Leninism

{{Marxism sidebar}}

In the 19th century, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote the Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848), in which they called for the political unification of the European working classes in order to achieve communist revolution; and proposed that because the socio-economic organisation of communism was of a higher form than that of capitalism, a workers' revolution first would occur in the industrialised countries. In Germany, Marxist social democracy was the political perspective of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, inspiring Russian Marxists, such as Lenin.{{cite book |last=Lih |first=Lars |title=Lenin Rediscovered: What is to be Done? in Context |year=2005 |publisher=Brill Academic Publishers |isbn=978-90-04-13120-0}}

In the early 20th century, the socio-economic backwardness of Imperial Russia (1721–1917) — characterized by combined and uneven economic development — facilitated rapid and intensive industrialisation, which produced a united, working-class proletariat in a predominantly agrarian society. Moreover, because industrialisation was financed chiefly with foreign capital, Imperial Russia did not possess a revolutionary bourgeoisie with political and economic influence upon the workers and the peasants, as had been the case in the French Revolution (1789–1799) in the 18th century. Although Russia's political economy was agrarian and semi-feudal, the task of democratic revolution fell to the urban, industrial working class as the only social class capable of effecting land reform and democratisation, in view that the Russian bourgeoisie would suppress any revolution.

In the April Theses (1917), the political strategy of the October Revolution (7–8 November 1917), Lenin proposed that the Russian revolution was not an isolated national event but a fundamentally international event—the first socialist revolution in the world. Lenin's practical application of Marxism and proletarian revolution to the social, political, and economic conditions of agrarian Russia motivated and impelled the "revolutionary nationalism of the poor" to depose the absolute monarchy of the three-hundred-year dynasty of the House of Romanov (1613–1917), as tsars of Russia.{{cite book |title=The Faces of Janus: Marxism and Fascism in the Twentieth Century |title-link=The Faces of Janus |first=A. James |last=Gregor |author-link=A. James Gregor |date=2000 |pages=133 |location=New Haven, Connecticut |publisher=Yale University Press |isbn=0-300-07827-7}}

In Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916), Lenin's economic analyses indicated that capitalism would transform into a global financial system, by which industrialised countries exported financial capital to their colonies and so realise the exploitation of the labour of the natives and the exploitation of the natural resources of their countries. Such superexploitation allows wealthy countries to maintain a domestic labour aristocracy with a slightly higher standard of living than most workers, ensuring peaceful labour–capital relations in the capitalist homeland. Therefore, a proletarian revolution of workers and peasants could not occur in capitalist countries whilst the imperialist global-finance system remained in place. The first proletarian revolution would have to occur in an underdeveloped country, such as Imperial Russia, the politically weakest country in the capitalist global-finance system in the early 20th century.{{cite journal |last=Tomasic |first=D. |title=The Impact of Russian Culture on Soviet Communism |date=December 1953 |journal=The Western Political Quarterly |publisher=Western Political Science Association |volume=6 |number=4 |pages=808–809 |doi=10.2307/443211 |jstor=443211}} In the United States of Europe Slogan (1915), Lenin wrote:

{{blockquote|Workers of the world, unite!—Uneven economic and political development is an absolute law of capitalism. Hence the victory of socialism is possible, first in several, or even in one capitalist country taken separately. The victorious proletariat of that country, having expropriated the capitalists and organised its own socialist production, would stand up against the rest of the world, the capitalist world.|Collected Works, vol. 18, p. 232Lenin, V. I., United States of Europe Slogan, Collected Works, vol. 18, p. 232.|source=}}

File:Ленин В. И. Империализм, как высшая стадия капитализма (1917).jpg]]

In "Left-Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder (1920), Lenin wrote:

{{blockquote|The more powerful enemy can be vanquished only by exerting the utmost effort, and by the most thorough, careful, attentive, skillful and obligatory use of any, even the smallest, rift between the enemies, any conflict of interests among the bourgeoisie of the various countries and among the various groups or types of bourgeoisie within the various countries, and also by taking advantage of any, even the smallest, opportunity of winning a mass ally, even though this ally is temporary, vacillating, unstable, unreliable and conditional. Those who do not understand this reveal a failure to understand even the smallest grain of Marxism, of modern scientific socialism in general. Those who have not proved in practice, over a fairly considerable period of time and in fairly varied political situations, their ability to apply this truth in practice have not yet learned to help the revolutionary class in its struggle to emancipate all toiling humanity from the exploiters. And this applies equally to the period before and after the proletariat has won political power.|Collected Works, vol. 31, p. 23{{cite book |title=Left-Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder |chapter=No Compromises? |first=Vladimir |last=Lenin |author-link=Vladimir Lenin |publisher=Progress Publishers |year=1920 |place=Soviet Union |url=http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/index.htm |chapter-url=http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/ch08.htm |access-date=5 January 2013 |archive-date=29 February 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200229182927/https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/index.htm |url-status=live |via=Marxists Internet Archive}}|source=}}

{{main|Vanguardism}}

In Chapter II, "Proletarians and Communists", of The Communist Manifesto (1848), Marx and Engels present the communist party as the political vanguard solely qualified to lead the proletariat in revolution:

{{blockquote|The Communists, therefore, are, on the one hand, practically the most advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the lines of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement. The immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of all other proletarian parties: Formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat.|title=|source=}}

