communist Party.[68] Proponents also note that Lenin put aban on factions within the party and introduced theone-party state in 1921, a move that enabled Stalin to get rid of his rivals easily after Lenin's death and citeFelix Dzerzhinsky, who exclaimed during theBolshevik struggle against opponents in theRussian Civil War: "We stand for organized terror—this should be frankly stated."[69][page needed]
Some scholars have had a differing view and attributed the establishment of the one-party system in the Soviet Union to the wartime conditions imposed on Lenin's government[70] and others have highlighted the initial attempts to form a coalition government with theLeft Socialist Revolutionaries.[71] According to historianMarcel Liebman, Lenin's wartime measures such as banning opposition parties was prompted by the fact that several political parties eithertook up arms against the newSoviet government, or participated in sabotage,collaborated with the deposedTsarists, or madeassassination attempts against Lenin and other Bolshevik leaders.[72] Liebman also argued that the banning of parties under Lenin did not have the same repressive character as later bans enforced under the Stalinist regime.[72] Several scholars have highlighted the socially progressive nature of Lenin's policies such asuniversal education,universal healthcare andequal rights for women.[73][74][75] Conversely, Stalin's regime reversed Lenin's policies on social matters such assexual equality, legal restrictions onmarriage, rights of sexual minorities andprotective legislation.[76] HistorianRobert Vincent Daniels also viewed the Stalinist period as a counter-revolution in Soviet cultural life which revivedpatriotic propaganda, the Tsarist programme ofRussification and traditional,military ranks which had been criticized by Lenin as expressions of "Great Russian chauvinism".[77] Daniels also regarded Stalinism to represent an abrupt break with the Leninist period in terms of economic policies in which a deliberated,scientific system ofeconomic planning that featured formerMenshevikeconomists atGosplan had been replaced with a hasty version of planning with unrealistic targets, bureaucratic waste,bottlenecks andshortages.[78]
Revisionist historians and somepost–Cold War and otherwisedissident Soviet historians, includingRoy Medvedev, argue that "one could list the various measures carried out by Stalin that were actually a continuation of anti-democratic trends and measures implemented under Lenin", but that "in so many ways, Stalin acted, not in line with Lenin's clear instructions, but in defiance of them."[79][page needed] In doing so, some historians have tried to distance Stalinism from Leninism to undermine thetotalitarian view that the negative facets of Stalin were inherent in communism from the start.[80][page needed] Critics include anti-Stalinist communists such asLeon Trotsky, who pointed out that Lenin attempted to persuade the Russian Communist Party to remove Stalin from his post as itsGeneral Secretary.Lenin's Testament, the document which contained this order, was suppressed after Lenin's death. Trotsky also argued that he and Lenin had intended to lift the ban on theopposition parties such as theMensheviks andSocialist Revolutionaries as soon as the economic and social conditions ofSoviet Russia had improved.[81] Various historians have cited Lenin's proposal to appoint Trotsky as aVice-chairman of the Soviet Union as evidence that he intended Trotsky to be his successor as head of government.[82][83][84][85][86] In his biography of Trotsky, Polish-British historianIsaac Deutscher says that, on being faced with the evidence, "only the blind and the deaf could be unaware of the contrast between Stalinism and Leninism."[87] According to Stalin's secretary,Boris Bazhanov, Stalin was jubilant over Lenin's death while “publicly putting on the mask of grief”.[88] French historianPierre Broue disputed the historical assessments of the early Soviet Union by modern historians such asDmitri Volkogonov in which he argued had falsely equated Leninism,Stalinism andTrotskyism to present the notion of ideological continuity and reinforce the position ofcounter-communism.[89] Other revisionist historians, such asOrlando Figes, whilst critical of the Soviet era, acknowledge that Lenin had actively sought to counter the growing influence of Stalin through a number of actions such as his alliance with Trotsky in 1922–23, opposition to Stalin onforeign trade, theGeorgian affair and proposed party reforms which included the democratisation of theCentral Committee and recruitment of 50–100 ordinary workers into the lower organs of the party.[90]
O kulcie jednostki i jego następstwach, Warsaw, March 1956, first edition of the Secret Speech, published for the inner use in thePUWP
