t or communist society. . . as arising without much delay on the yonder side of the proletarian revolutions with which they believed the societies of advanced capitalism were pregnant.
Lenin and his followers knew that Russia after the Revolution was too backward a country to be called socialist and that classes of workers still existed. A transformation process was to begin to form a socialist country, and this would be a lengthy process.
This process was perverted under Stalin into a system for the promotion of his cult. The purges that would take place had to fit within the shape of the socialist system the bolsheviks created, and hence the pretext devised by Stalin so his enemies could be portrayed as enemies of the people instead:
Extreme self-idealizing such as that seen in Stalin inescapably leads to conflict--within the person and with others. Being at best humanly limited and fallible, such an individual is bound in practice. . . to fall short of the ideal self's standards of perfection and supremely ambitiou
...