The revolutionary purpose of the Leninist vanguard party is to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat with the working class's support. The communist party would lead the popular deposition of the Tsarist government and then transfer government power to the working class; that change of the ruling class—from the bourgeoisie to the proletariat—makes establishing socialism possible.{{cite book |last=Townson |first=D. |title=The New Penguin Dictionary of Modern History: 1789–1945 |location=London |date=1994 |pages=462–464}} In What Is To Be Done? (1902), Lenin said that a revolutionary vanguard party, recruited from the working class, should lead the political campaign because only in that way would the proletariat successfully realise their revolution; unlike the economic campaign of trade-union-struggle advocated by other socialist political parties and the anarcho-syndicalists. Like Marx, Lenin distinguished between the aspects of a revolution, the "economic campaign" (labour strikes for increased wages and work concessions) that featured diffused plural leadership; and the "political campaign" (socialist changes to society), which required the decisive, revolutionary leadership of the Bolshevik vanguard party.

{{main|Democratic centralism}}

Based upon the First International (IWA, International Workingmen's Association, 1864–1876), Lenin organised the Bolsheviks as a democratically centralised vanguard party; wherein free political speech was recognised as legitimate until policy consensus; afterwards, every member of the party was expected to abide by the agreed policy. Democratic debate was Bolshevik practice, even after Lenin banned factions among the Party in 1921. Despite being a guiding political influence, Lenin did not exercise absolute power and continually debated to have his points of view accepted as a course of revolutionary action. In Freedom to Criticise and Unity of Action (1905), Lenin said:

{{blockquote|Of course, the application of this principle in practice will sometimes give rise to disputes and misunderstandings; but only on the basis of this principle can all disputes and all misunderstandings be settled honourably for the Party. ... The principle of democratic centralism and autonomy for local Party organisations implies universal and full freedom to criticise, so long as this does not disturb the unity of a definite action; it rules out all criticism which disrupts or makes difficult the unity of an action decided on by the Party.{{cite book |last=Lenin |first=V. I. |author-link=Vladimir Lenin |orig-date=1905 |chapter=Freedom to Criticise and Unity of Action |title=Lenin's Collected Works |publisher=Progress Publishers |date=1965 |location=Moscow |volume=10 |pages=442–443 |url=http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1906/may/20c.htm |via=Marxists Internet Archive |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210124192311/https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1906/may/20c.htm |archive-date=24 January 2021 |access-date=30 November 2011}}}}

Before the October Revolution, despite supporting moderate political reform—including Bolsheviks elected to the Duma when opportune—Lenin said that capitalism could only be overthrown with proletarian revolution, not with gradual reforms—from within (Fabianism) and from without (social democracy)—which would fail because the bourgeoisie's control of the means of production determined the nature of political power in Russia.{{cite book |last=Lenin |first=V. I. |author-link=Vladimir Lenin |orig-date=1917 |chapter=The State and Revolution |title=Lenin's Collected Works |publisher=Progress Publishers |date=1965 |location=Moscow |volume=25 |pages=381–492 |url=http://marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/index.htm |via=Marxists Internet Archive |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111203042734/http://marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/index.htm |archive-date=3 December 2011 |access-date=30 November 2011}} As epitomised in the slogan "For a Democratic Dictatorship of the Proletariat and Peasantry", a proletarian revolution in underdeveloped Russia required a united proletariat (peasants and industrial workers) to assume government power in the cities successfully. Moreover, owing to the middle-class aspirations of much of the peasantry, Leon Trotsky said that the proletarian leadership of the revolution would ensure truly socialist and democratic socio-economic change.

{{main|Dictatorship of the proletariat#Vladimir Lenin|l1=Dictatorship of the proletariat}}

File:L'état et la révolution.jpg]]

In Bolshevik Russia, government by direct democracy was realised and effected by the soviets (elected councils of workers), which Lenin said was the "democratic dictatorship of the proletariat" postulated in orthodox Marxism.{{cite book |first=Isaac |last=Deutscher |author-link=Isaac Deutscher |date=1954 |title=The Prophet Armed: Trotsky 1879–1921 |publisher=Oxford University Press}} The soviets comprised representative committees from the factories and the trade unions but excluded the capitalist social class to establish a proletarian government by and for the working class and the peasants. Concerning the political disenfranchisement of the capitalist social class in Bolshevik Russia, Lenin said that "depriving the exploiters of the franchise is a purely Russian question, and not a question of the dictatorship of the proletariat, in general. ... In which countries ...democracy for the exploiters will be, in one or another form, restricted ...is a question of the specific national features of this or that capitalism." In chapter five of The State and Revolution (1917), Lenin describes the dictatorship of the proletariat as:

{{blockquote|the organisation of the vanguard of the oppressed as the ruling class for the purpose of crushing the oppressors. ... An immense expansion of democracy, which, for the first time, becomes democracy for the poor, democracy for the people, and not democracy for the rich ... and suppression by force, i.e. exclusion from democracy, for the exploiters and oppressors of the people—this is the change which democracy undergoes during the 'transition' from capitalism to communism.{{cite book |last=Hill |first=Christopher |author-link=Christopher Hill (historian) |url=https://archive.org/details/leninrussianrevolution |title=Lenin and the Russian Revolution |date=1993 |publisher=Penguin Books |location=London |pages=85–86}}|title=|source=}}

