Kerensky, talking about the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, said that ‘Lenin’s betrayal of Russia, at the most crucial moment in the war, is an indubitable, established fact.’ Conversely, many think it was Stalin who betrayed the Revolution. Others though think that he completed what Lenin had started. Trotsky thought Lenin was ‘a man of great moral passion’ and ‘a thinker, observer and strategist’ whereas Stalin was ‘gifted with practicability, a strong will, and persistence in carrying out his aims’ and his ‘strength lies in his political blindness.’
Lenin’s brother was executed because he was involved in a plot to kill a tsar. This gave Lenin a huge motivation to overthrow the tsarist regime. Lenin was an inspiring speaker, he galvanized crowds as they flocked to see him speak and this was because, as V. Serge said, ‘his whole genius consists in his ability to say what these people want to say, but do not know how to say. Stalin was not such an inspiring or memorable speaker, in fact Trotsky, who by the time was being persecuted by Stalin said he is ‘the outstanding mediocrity in the party. He was also outwardly more selfish and more obsessed with power than Lenin.
When the Revolution succeeded, Lenin was delighted that ‘at last the soldier and the worker had been brought together. Lenin was able to win over his party with his April Theses. He then won them over to the NEP. He was intelligent and a flexible, persuasive individual. That was not Stalin’s style. He was not a great negotiator – he played one factor off against another – he didn’t try to win them all over. His approach was very different – he worked with factions. Stalin was obviously unintellectual, but many mistakenly believed that this made him unintelligent.
Russia became a paranoiac country under Stalin. People were in a climate of fear over saying anything in criticism of Stalin and the government. The secret police could, and would just cart them off, taking them to labour camps or having them executed without trial.
Stalin was quiet and strong, dangerous and sinister. He kept albums of the people whom he had had executed. There were also the show trials where people were vilified for things that they hadn’t come close to doing e.g. industrial sabotage. Politically if he was worried about a group ousting him he would force them to admit treason or own up to spying, and then would have them killed.
Stalin could see through a peephole in his study into the courts where the show trials took place and watch the humiliation. It seems unlikely that Lenin would have ever been this callous. Lenin was moved by his experiences – when he spoke to Westerners during the Civil War about their lives he was in tears going around the devastated Russian villages.
Stalin never showed any emotion. However he also galvanized the country – its economy, the agricultural output increases mightily, and then he prepared Russia and the Russians for the German Invasion and the Second World War. The Russians were decisive in defending against Hitler – technological advances were also great and magnificent structures were erected.
Ruthlessness with an objective of winning against Hitler can be justified, but he didn’t know what was to come when he signed the Neutrality Pact with Germany in 1939, carving up Poland for both countries. He was unprepared for the invasion of June 1941 and could have lost all a year later still. He was fighting an extremely ruthless man and Stalin had to be as ruthless himself.
Stalin was almost totally paranoiac about himself – he believed the opposite of what his spies told him. He was incredibly suspicious but that’s not particularly surprising if you look at his undesirable early life. The way of life throughout the Communist rule was a very heartless way of life - putting people through hell to achieve success and the establishment of Communism.
Kerensky, talking about the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, said that ‘Lenin’s betrayal of Russia, at the most crucial moment in the war, is an indubitable, established fact.’ Conversely, many think it was Stalin who betrayed the Revolution. Others though think that he completed what Lenin had started. Trotsky thought Lenin was ‘a man of great moral passion’ and ‘a thinker, observer and strategist’ whereas Stalin was ‘gifted with practicability, a strong will, and persistence in carrying out his aims’ and his ‘strength lies in his political blindness.’
Stalin was found by many to be a tyrant. His beliefs are not always entirely obvious. Lenin stuck to more to Communist principles and was not such a dictator. His switches from Communism to the dictatorship of War Communism and the capitalist ways of the NEP show he was flexible and would change policies that didn’t work. War Communism was for an emergency – the Civil War – the NEP only a temporary measure. If he had lived longer it seems as though he would have returned to the fundamental ideas of Communism. Stalin drifted from left to right in order to get into power and then reaffirmed Communism, in the forms of Industrialization and Collectivisation, bringing it back with a vengeance.
