the wake of scores of failures on all fronts, instead of admitting the bankruptcy of Leninist ideology, Stalin sought to uphold it by blaming the failures on convenient scapegoats--his political competitors (Tucker, pp. 51-103). In doing so, Stalin appeared to transform the original dictatorship into a more bureaucratic structure purging that portion of the Bolshevik elite still committed to a classless society. What was crucial at the time and insured a continuity of rule was that Stalin carried out such a shift in order to consolidate the power of the bulk of the Bolshevik party now entrenched in the bureaucratic apparatus. The objective appeared to stabil
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