Concerning the disenfranchisement from democracy of the capitalist social class, Lenin said: "Democracy for the vast majority of the people, and suppression by force, i.e. exclusion from democracy, of the exploiters and oppressors of the people—this is the change democracy undergoes during the transition from capitalism to communism."Collected Works, vol. 25, pp. 461–462, {{cite book |title=Marx Engels Lenin on Scientific Socialism |publisher=Novosti Press Ajency Publishing House |place=Moscow |year=1974 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KmeHGAAACAAJ |access-date=18 March 2016 |archive-date=31 January 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200131161137/https://books.google.com/books?id=KmeHGAAACAAJ |url-status=live}} The dictatorship of the proletariat was effected with soviet constitutionalism, a form of government opposite to the dictatorship of capital (privately owned means of production) practised in bourgeois democracies. Under soviet constitutionalism, the Leninist vanguard party would be one of many political parties competing for election to government power.{{cite book |last=Carr |first=Edward Hallett |author-link=E. H. Carr |title=The Russian Revolution From Lenin to Stalin: 1917–1929 |date=1979}} Nevertheless, because of the Russian Civil War (1917–1924) and the anti-Bolshevik terrorism of opposing political parties aiding the White Armies' counter-revolution, the Bolshevik government banned all other political parties, which left the Leninist vanguard party as the only political party in Russia. Lenin said that such political suppression was not philosophically inherent to the dictatorship of the proletariat.{{cite book |last=Lewin |first=Moshe |author-link=Moshe Lewin |date=1969 |title=Lenin's Last Struggle}}

{{Soviet Union sidebar|Ideology}}

The Bolshevik government nationalised industry and established a foreign-trade monopoly to allow the productive coordination of the national economy and so prevent Russian national industries from competing against each other. To feed the populaces of town and country, Lenin instituted war communism (1918–1921) as a necessary condition—adequate supplies of food and weapons—for fighting the Russian Civil War. In March 1921, the New Economic Policy (NEP, 1921–1929) allowed limited local capitalism (private commerce and internal free trade) and replaced grain requisitions with an agricultural tax managed by state banks. The NEP was meant to resolve food-shortage riots by the peasantry and allowed limited private enterprise; the profit motive encouraged farmers to produce the crops required to feed town and country; and to economically re-establish the urban working class, who had lost many workers to fight the counter-revolutionary Civil War.{{cite book |editor-last=Cook |editor-first=Chris |date=1983 |title=Dictionary of Historical Terms |location=New York |publisher=Peter Bedrick Books |pages=205}}{{cite book |last=Lenin |first=V. I. |author-link=Vladimir Lenin |orig-date=17 October 1921 |chapter=The New Economic Policy and the Tasks of the Political Education Departments. Report to the Second All-Russia Congress of Political Education Departments |title=Lenin's Collected Works |publisher=Progress Publishers |date=1965 |edition=2nd English |location=Moscow |volume=33 |pages=60–79 |url=http://marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1921/oct/17.htm |via=Marxists Internet Archive |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111203082619/http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1921/oct/17.htm |archive-date=3 December 2011 |access-date=2 December 2011}} The NEP nationalisation of the economy then would facilitate the industrialisation of Russia, politically strengthen the working class, and raise the standards of living for all Russians. Lenin said that the appearance of new socialist states was necessary for strengthening Russia's economy in establishing Russian socialism. Lenin's socio-economic perspective was supported by the German Revolution of 1918–1919, the Italian insurrection and general strikes of 1920, and worker wage-riots in the UK, France, and the US.

In recognising and accepting nationalism among oppressed peoples, Lenin advocated their national right to self-determination and so opposed Russian chauvinism because such ethnocentrism was a cultural obstacle to establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat in every territory of the deposed Russian Empire (1721–1917).{{cite book |last=Lenin |first=V. I. |author-link=Vladimir Lenin |orig-date=1914 |chapter=The Right of Nations to Self-Determination |title=Lenin's Collected Works |publisher=Progress Publishers |date=1972 |location=Moscow |volume=20 |pages=393–454 |url=http://marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/self-det/index.htm |via=Marxists Internet Archive |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210613045734/https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/self-det/index.htm |archive-date=13 June 2021 |access-date=30 November 2011}}{{cite book |editor-last=Harding |editor-first=Neil |date=1984 |title=The State in Socialist Society |edition=2nd |location=Oxford |publisher=St. Antony's College |pages=189}} In The Right of Nations to Self-determination (1914), Lenin said:

{{blockquote|We fight against the privileges and violence of the oppressor nation, and do not in any way condone strivings for privileges on the part of the oppressed nation. :... The bourgeois nationalism of any oppressed nation has a general democratic content that is directed against oppression, and it is this content that we unconditionally support. At the same time, we strictly distinguish it from the tendency towards national exclusiveness. ... Can a nation be free if it oppresses other nations? It cannot.{{cite book |last=Lenin |first=V. I. |author-link=Vladimir Lenin |orig-date=1914 |chapter=The Right of Nations to Self-determination, Chapter 4: 4. "Practicality" in The National Question |title=Lenin's Collected Works |publisher=Progress Publishers |date=1972 |location=Moscow |volume=20 |pages=393–454 |url=http://marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/self-det/index.htm |via=Marxists Internet Archive |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210613045734/https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/self-det/index.htm |archive-date=13 June 2021 |access-date=30 November 2011}}|title=|source=}}

