Links between the two regimes of Lenin and Stalin.

To Deutscher’s optimistic conclusion the intentionalists replied that collectivisation was not useful and only damaged Russia. They class the period of Stalinism as “a struggle on the same scale”as the First World War; “a war against the nation”. Ulam considers collectivisation as a war against the peasantry- he asks, “Was the Civil War ever concluded?” For the totalitarian school of thought both Lenin and Stalin saw peasants as scum, malleable to any needs of the party. Ulam even believes that had Lenin lived on then he would have ended the NEP earlier than Stalin did. To them both, the revolution was hi- jacked by a group of fanatical radicals, who crippled the economy, and set up institutions which later provided the stepping stone for Stalin to launch his ‘revolution from above’. To link the two ‘tyrants’, Conquest deduces that both their economic policies killed the same number of people. For Lenin’s ‘Peasant War’ of grain requisitioning the estimate is 14 million people dead, in comparison with Stalin’s ‘revolution from above’ in which 14.5 million Soviet people perished. His last words about the Leninist- Stalinist policies are- “When the Stalin regime moved into excessive requisitioning in late 1932, it had the experience of 1918- 21 behind it. Then the experience had resulted in disastrous famine. If it was again to do so, this cannot have been for want of understanding in the Kremlin.” During, the ‘Terror Famine’ of 1933 it did. He says that Stalin did not follow the advice of Lenin, but ploughed on with his exploitation and destruction of the muzhik. This view further damages Stalinist claims of continued Bolshevik policies, for we know that had they actually been fulfilled, NEP would have survived. Ulam backs up this statement by stating that Stalin’s ‘war’ was not only not simply for power, but also not because of the “ideology, the faith of Marxism- Leninism”. Had Marxism been properly understood, it “would have required a safer, more reasonable method of transforming Russia into a modern industrial society”. Conquest realises some difference between Leninist and Stalinist policies and does not wholly regard Stalinist economics as a complete direct continuation of Leninist war communism. He writes, in that although “Lenin shared Bolshevik antipathy towards the peasants as the archaic element in Russia, his main concerns were to understand them in Marxist terms… and to decide how to organise the countryside”, whilst Stalin simply wanted to “frighten the kulaks into submission”. Lenin’s only redeeming point it seems is that he looked at the peasantry in Marxist terms,  and his “policy was based on trial and error, with a changeable mixture of ideology and pragmatism”  and “at the last moment, Lenin… listened to the voice of reality”. This does not justify their policies, but simply highlights the flawed nature of Stalinist policies which were not only a continuation, but an escalation, and unlike Deutscher’s view, the direction in which Stalin was going was one that would end in “a cruel mockery” of the peasant.

        “It is said that one cannot make omelettes without breaking eggs. In that case, perhaps one should not make omelettes, if the menu happens to provide other choices”. In the case of Russia many millions of eggs were broken, according to not only the totalitarians, but which was also later admitted even by the Soviets, like Gorbachev who wanted to introduce Lenin- like perestroika and glastnost reforms to change the strong Stalinist red tape. They argued that there was too great an emphasis on what Gorbachev called the ‘centralisation- and- command system’, and showed to the Soviet people that there were horrors during collectivisation. “Flagrant violations of the principles of collectivisation occurred everywhere. Nor were excesses avoided in the struggle against the kulaks… An atmosphere of intolerance, hostility and suspicion was created in the country… I am putting things bluntly- those were real crimes stemming from an abuse of power. Many thousands of people… were subjected to wholesale repressive methods. Such comrades is the bitter truth”. However while Nove states that Stalin was necessary to drag Russia into the 20th century and that no other option was available to Russia on the menu, the losses were drastic. It is becoming more definite that Stalin extended and intensified Leninist methods to such a degree unimaginable under Lenin, and whilst it is true that the foundations were there to be exploited, Stalin was not a ‘Leninist’, but a ‘Stalinist’ influenced by Leninism and the events which took shape, Lenin would probably not have approved.

        Politically, the totalitarian view is that both were dictatorships; both were single- party systems; both had a secret police apparatus; both indoctrinated their citizens; both controlled the economy and the political organisation of the country; both practiced terror; “…to be clear: Lenin bequeathed to his successors a fully functioning police state.”. Both had a one party state, but the Trotskyite Deutscher suggests that Stalin’s was “the rule of the single faction [which] was indeed an abuse as well as a consequence of the rule of the single party”.  This was utterly disputed by Khrushchev who, saw that in terms of political ideology and practice towards the party, Lenin had been a true Marxist. He explained in his secret speech that Lenin upheld democracy and ‘collegiality’ within the Communist Party, or what he called “the Leninist method of convincing and educating”. He coincides with the revisionist viewpoint of Figes who says that “despite the ban on factions, the party still made room for comradely debate”. For Stalin’s successors, there was a direct split in the political behaviour inside the party. “In practice Stalin ignored the norms of Party life and trampled on the Leninist principle of collective Party leadership.”- To Khrushchev and co. it was pure despotism.

