Who do you think was the more important figure in Russian history, Lenin or Stalin?
Who do you think was the more important figure in Russian history, Lenin or Stalin?
An important question that has been asked by historians is whether Stalin or Lenin had the biggest effect over Russian history. It is a difficult question to answer because both of them played such important roles in Russia's history:
In 1928, when Stalin took complete control of the nation, Russia was possibly hundreds of years behind the other large nations in terms of society and technology. Stalin replaced New Economic Policy with his own economic programmes known as the Five-Year Plan. In the first Five-Year Plan (1928-1932), central planning replaced market systems, and a strict state-controlled regime dominated the Soviet economy until the dissolution of the USSR in 1991. Although Stalin had many formidable achievements they must be set one major disadvantage. Although a high industrial output was indeed achieved under Stalin, very little of it ever became available to the ordinary Soviet citizen in the form of consumer goods or facilities - a considerable proportion of the national wealth was taken by the state to cover military expenditure, the police apparatus, and further industrialisation. It is also arguable that a lot of industrialisation would have come about in any case by means less savage under almost any regime as an alternative to Stalinism.
An important question that has been asked by historians is whether Stalin or Lenin had the biggest effect over Russian history. It is a difficult question to answer because both of them played such important roles in Russia's history:
In 1928, when Stalin took complete control of the nation, Russia was possibly hundreds of years behind the other large nations in terms of society and technology. Stalin replaced New Economic Policy with his own economic programmes known as the Five-Year Plan. In the first Five-Year Plan (1928-1932), central planning replaced market systems, and a strict state-controlled regime dominated the Soviet economy until the dissolution of the USSR in 1991. Although Stalin had many formidable achievements they must be set one major disadvantage. Although a high industrial output was indeed achieved under Stalin, very little of it ever became available to the ordinary Soviet citizen in the form of consumer goods or facilities - a considerable proportion of the national wealth was taken by the state to cover military expenditure, the police apparatus, and further industrialisation. It is also arguable that a lot of industrialisation would have come about in any case by means less savage under almost any regime as an alternative to Stalinism.