The socialist internationalism of Marxism and Bolshevism is based upon class struggle and a people's transcending nationalism, ethnocentrism, and religion—the intellectual obstacles to progressive class consciousness—which are the cultural status quo that the capitalist ruling class manipulates in order to divide the working classes and the peasant classes politically. To overcome that barrier to establishing socialism, Lenin said that acknowledging nationalism, as a people's right of self-determination and right of secession, naturally would allow socialist states to transcend the political limitations of nationalism to form a federation. In The Question of Nationalities, or 'Autonomisation' (1923), Lenin said:

{{blockquote|[N]othing holds up the development and strengthening of proletarian class solidarity so much as national injustice; "offended" nationals are not sensitive to anything, so much as to the feeling of equality, and the violation of this equality, if only through negligence or jest – to the violation of that equality by their proletarian comrades.Lenin, V. I. (1923). [http://marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/dec/testamnt/index.htm "The Question of Nationalities or 'Autonomisation{{'"}}]. In {{"'}}Last Testament' Letters to the Congress", from Lenin Collected Works, Volume 36, pp. 593–611. {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111203055614/http://marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/dec/testamnt/index.htm |date=3 December 2011}}. Retrieved 30 November 2011.|title=|source=}}

The role of the Leninist vanguard party was to politically educate the workers and peasants to dispel the societal false consciousness of religion and nationalism that constitute the cultural status quo taught by the bourgeoisie to the proletariat to facilitate their economic exploitation of peasants and workers. Influenced by Lenin, the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party stated that the development of the socialist workers' culture should not be "hamstrung from above" and opposed the Proletkult (1917–1925) organisational control of the national culture.Central Committee, "On Proletcult Organisations", Pravda No. 270, 1 December 1920.

{{main|Stalinism|Marxism–Leninism}}

In post-Revolutionary Russia, the Stalinist application of Marxism–Leninism (socialism in one country), and Trotskyism (permanent world revolution) were the principal philosophies of communism that claimed legitimate ideological descent from Leninism; thus, within the Communist Party, each ideological faction denied the political legitimacy of the opposing faction.Chambers Dictionary of World History (2000) p. 837. Until shortly before his death, Lenin countered Stalin's disproportionate political influence in the Communist Party and the bureaucracy of the Soviet government, partly because of abuses he had committed against the populace of Georgia and partly because the autocratic Stalin had accumulated administrative power disproportionate to his office of General Secretary of the Communist Party.{{cite book |last=Carr |first=Edward Hallett |author-link=Edward Hallett Carr |title=The Russian Revolution From Lenin to Stalin: 1917–1929 |date=1979}}{{page needed|date=June 2024}}

The counter-action against Stalin aligned with Lenin's advocacy of the right of self-determination for the national and ethnic groups of the deposed Tsarist Empire. Lenin warned the Party that Stalin had "unlimited authority concentrated in his hands, and I am not sure whether he will always be capable of using that authority with sufficient caution" and formed a faction with Leon Trotsky to remove Stalin as the General Secretary of the Communist Party.{{cite book |first=Isaac |last=Deutscher |author-link=Isaac Deutscher |title=Trotsky: The Prophet Unarmed (1921-1929) |url=https://archive.org/details/prophetunarmedtr0000unse_c1b0 |url-access=registration |year=1959 |publisher=Oxford University Press}}{{cite book |last=Lenin |first=V. I. |author-link=Vladimir Lenin |orig-date=1923–1924 |chapter='Last Testament' Letters to the Congress |chapter-url=http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/dec/testamnt/congress.htm |title=Lenin's Collected Works |publisher=Progress Publishers |date=1965 |location=Moscow |volume=36 |pages=593–611 |via=Marxists Internet Archive |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111204093454/http://marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/dec/testamnt/congress.htm |archive-date=4 December 2011 |access-date=30 November 2011}}

To that end followed proposals reducing the administrative powers of party posts to reduce bureaucratic influence upon the policies of the Communist Party. Lenin advised Trotsky to emphasise Stalin's recent bureaucratic alignment in such matters (e.g. undermining the anti-bureaucratic workers' and peasants' Inspection) and argued to depose Stalin as General Secretary. Despite advice to refuse "any rotten compromise", he did not heed Lenin's advice and General Secretary Stalin retained power over the Communist Party and the bureaucracy of the Soviet government.