Nikita Khrushchev, Stalin's successor, argued that Stalin's regime differed profusely from the leadership of Lenin in his "Secret Speech", delivered in 1956. He was critical of thecult of the individual which was constructed around Stalin whereas Lenin stressed “the role of the people as the creator of history”.[91] He also emphasized that Lenin favored acollective leadership which relied on personal persuasion and recommended the removal of Stalin from the position of General Secretary. Khrushchev contrasted this with the “despotism” of Stalin which require absolute submission to his position and he also highlighted that many of the people who were later annihilated as “enemies of the party", "had worked with Lenin during his life”.[91] He also contrasted the “severe methods” used by Lenin in the “most necessary cases” as a “struggle for survival” during the Civil War with the extreme methods and mass repressions used by Stalin even when the Revolution was “already victorious”.[91] In his memoirs, Khrushchev argued that Stalin's widespread purges of the "most advanced nucleus of people" among theOld Bolsheviks and leading figures in themilitary andscientific fields had "undoubtedly" weakened the nation.[92]
Some Marxist theoreticians have disputed the view that the Stalinist dictatorship was a natural outgrowth of the Bolsheviks' actions as most of the original central committee members from 1917 were later eliminated by Stalin.[93]George Novack stressed the initial efforts by the Bolsheviks to form a government with theLeft Socialist Revolutionaries and bring other parties such as the Mensheviks into political legality.[94]Tony Cliff argued the Bolshevik-Left Socialist Revolutionary coalition government dissolved the democratically electedRussian Constituent Assembly due to a number of reasons. They cited the outdated voter-rolls which did not acknowledge the split among the Socialist Revolutionary party and the assemblies conflict with theRussian Congress of the Soviets as an alternative democratic structure.[95]
A similar analysis is present in more recent works such as those of Graeme Gill, who argues that "[Stalinism was] not a natural flow-on of earlier developments; [it formed a] sharp break resulting from conscious decisions by leading political actors." However, Gill notes that "difficulties with the use of the term reflect problems with the concept of Stalinism itself. The major difficulty is a lack of agreement about what should constitute Stalinism."[96] Revisionist historians such asSheila Fitzpatrick have criticized the focus on the upper levels of society and the use of Cold War concepts such as totalitarianism, obscuring the system's reality.[97]
Russian historianVadim Rogovin stated that "Under Lenin, the freedom to express a real variety of opinions existed in the party, and in carrying out political decisions, consideration was given to the positions of not only the majority, but a minority in the party". He compared this practice with subsequent leadership blocs which violated party tradition, ignored proposals of opponents and expelled theOpposition from the party on falsified charges which culminated with theMoscow Trials of 1936–1938. According to Rogovin, 80-90% of the members of the Central Committee elected at theSixth through to theSeventeenth Congresses were physically annihilated.[98]
TheRight Opposition andLeft Opposition have been held by some scholars as representing political alternatives to Stalinism despite their shared beliefs in Leninism due to their policy platforms which were at variance with Stalin. This ranged from areas related toeconomics,foreign policy andcultural matters.[99][100]
^Tomasic, D. (December 1953). "The Impact of Russian Culture on Soviet Communism".The Western Political Quarterly.6 (4). Western Political Science Association:808–809.doi:10.2307/443211.JSTOR443211.
^Lenin, V. I.,United States of Europe Slogan,Collected Works, vol. 18, p. 232.
^Townson, D. (1994).The New Penguin Dictionary of Modern History: 1789–1945. London. pp. 462–464.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
^Collected Works, vol. 25, pp. 461–462,Marx Engels Lenin on Scientific Socialism. Moscow: Novosti Press Ajency Publishing House. 1974.Archived from the original on 31 January 2020. Retrieved18 March 2016.
^Cook, Chris, ed. (1983).Dictionary of Historical Terms. New York: Peter Bedrick Books. p. 205.
^Lenin, V. I. (1965) [17 October 1921]. "The New Economic Policy and the Tasks of the Political Education Departments. Report to the Second All-Russia Congress of Political Education Departments".Lenin's Collected Works. Vol. 33 (2nd English ed.). Moscow:Progress Publishers. pp. 60–79. Archived fromthe original on 3 December 2011. Retrieved2 December 2011 – viaMarxists Internet Archive.
^Rogovin, Vadim Z. (2021).Was There an Alternative? 1923-1927: Trotskyism: a Look Back Through the Years.Mehring Books. pp. 494–495.ISBN978-1-893638-96-9.
^"While Trotsky was strongly biased toward industrial development, there is little basis to suppose that he would have adopted Stalin’s forcible collectivization, slapdash economic planning, anti expert campaigns, or cultural know-nothingism. Neither Trotsky nor Bukharin would have pursued anything like Stalin’s pseudo-revolutionary “third period” foreign policy and his connivance in the advent of Hitler, another product of his political manoeuvring against the Bukharinists".Daniels, Robert V. (1 October 2008).The Rise and Fall of Communism in Russia.Yale University Press. p. 396.ISBN978-0-300-13493-3.
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