         Stalin ruled with an iron fist inside the party, the totalitarians show, but he ran the country even more ruthlessly than the C. S. P. U. This Soviet judgment is in a minority among the colossal amount of writings by the Liberals, who whole heartedly deny the break between the political ideologies of the two. The western historians had no need to justify their beliefs like the Soviets and so agree with Pipes when he says, “Stalin’s megalomania… and other odious qualities should not obscure the fact that his ideology and modus operandi were Lenin’s. A man of meagre education, he had no other source of ideas.” For the historians influenced by the American values of ‘democracy’, the ‘modus operandi’ for both is the same. Lenin’s theoretical and practical ‘solutions’ to the situation simply strengthened the party which later gave rise to the totalitarian Stalinist baby. Pipes sees no indication that Lenin ever saw Stalin as a traitor to his brand of Communism- the dictatorship of the proletariat gave rise to the dictatorship by the vanguard, terror was death in both cases. It is ironic that these views matched those of the pre- revolutionary utopian idealist Lenin, unaffected by the hardships of the Civil War government- “So long as state exists there is no freedom”. For Pipes particularly, the state remained throughout Lenin and Stalin- there was no freedom. Service, a revisionist in every sense, although not as extreme as Pipes, through recent archival research, sides with the totalitarians, and points out the violent Bolshevik political ambitions. He states that the one party/ ideology state meant “arbitrary rule… administrative ultra- centralism…[and] philosophical amoralism”. Lenin was not as ‘cuddly’ as first thought of, and the “speculation that if Lenin had survived, a humanitarian order would have been established is hard to square with this garment of agreed principles of Bolshevism”. Volkogonov, a reformed communist, holds equally totalitarian beliefs, the red tape, sabotage and bureaucracy that Lenin constantly railed against were organically permeated through the system which he created. Concepts like people’s power, freedom and human rights simple became unnecessary. By Lenin the “party had become a state within a state, its dictatorship a fact... Party absolutism replaced tsarist autocracy. Democracy and civil rights became ‘bourgeois manifestations’… [and]… human life a soulless statistical unit.”. It stayed that way until Stalin’s death.

        In addition to this, revisionism has proven that perhaps not only was there no a direct continuation but that the final Stalinist product was completely different from the primary Leninist system. Cohen rethinks the soviet experience, concluding that the Party changed considerably from 1917 to 1921 alone, in composition, organisational structure, internal political life and outlook. Stalin’s party was radically different from the one seen off by Lenin. For “if ideology could influence events, then it was also shaped and changed by it”. If for Lenin the Civil War had a huge impact, then Stalinism went through different stages of evolution. Stalinist ideology changed in essence, and “it did not represent the same movement as that which took place in 1917”. There was a revival of nationalism, conservatism, reactionism and dogmatism, whilst the switch in emphasis from proletariat changed to the leaders as creators of life. He concludes simply that, “discontinuities were secondary to continuities.”  However the difference between the two in terms of political continuation is “quantitative, not qualitative”, and, as Cohen points out, “excess was Stalinism”, this is what separates the two. The degree to which they differed, not the way they differed. Essentially “the basic elements of the Stalinist regime… were all in place by 1924”, Stalin simply extended these to his own satisfactory conclusion.

        Politically and economically both continuations and discontinuations can be found, and whilst it is dangerous to jump to extremes by denying the direct link between Lenin and Stalin as the Soviets do, or emphasising that there was no difference between the two, such as the totalitarians do, it is essential to see a link between the two regimes. Had the economic and political precedents not been set, such terror and killing as seen by Stalin would not have existed. Conquest states Stalinism did not come out of the blue, as “like any other historical phenomenon, it had its roots in the past”, but it would be misleading to think like Solzhenitsyn that there was a direct chain of events that led to Stalin. Stalinist terror found its influences in history and plain simple human barbarity which inhabits mankind. Ivan the Terrible did it, the Mongols likewise, and many other dictators used Lenin’s “logic of the axe”. Whilst there was a similarity between the Cheka of 1918 and the NKVD of the 1930’s, the ultimate difference between Lenin and Stalin was the measure of how far they would go. Plainly, all agree that Stalin went further. Both killed but “Lenin did not kill fellow Communists, and Stalin did so on a massive scale”, Lenin talked of collectivisation, Stalin implemented, Lenin criticised bureaucratic red tape, Stalin wrapped the USSR in it. Stalinism was Leninism… PLUS!

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