{{main|Trotskyism|Anti-Stalinist Left|The Declaration of 46|New Course (Trotsky book)|The Stalin School of Falsification|Stalin: An Appraisal of the Man and His Influence}}

File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-R15068, Leo Dawidowitsch Trotzki.jpg was exiled from Russia after losing to Stalin in the factional politics of the Bolsheviks]]

In 1922, Lenin allied with Leon Trotsky against the party's growing bureaucratisation and the influence of Joseph Stalin.{{cite book |last1=Mccauley |first1=Martin |title=The Soviet Union 1917-1991 |date=4 February 2014 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-317-90179-2 |page=59 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=7cbKAgAAQBAJ&dq=the+soviet+union+1917+1991+lenin+trotsky+bloc+1922&pg=PA59 |language=en}}{{cite book |last1=Deutscher |first1=Isaac |author1-link=Isaac Deutscher |title=The Prophet Unarmed: Trotsky 1921-1929 |date=2003 |publisher=Verso Books |isbn=978-1-85984-446-5 |page=63 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mgubj5z1XUcC&dq=lenin+trotsky+bloc+1922+stalin&pg=PA63 |language=en}}{{cite book |last1=Kort |first1=Michael G. |title=The Soviet Colossus: History and Aftermath |date=18 May 2015 |publisher=M. E. Sharpe |isbn=978-0-7656-2845-9 |page=166 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=BHaWGEZA5zMC |language=en}}{{cite book |last1=Volkogonov |first1=Dmitriĭ Antonovich |title=Trotsky: The Eternal Revolutionary |date=1996 |publisher=HarperCollins |isbn=978-0-00-255272-1 |page=242 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FdqOQgAACAAJ |language=en}}{{cite book |last1=Lenin |first1=V. I. |author1-link=Vladimir Lenin |title="To L. D. Trotsky", 13 December 1922 |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/dec/21.htm |via=Marxists Internet Archive}} Lenin himself never mentioned the concept of "Trotskyism" after Trotsky became a member of the Bolshevik party but the term was employed by Stalin and the troika to present Trotsky's views as factional and anathematical to Leninist thought.{{cite book |last1=Rogovin |first1=Vadim Zakharovich |title=Was There an Alternative? Trotskyism: a Look Back Through the Years |date=2021 |publisher=Mehring Books |isbn=978-1-893638-97-6 |pages=281 |language=en}}

After Lenin's death (21 January 1924), Trotsky ideologically battled the influence of Stalin, who formed ruling blocs within the Russian Communist Party (with Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev, then with Nikolai Bukharin and then by himself) and so determined soviet government policy from 1924 onwards. The ruling blocs continually denied Stalin's opponents the right to organise as an opposition faction within the party—thus, the reinstatement of democratic centralism and free speech within the Communist Party were key arguments of Trotsky's Left Opposition and the later Joint Opposition.{{cite web |last=Trotsky |first=Leon |author-link=Leon Trotsky |date=1927 |title=Platform of the Joint Opposition |url=http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1927/opposition/index.htm |via=Marxists Internet Archive |access-date=28 November 2011 |archive-date=3 December 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111203222432/http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1927/opposition/index.htm |url-status=live}}

In instituting government policy, Stalin promoted the doctrine of socialism in one country (adopted 1925),{{cite web|url=https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft009nb0bb&chunk.id=d0e2411&toc.depth=1&toc.id=d0e2185&brand=ucpress |title=When the Soviet Union Entered World Politics |publisher=UC Press E-Books Collection |access-date=17 December 2019 |archive-date=14 February 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200214172318/https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft009nb0bb&chunk.id=d0e2411&toc.depth=1&toc.id=d0e2185&brand=ucpress |url-status=live}} wherein the Soviet Union would establish socialism upon Russia's economic foundations (and support socialist revolutions elsewhere).{{cite web |url=http://soviethistory.msu.edu/1924-2/industrialization-debate/industrialization-debate-texts/socialism-in-one-country-versus-permanent-revolution/ |title=Socialism in One Country versus Permanent Revolution |website=Seventeen Moments in Soviet History |date=27 August 2015 |access-date=17 December 2019 |archive-date=1 February 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170201025252/http://soviethistory.msu.edu/1924-2/industrialization-debate/industrialization-debate-texts/socialism-in-one-country-versus-permanent-revolution/ |url-status=live}} In a 1936 interview with journalist Roy W. Howard, Stalin articulated his rejection of world revolution and stated that “We never had such plans and intentions” and that “The export of revolution is nonsense”.{{cite book |last1=Vyshinsky |first1=Andrey Yanuaryevich |title=Speeches Delivered at the Fifth Session of the General Assembly of the United Nations, September-October, 1950 |date=1950 |publisher=Information Bulletin of the Embassy of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics |page=76 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1VM1AQAAIAAJ&dq=Stalin+we+ever+had+such+plans+and+intentions&pg=PA76 |language=en}}{{cite book |last1=Volkogonov |first1=Dmitriĭ Antonovich |title=Autopsy for an Empire: The Seven Leaders who Built the Soviet Regime |date=1998 |publisher=Simon & Schuster |isbn=978-0-684-83420-7 |page=125 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=S5XlHA_75YwC&dq=Stalin+we+ever+had+such+plans+and+intentions&pg=PA125 |language=en}}{{cite book |last1=Kotkin |first1=Stephen |title=Stalin |volume=II, Waiting for Hitler, 1928-1941 |date=2017 |location=London |publisher=Allen Lane |isbn=978-0-7139-9945-7 |page=125 |url=https://archive.org/details/stalinvoliiwaiti0000kotk/page/287/mode/1up}}

Conversely, Trotsky held that socialism in one country would economically constrain the industrial development of the Soviet Union and thus required assistance from the new socialist countries in the developed world—which was essential for maintaining soviet democracy—in 1924, much undermined by the Russian Civil War of White Army counter-revolution. Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution proposed that socialist revolutions in underdeveloped countries would further dismantle feudal régimes and establish socialist democracies that would not pass through a capitalist stage of development and government. Hence, revolutionary workers should ally politically with peasant political organisations, not capitalist political parties. In contrast, Stalin and his allies proposed that alliances with capitalist political parties were essential to realising a revolution where communists were too few. Said Stalinist practice failed, especially in the Northern Expedition portion of the Chinese Revolution (1926–1928), which resulted in the right-wing Kuomintang's massacre of the Chinese Communist Party. Despite the failure, Stalin's policy of mixed-ideology political alliances nonetheless became Comintern's policy.

