Was Stalin a true Leninist or did he betray the revolution as conceived by the
“old Bolsheviks”?
Stalin ideology and action were not the same as Lenin’s. But was Stalin
developing Lenin’s thought or was he making a break with Lenin. One of the
defining features of Stalin’s reign was his violence. Was this violence the product
of Stalin’s paranoid personality or was it the out working of Leninist ideology. If
we argue that Stalin was in continuity with the old Bolsheviks we can point to the
writings of the Nikolai Bukharin who said that “proletarian compulsion in all it’s
forms, beginning with execution by shooting and ending with compulsory labor
obligation is – however paradoxical this might sound – the means for producing
a communist humanity from human material of the capitalist epoch” 1 Lenin
made a note on the margins of this text “Precisely2 We can reasonably assume
that Lenin agreed with Bukharin. Lenin was agreeing to a programme of social
hygiene. The Bolsheviks had an image of an idea society in their imagination. The
idea society was a communist one. This would be harmonious society free from
strife where the division between exploiter and exploited would not exist. The
beauty of the future communist society was contrasted in their minds with
ugliness of the present one. They made a moral calculation that harmony was
worth violence and discord now. This would entail brutal social engineering. The
Cossacks were among the first to face Bolshevik violence 1919. They had mainly
fought on the side of rebels against Bolshevik rule in the Russian Civil War. The
Bolsheviks judged them to be a “bandit element”3. In the word of one party
member they wanted to “make the territory healthy” 4. They set out to physically
destroy the vast majority of the Cossacks. They were an “element” that had be
removed like a tumor from the body. This was for the health of the wider
socialist society. Stalin too would use the language of social engineering to justify
his purges in the 1930’s.
The continuity between Stalinism and the old Bolshevik position is disputed. The
argument for continuity rests on the idea that “seeds” of Stalinism can be
identified in original Bolshevik movement. But Bolshevism was diverse field with
many different political opinions. Looking for ‘seeds’ poses problems for
historians. You can look at earlier Russian history and find ‘seeds’ of Stalinism.
For example you could characterise Stalin as a ‘Red Tzar’. His autocracy looks
like a modern form of traditional society. Feudalism is replaced with
collectivisation. Many aspects of Stalinism were replicated in other societies.
Nationalism, beureaucratisation, absense of democracy, censorship and police
repression all found expression in other societies. `Where in ‘old’ Bolshevism
was the Stalinist cult of personality? It was something Stalin invented himself.
Ideology is seen, by those who argue for continuity, as something that is not
affected by the context it is used in. But official ideology changed under Stalin
1
Peter Holquist, “Total Violence as Technique: The logic of Violence in Soviet
Totalitarianism,” in Landscaping the Human Garden. Twentieth-Century
Population Management in a Comparative Framework, (Stanford, Stanford
University Press, 2003), 19
2
Holquist, Total Violence, 19
3
Ibid, 26
4
Ibid,25
making. Stalin tapped into Russian nationalism and traditional attitudes. During
the Second World War soldiers were told to fight for ‘holy Russia’. The idealism
of Lenin a true Marxist intellectual was forgotten in the face of cold realities.
Stalin was statist and regressive. Laws favouring women children and minority
cultures were revoked. Egalitarianism was forgotten in favour elitist
bureaucracies. The focus in Stalinism turned from the people as the driving force
of change to the leaders. This was a corruption of Leninism.
But Stalin was focused on making the Russia an industrial power Lenin was
working at a more theoretical level. Stalin was adopting Leninism for the
situation he was in. Discuss more
Stalin’s primary aim was to increase the industrial capacity of the Soviet Union.
In order to do this Stalin developed a huge bureaucracy. Central planning and
expertise were emphasized instead of democratic control. Stalin abandoned the
New Economic Policy. The NEP was nearly capitalist. It allowed profit-making
businesses that were on a small scale. Lenin understood NEP as a strategic
retreat from capitalism. Lenin wrote that Russia was “not civilised enough to
pass directly to socialism”5 Lenin believed in a stage theory in which socialism
would emerge from capitalism. The inequalities of capitalism would drive the
working classes to rise up and overthrow the exploitive ruling classes. This is not
what happened in Russia. Lenin believed that Russia would need to develop an
advanced capitalist culture. The NEP was a method of developing a capitalist
culture. Stalin gave up on the more ephemeral aspects of ‘old’ Bolsheviks such as
stage theory. Stalin nationalised the industries and started planning to rapidly
industrialise Russia. Lenin had envisioned factories under worker control. Stalin
changed this to control by industrial experts. Stalin’s industrialisation was
successful in bringing Russia up to the level of the western powers but it didn’t
do much to engender communism in Russia
Stalin’s policy of socialism in one country was an intellectual justification of his
focus on rapid industrialisation instead of revolution. Stalin twisted the Lenin’s
words in order to find justification for his policies. The general thrust of lenin’s
thought was that revolution could not be secured in one country alone. In 1906
Lenin said that “the Russian Revolution can conquer by it’s own strength, but can
in no way maintain and consolidate it’s conquests unaided”6. Lenin always
insisted that socialism could not exist in one country especially one as backward
as Russia. Lenin did a large amount of speaking and writing. He would emphasize
one aspect of the theory over another to suit the audience he had. Stalin took
some sentences and made a theory out of them. So Lenin’s statement just before
the revolution that socialism would come about “first in a few capitalist countries
or even alone”7 It was tentative musing that goes against the general tenor of the
Lenin’s thought. But Lenin’s thought was ambiguous. Stalin and Zinoviev were
both able to compile lists of quotations that proved the opposite of each other’s
book. But Stalin was guilty of twisting Lenin’s words to prove something they
were never meant to prove.
5
Boris Souvarine, Stalin, A Critical Survey of Bolshevism, (New York, Octagon
Books, 1972), 293
6
Souvarine, Critical Survey, 292
7
Ibid, 294
