One example of continuity between Lenin and Stalin is their use of terror. Right wing western historians put major emphasis onto this fact, pointing to the similarity between Stalin’s purges in the 1930’s and Lenin’s periodic cleansing of the party that occurred in the early 1920’s, when every single member of the party was scrutinised and forced to justify themselves before a purge commission, as well as responding to any criticisms. The roots of Stalin’s purges can also be recognised in Lenin’s banning of factionalism at the tenth party congress in 1921. Both Lenin and Stalin were ruthless with their people and would stop at nothing to push the revolution forward, with the similarities between Stalin’s secret police used against Trotskyists and Lenin’s treatment of Mensheviks in 1922 illustrating this: both Trotsky and the Mensheviks being forced out of Russia in comparable circumstances. Although it is Stalin who is most often remembered for his murders, S. J. Lee points out that Lenin’s secret police (the Cheka) ‘executed over 140,000 people’ between 1917 and 1922, ten times the figure dispatched by the Tsarist secret police under both the previous two Tsars put together. As a commercial historian and head of History at a school, A.J. Lee does not have a historical agenda of his own (he takes into account all schools of thought in a critical manner) and therefore these figures are likely to be reliable. This terror becomes even more apparent when put next to the first hand sources of actual letters from Lenin to other party members, which include lines like ‘Hang no fewer than one hundred known kulaks’.
However, there is also a clear difference in the way the two used terror. Whereas Lenin was responsible for the death of thousands, Stalin was responsible for the death of millions. Stalin was also responsible for, as Richard Pipes puts it, ‘the killing of fellow Communists – a crime Lenin did not commit’. As Pipes is a historian who argues for strong continuity between Lenin and Stalin, the fact that he highlights this exception makes it a very credible piece of evidence, showing that although Lenin used terror in order to suppress other political parties, Stalin used it within his own party and to a much more extreme degree. Stalin was responsible for ordering Trotsky to be assassinated and ridding the party of many of Lenin’s Bolshevik elite, executing over 60 % of those that attended the 17th party congress. Lenin, again showing us a significant break between the thinking of the two, would never have countenanced the killing of party members. Another key difference, highlighted and argued by Soviet historians is that whilst Stalin’s use of terror was as a result of his personal paranoia and megalomania, Lenin used it solely in ‘the name of the interest of the workers’. The official Soviet line of argument on this (as stated in ‘A Short History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union’) is that ‘though people were killed, they were subjected to a Red Terror in retaliation for their White terror against the Bolsheviks’.However we must remember that it was a clear objective of these historians to preserve the USSR’s position after Stalin’s death, and hence attempt to keep the distance between Lenin and Stalin (now seen as the betrayer of the revolution) as large as possible.
A parallel can be drawn between Lenin and Stalin through their economic policy, with central planning being key to both. Keeping the economy within the hands of the state was a major feature of Lenin’s policy, and he wanted this to evolve so that the state was given increasing power over it. Even during his NEP (new economic policy), which reintroduced market mechanisms, the state not only controlled key industries and banking but also regulated agriculture, by fixing prices for example. Stalin abandoned the NEP in favour of the ‘Great Turn’, increasing the power of the state to direct the economy and keeping everything within a single plan, and also collectivising agriculture, doing (as Pipes puts it) exactly ‘as Lenin had desired’. Stalin’s five year plans can be seen even more as a result of Lenin if the substantially more socialist economic policy of War communism is seen as their foundation. Pipes also stresses the fact that both Lenin and Stalin made sure that all autonomous labour organisations (such as trade unions and factory committees) were made wholly ineffectual which again highlights continuity. E.H. Carr is also of this view, stating that Stalin’s industrialisation through his five-year plans was ‘inevitable’. However, Roy Medvedev is of quite the opposite opinion, stating that in returning to the methods of War Communism, ‘Stalin acted not in line with Lenin’s clear instructions, but in defiance of them’. Although giving many examples to illustrate this, he focuses on Stalin’s ‘hasty policy of forced collectivisation’ and ‘mainly administrative rather than economic methods to carry out industrialisation’. Medvedev’s arguments however, maybe influenced by his strong commitment to Lenin and Marxism.
Some historians see the way that Lenin and Stalin dealt with foreign policy as clear difference between the two. Whilst Lenin hoped that the revolution would spread and occur on an international scale, Stalin followed a system of ‘Socialism in one country’. Some historians have argued that Stalin’s foreign policy (or lack of it) was simply a result of what was occurring elsewhere, supported by the fact that many post-war revolutions that the Bolsheviks had been hoping for were crushed or simply didn’t happen. Liberal Westerners argue that even when this is taken into account, Stalin was still acting a result of his own will, having been left with a country so isolated from foreign investment and intervention that all he could really attempt was to modernise Russia in as self sufficient a manner as possible. Lenin had attempted to implement Marx’s idea of the proletarian revolution (i.e. the revolution starting in countries where industrialisation had occurred and hence caused an advance state of capitalism before then spreading to neighbouring countries) by sending Bolshevik forces to Poland in an attempt to liberate their people. But, rather than becoming a communist friendly nation as Lenin had hoped, Poland was far from enthusiastic and on occasion openly hostile. Some historians such as Geoffrey Swain however, have stated that Lenin’s ‘attitude to world revolution remained ambivalent’ backing this up by illuminating the idea that the Brest-Litovsk treaty signed by Lenin in March 1918 ‘delayed the onset of revolution in Europe’ as it strengthened the German Empire (even if only temporarily). Therefore, if Lenin was not in fact trying to bring about a world revolution, there is indeed continuity between the two in this area, with both Lenin and Stalin settling for single country socialism in much the same way.