Until exiled from Russia in 1929, Trotsky developed and led the Left Opposition (and the later Joint Opposition) with members of the Workers' Opposition, the Decembrists and (later) the Zinovievists. Trotskyism predominated the politics of the Left Opposition, which demanded the restoration of soviet democracy, the expansion of democratic centralism in the Communist Party, national industrialisation, international permanent revolution and socialist internationalism. According to historian Sheila Fitzpatrick, the scholarly consensus was that Stalin appropriated the position of the Left Opposition on such matters as industrialisation and collectivisation.{{cite journal |last1=Fitzpatrick |first1=Sheila |author1-link=Shiela Fitzpatrick |title=The Old Man |journal=London Review of Books |date=22 April 2010 |volume=32 |issue=8 |url=https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v32/n08/sheila-fitzpatrick/the-old-man |language=en |issn=0260-9592}}

The Trotskyist demands countered Stalin's political dominance of the Communist Party, which was officially characterised by the "cult of Lenin", the rejection of permanent revolution, and advocated the doctrine of socialism in one country. The Stalinist economic policy vacillated between appeasing the capitalist interests of the kulak in the countryside and destroying them as a social class. Initially, the Stalinists also rejected the national industrialisation of Russia but then pursued it in full, sometimes brutally. In both cases, the Left Opposition denounced the regressive nature of Stalin's policy towards the wealthy kulak social class and the brutality of forced industrialisation. Trotsky described Stalinist vacillation as a symptom of the undemocratic nature of a ruling bureaucracy.{{cite book |last=Trotsky |first=L. D. |author-link=Leon Trotsky |date=1938 |title=The Revolution Betrayed}}

During the 1920s and the 1930s, Stalin fought and defeated the political influence of Trotsky and the Trotskyists in Russia using slander, antisemitism, censorship, expulsions, exile (internal and external), and imprisonment. The anti-Trotsky campaign culminated in the executions (official and unofficial) of the Moscow Trials (1936–1938), which were part of the Great Purge of Old Bolsheviks who had led the Revolution.{{cite book |last=Rogovin |first=Vadim Z. |author-link=Vadim Rogovin |date=2009 |title=Stalin's Terror of 1937–1938: Political Genocide in the USSR |translator-first=Frederick S. |translator-last=Choate}}

Some historians such as Richard Pipes consider Stalinism as the natural consequence of Leninism, that Stalin "faithfully implemented Lenin's domestic and foreign policy programs".{{cite book |first=Richard |last=Pipes |title=Three Whys of the Russian Revolution |pages=83–84}} 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."{{cite journal|title=Lenin: Individual and Politics in the October Revolution |journal=Modern History Review |volume=2 |year=1990 |number=1 |pages=16–19}} Historian and Stalin biographer Edvard Radzinsky believes that Stalin was a genuine follower of Lenin, exactly as he claimed himself.{{cite book |first=Edvard |last=Radzinsky |author-link=Edvard Radzinsky |title=Stalin: The First In-depth Biography Based on Explosive New Documents from Russia's Secret Archives |publisher=Anchor Books |date=1997 |isbn=0-385-47954-9}} Proponents of continuity cite a variety of contributory factors, in that it was Lenin, rather than Stalin, whose civil war measures introduced the Red Terror with its hostage-taking and internment camps; that it was Lenin who developed the infamous Article 58 and who established the autocratic system within the Russian Communist Party.{{cite book |first=Richard |last=Pipes |author-link=Richard Pipes |title=Communism: A History |url=https://archive.org/details/communismhistory00pipe |url-access=registration |year=2001 |isbn=978-0-8129-6864-4 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/communismhistory00pipe/page/n90 73]–74 |publisher=Random House Publishing}} Proponents also note that Lenin put a ban on factions within the party and introduced the one-party state in 1921, a move that enabled Stalin to get rid of his rivals easily after Lenin's death and cite Felix Dzerzhinsky, who exclaimed during the Bolshevik struggle against opponents in the Russian Civil War: "We stand for organized terror—this should be frankly stated."{{cite book |first=George |last=Leggett |title=The Cheka: Lenin's Political Police |date=1986 |publisher=Oxford University Press}}{{pn|date=October 2024}}

