Russian Politics

Lenin did not actually create a solution to the problem of how to build a worker’s state in a peasant society. However, there is quite a bit of continuity between Lenin’s early ideas and those of Joseph Stalin, his successor. Some critics disagree with this interpretation, but they generally use the New Economic Policy formulated by Lenin in the last years of his life and not his early ideas. Lenin was instrumental in the success of the Bolshevik Revolution. Where he was a revolutionary, Stalin was a planner and organizer. However, the aims of the Bolshevik Revolution, policies formulated by Lenin, would underlie what would come to be known as Stalinism. At the heart of these policies was the formation of a socialist state that used Marxism as its base ideology. Government would own all means of production. Individuals would be asked to produce according to ability, and they would be rewarded dependent upon the level of production and quality of output. Industrialization became a key objective as land, banks and most industry became state-owned. Yet, many argue that all Stalin did was naturally exten

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lems, such as infant mortality, which the public had not been aware of because of the suppression of official data. Gorbachev’s own ‘meet the people’ tours brought him face to face with some very dissatisfied consumers, and presumably convinced him of the explosive situation in Soviet society” (Daniels 286). Nonetheless, Gorbachev was also astute enough to know that this level of dissatisfaction was a powerful force that could overnight be used as a weapon for the reinstitution of totalitarianism and oppression. Surely, Stalin would have adopted such an approach in this kind of crisis, and, in fact, many times did. Gorbachev’s defeat by Boris Yeltsin also shows how little the Soviet system had changed since the time of Stalin. However, it demonstrates this by the fact that the successor of Gorbachev gained power by promising to reinstitute major reforms to stabilize the economy and to gradually improve the quality of life for the Soviet people. Why this shows us little had changed since Stalin’s era is because the changes being recommended by Yeltsin were very similar to those formulated by Lenin. In other words, a continuation or modification of Stalin’s Soviet Union would not work, only a return to the conciliatory and g
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Soviet Union, Lenin Stalin, Mikhail Gorbachev, Union Stalin, Latvia Lithuania, Andrei Kozyrev, Soviet System, Lenin Russian, Revolution Lenins, Bolshevik Revolution, soviet union, soviet system, soviet people, economic political, lenin stalin, stable democracy, formulated lenin, bolshevik revolution, russian revolution, soviet history, disintegration soviet union, nelson et al, late 1980s 1990s, virtual civil war, newly independent countries,
Approximate Word count = 7509
Approximate Pages = 30 (250 words per page)

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