A one party state ruled from above arose from the terror of both Lenin and Stalin, again suggesting continuity. As seen above, Lenin initiated the one-party state dealing ruthlessly with other socialist parties such as the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries as a result of his intolerance to opposing views. Both Lenin and Stalin enacted revolution from above (going against Engels’ idea that a revolution would be ‘the task of the working class itself’), facets of which included forcing peasants into collective farms, implementing state control over industry and establishing a large and bureaucratic central administration. Trotsky accused Stalin of being the betrayer of the revolution however, pointing to the fact that Lenin stated ‘the proletarian state will wither away immediately after its victory’, an idea that Stalin clearly didn’t adhere to. In fact he even went actively against this, and is quoted as having said ‘we advance toward the abolition of the state by way of the strengthening of the state’. In evaluating Trotsky’s opinion of Stalin as a traitor to the revolution we must note that there may be slight bias, with Trotsky having been in competition with Stalin for leadership of the party (with very different plans) when Lenin died. There is also an argument that Stalin’s failure to get rid of the state was not a clear contradiction to Lenin’s will but in fact a direct result of his not letting it wither away, again suggesting continuity. This could be put down to the impossibility of attempting to create a whole new political and social order capable of then destroying itself. If this was the case, then Stalin’s strengthening of the state was simply a logical progression of what Pipes describes as Lenin’s ‘vanguard of the proletariat’.
Another similarity is that under both Lenin and Stalin, the party was severely detached from the people. Lenin decided along with the party leadership that it was their responsibility to move the people along in the right direction chosen by the party, bringing about a dictatorship. Medvedev states that this line of action was simply taken on by Stalin and then progressed to its logical conclusion. He also points out that once this policy was in place, both Lenin and Stalin used the workers as tools to carry out their aims. Lenin did so for the October revolution and during the Civil War, whilst Stalin did so in order to carry out fast and efficient industrialisation and /collectivisation in the early 1930’s. Stalin again mobilised the workers later in the 1930’s during the Stakhanovite campaign. Medvedev goes onto state that these actions were necessary for Stalin regardless of the precedent set by Lenin, due to the industrially backward state he had been left to deal with. This is illustrated by the fact that Russia’s production levels were still below those of 1913 when Stalin came to power. He almost had to the reverse the sequence of events that Marx laid down, having to attempt to modernise the country after the premature proletarian revolution. Sheila Fitzpatrick, along with other revisionist historians, argues that although Lenin may have followed a path to industrialisation similar to that of Stalin’s had he lived past 1923, he clearly stated in the writings toward the end of his life that peasants should fundamentally not be coerced into collective farms. This suggests a break in ideas between the two.
Through the examination of the issues on which historians have based their judgements on the extent to which Lenin was the begetter of Stalin, a trend has emerged. Although it seems clear that a number of Stalin’s actions were based on what occurred under Lenin’s rule it is also clear that there was also contrasts between the two that ‘only the blind and the deaf could be unaware of’. Also important is the ideology of both leaders and how it affected them. Whilst Western Right Wing historians are quick to point out how Lenin’s hunger for power was littered with empty promises on the way to the October revolution, his writings show that he truly had continuous commitment to the revolution right up to his last days. In Stalin’s case, it is clear that he did build on Lenin’s blueprint with Pipes stating that he carried out Lenin’s agenda ‘to a successful conclusion’ . However, he attempted this in too explicit a manner, and in creating the ‘cult of Lenin’, he ended up going directly against Lenin’s wishes for such an idea not to be perpetuated, something symptomatic of Stalin’s whole career as the USSR’s megalomaniacal leader. Although justifying every single action against Lenin’s principles to the people, his drive became far too polluted by his own personal views and impulses. Therefore, despite the fact that some aspects of Lenin’s approach to power clearly influenced Stalin, he cannot be seen as the sole begetter.
Sheila Fitzpatrick, The Russian Revolution, 2nd edition (1994) p98
Stephen J. Lee, Lenin and Revolutionary Russia (2003) p98
Lenin quoted in ‘The Unknown Lenin’ (1996) Document 24, p.50
R.Pipes, Three Whys of the Russian Revolution (1988) p.83
C. P. S. U. - History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1939) p229
R.Medvedev, ‘The Political Biography of Stalin’ in R.C. Tucker (ed.) Stalinism, Essays in Historical Interpretation (1977)
Geoffrey Swain – Lenin: Tyrant or Saviour (Modern History Review) p.4
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/index.htm
Stalin, quoted in ‘From Lenin to Stalin’, Victor Serge, (1937)
I.Deutscher, The Prophet Unarmed: Trotsky 1921-1929 (1959) – p.465
R.Pipes, Three Whys of the Russian Revolution (1988) p.83