Some scholars have had a differing view and attributed the establishment of the one-party system in the Soviet Union to the wartime conditions imposed on Lenin's government{{cite book |last1=Rogovin |first1=Vadim Zakharovich |title=Was There an Alternative? Trotskyism: a Look Back Through the Years |date=2021 |publisher=Mehring Books |isbn=978-1-893638-97-6 |pages=13–14 |language=en}} and others have highlighted the initial attempts to form a coalition government with the Left Socialist Revolutionaries.{{cite book |last1=Carr |first1=Edward Hallett |title=The Bolshevik revolution 1917 - 1923. Vol. 1 |date=1977 |publisher=Penguin Books |isbn=978-0-14-020749-1 |pages=111–112 |edition=Reprinted}} According to historian Marcel Liebman, Lenin's wartime measures such as banning opposition parties was prompted by the fact that several political parties either took up arms against the new Soviet government, or participated in sabotage, collaborated with the deposed Tsarists, or made assassination attempts against Lenin and other Bolshevik leaders.{{cite book |last1=Liebman |first1=Marcel |title=Leninism Under Lenin |date=1985 |publisher=Merlin Press |isbn=978-0-85036-261-9 |pages=1–348 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=OQjzAAAAMAAJ |language=en}} Liebman also argued that the banning of parties under Lenin did not have the same repressive character as later bans enforced under the Stalinist regime. Several scholars have highlighted the socially progressive nature of Lenin's policies such as universal education, universal healthcare and equal rights for women.{{cite book |last1=Adams |first1=Katherine H. |last2=Keene |first2=Michael L. |title=After the Vote Was Won: The Later Achievements of Fifteen Suffragists |date=10 January 2014 |publisher=McFarland |isbn=978-0-7864-5647-5 |page=109 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=oyaxYvSG6gAC&dq=lenin+universal+literacy+after+the+vote+was+won&pg=PA109 |language=en}}{{cite book |last1=Ugri͡umov |first1=Aleksandr Leontʹevich |title=Lenin's Plan for Building Socialism in the USSR, 1917–1925 |date=1976 |publisher=Novosti Press Agency Publishing House |page=48 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gXknAQAAMAAJ&q=lenin+universal+literacy |language=en}}{{cite book |last1=Service |first1=Robert |title=Lenin: A Political Life |volume=1: The Strengths of Contradiction |date=24 June 1985 |publisher=Springer |isbn=978-1-349-05591-3 |page=98 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ntiuCwAAQBAJ&q=universal+education&pg=PA98 |language=en}} Conversely, Stalin's regime reversed Lenin's policies on social matters such as sexual equality, legal restrictions on marriage, rights of sexual minorities and protective legislation.{{cite book |last1=Meade |first1=Teresa A. |author-link=Teresa Meade |last2=Wiesner-Hanks |first2=Merry E. |title=A Companion to Gender History |date=15 April 2008 |publisher=John Wiley & Sons |isbn=978-0-470-69282-0 |page=197 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ZtQP5why918C&dq=stalin+criminalize+abortion+religion+nationalism&pg=PA197 |language=en}} Historian Robert Vincent Daniels also viewed the Stalinist period as a counter-revolution in Soviet cultural life which revived patriotic propaganda, the Tsarist programme of Russification and traditional, military ranks which had been criticized by Lenin as expressions of "Great Russian chauvinism".{{cite book |last1=Daniels |first1=Robert V. |title=The End of the Communist Revolution |date=November 2002 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-134-92607-7 |pages=90–94 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ZKeJAgAAQBAJ&dq=stalin+abortion+criminalised&pg=PA94 |language=en}} Daniels also regarded Stalinism to represent an abrupt break with the Leninist period in terms of economic policies in which a deliberated, scientific system of economic planning that featured former Menshevik economists at Gosplan had been replaced with a hasty version of planning with unrealistic targets, bureaucratic waste, bottlenecks and shortages.{{cite book |last1=Daniels |first1=Robert V. |title=The End of the Communist Revolution |date=November 2002 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-134-92607-7 |pages=90–92 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ZKeJAgAAQBAJ&dq=stalin+abortion+criminalised&pg=PA94 |language=en}}

