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The historiography of Stalin is diverse, with many different aspects of continuity and discontinuity between the regimes Stalin and Lenin proposed. Some historians, such as Richard Pipes, consider Stalinism the natural consequence of Leninism: Stalin "faithfully implemented Lenin's domestic and foreign policy programs."
Trotsky controversially suggested that Stalin had poisoned V.I. Lenin, seen here with Stalin recuperating from a stroke in the city of Gorky. Stalin begins with an unfinished introduction where Trotsky attempts to prove his objectivity in relation to the events in the rest of the book, however was never finished due to his assassination. [12]
Robert Service notes that "institutionally and ideologically Lenin laid the foundations for a Stalin ... but the passage from Leninism to the worse terrors of Stalinism was not smooth and inevitable." [47] Historian and Stalin biographer Edvard Radzinsky believes that Stalin was a genuine follower of Lenin, exactly as he claimed himself. [48]
Stalin's office was near Lenin's in the Smolny Institute, [122] and he and Trotsky had direct access to Lenin without an appointment. [123] Stalin co-signed Lenin's decrees shutting down hostile newspapers, [ 124 ] and co-chaired the committee drafting a constitution for the newly-formed Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic . [ 125 ]
By the late 1920s, Joseph Stalin consolidated the regime's control over the country's economy and society through a system of economic planning and five-year plans. Between the Russian Revolution and the Second World War, Soviet-style communist rule only spread to one state that was not later incorporated into the Soviet Union.
In the course of the unfolding controversy about the possibility of socialism in Russia, Lenin rejected all the critical arguments of the Mensheviks, socialist revolutionaries and other political opponents about the country's unpreparedness for a socialist revolution due to its economic backwardness, weakness, lack of culture and organization ...
Lenin died on 21 January 1924. Stalin was given the honour of organizing his funeral. Upon Lenin's death, Stalin was officially hailed as his successor as the leader of the ruling Communist Party and of the Soviet Union itself. Against Lenin's wishes, he was given a lavish funeral and his body was embalmed and put on display.
Lenin had not wanted Stalin to succeed him, stating that "Comrade Stalin is too rude" and suggesting that the party find someone "more patient, more loyal, more polite". [ 5 ] [ 6 ] Stalin did not completely succeed in suppressing Lenin's Testament suggesting that others remove Stalin from his position as leader of the Communist party .