Revisionist historians and some post–Cold War and otherwise dissident Soviet historians, including Roy Medvedev, argue that "one could list the various measures carried out by Stalin that were actually a continuation of anti-democratic trends and measures implemented under Lenin", but that "in so many ways, Stalin acted, not in line with Lenin's clear instructions, but in defiance of them."{{cite book |first=Roy |last=Medvedev |author-link=Roy Medvedev |date=1981 |title=Leninism and Western Socialism |publisher=Verso Books}}{{page needed|date=June 2024}} In doing so, some historians have tried to distance Stalinism from Leninism to undermine the totalitarian view that the negative facets of Stalin were inherent in communism from the start.{{cite book |first=Moshe |last=Lewin |author-link=Moshe Lewin |date=2005 |title=Lenin's Last Testament |publisher=University of Michigan Press}}{{page needed|date=June 2024}} Critics include anti-Stalinist communists such as Leon Trotsky, who pointed out that Lenin attempted to persuade the Russian Communist Party to remove Stalin from his post as its General Secretary. Lenin's Testament, the document which contained this order, was suppressed after Lenin's death. Trotsky also argued that he and Lenin had intended to lift the ban on the opposition parties such as the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries as soon as the economic and social conditions of Soviet Russia had improved.{{cite book |last1=Deutscher |first1=Isaac |title=The Prophet: The Life of Leon Trotsky |date=5 January 2015 |publisher=Verso Books |isbn=978-1-78168-721-5 |pages=528 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YGznDwAAQBAJ&q=isaac+deutscher+trotsky+the+prophet |language=en}} Various historians have cited Lenin's proposal to appoint Trotsky as a Vice-chairman of the Soviet Union as evidence that he intended Trotsky to be his successor as head of government.{{cite journal |last1=Danilov |first1=Victor |last2=Porter |first2=Cathy |title=We Are Starting to Learn about Trotsky |journal=History Workshop |date=1990 |issue=29 |pages=136–146 |jstor=4288968 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/4288968 |issn=0309-2984}}{{cite book |last1=Daniels |first1=Robert V. |title=The Rise and Fall of Communism in Russia |date=1 October 2008 |publisher=Yale University Press |isbn=978-0-300-13493-3 |page=438 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=27JGzAoMLjoC&dq=Victor+Danilov+Trotsky&pg=PA438 |language=en}}{{cite book |last1=Watson |first1=Derek |title=Molotov and Soviet Government: Sovnarkom, 1930-41 |date=27 July 2016 |publisher=Springer |isbn=978-1-349-24848-3 |page=25 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xhm_DAAAQBAJ&dq=Trotsky+chairman+rykov&pg=PA25 |language=en}}{{cite book |last1=Deutscher |first1=Isaac |title=The prophet unarmed: Trotsky, 1921-1929 |date=1965 |location=New York |publisher= Vintage Books |isbn=978-0-394-70747-1 |page=135 |url=https://archive.org/details/prophetunarmed00isaa/page/134/mode/2up?q=promote+rykov+}}{{cite book |last1=Dziewanowski |first1=M. K. |title=Russia in the twentieth century |date=2003 |publisher=Upper Saddle River, N.J. : Prentice Hall |isbn=978-0-13-097852-3 |page=162 |url=https://archive.org/details/russiaintwentiet0000dzie/page/162/mode/1up?view=theater}} In his biography of Trotsky, Polish-British historian Isaac Deutscher says that, on being faced with the evidence, "only the blind and the deaf could be unaware of the contrast between Stalinism and Leninism."{{cite book |first=Isaac |last=Deutscher |author-link=Isaac Deutscher |title=Trotsky: The Prophet Unarmed (1921–1929) |url=https://archive.org/details/prophetunarmedtr0000unse_c1b0 |url-access=registration |year=1959 |publisher=Oxford University Press |pages=[https://archive.org/details/prophetunarmedtr0000unse_c1b0/page/n497 464]–465}} According to Stalin's secretary, Boris Bazhanov, Stalin was jubilant over Lenin's death while “publicly putting on the mask of grief”.{{cite book |last1=Kuromiya |first1=Hiroaki |title=Stalin |date=16 August 2013 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-317-86780-7 |page=60 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=BRV4AAAAQBAJ&dq=Stalin+swearing+Lenin+testament&pg=PA59 |language=en}} French historian Pierre Broue disputed the historical assessments of the early Soviet Union by modern historians such as Dmitri Volkogonov in which he argued had falsely equated Leninism, Stalinism and Trotskyism to present the notion of ideological continuity and reinforce the position of counter-communism.{{cite book |last1=Broue |first1=Pierre |title=Trotsky: a biographer's problems. In The Trotsky reappraisal. Brotherstone, Terence; Dukes, Paul,(eds) |date=1992 |publisher=Edinburgh University Press |isbn=978-0-7486-0317-6 |pages=19, 20}} Other revisionist historians, such as Orlando Figes, whilst critical of the Soviet era, acknowledge that Lenin had actively sought to counter the growing influence of Stalin through a number of actions such as his alliance with Trotsky in 1922–23, opposition to Stalin on foreign trade, the Georgian affair and proposed party reforms which included the democratisation of the Central Committee and recruitment of 50–100 ordinary workers into the lower organs of the party.{{cite book |last1=Figes |first1=Orlando |title=A people's tragedy : a history of the Russian Revolution |date=1997 |location=New York, NY |publisher=Viking Books |isbn=978-0-670-85916-0 |pages=796–801 |url=https://archive.org/details/peoplestragedyhi00fige/page/796/mode/2up}}

File:First edition of Krushchev's "Secret Speech".jpg.]]

Nikita Khrushchev, Stalin's successor, argued that Stalin's regime differed profusely from the leadership of Lenin in his "Secret Speech", delivered in 1956. He was critical of the cult of the individual which was constructed around Stalin whereas Lenin stressed “the role of the people as the creator of history”.{{cite book |last1=Khrushchev |first1=Nikita Sergeevich |author1-link=Nikita Khrushchev |title=The Crimes Of The Stalin Era, Special Report To The 20th Congress Of The Communist Party Of The Soviet Union. |date=1956 |pages=1–65 |url=https://archive.org/details/TheCrimesOfTheStalinEraSpecialReportToThe20thCongressOfTheCommunistPartyOfTheSovietUnion.}} He also emphasized that Lenin favored a collective leadership which relied on personal persuasion and recommended the removal of Stalin from the position of General Secretary. Khrushchev contrasted this with the “despotism” of Stalin which require absolute submission to his position and he also highlighted that many of the people who were later annihilated as “enemies of the party", "had worked with Lenin during his life”. He also contrasted the “severe methods” used by Lenin in the “most necessary cases” as a “struggle for survival” during the Civil War with the extreme methods and mass repressions used by Stalin even when the Revolution was “already victorious”. In his memoirs, Khrushchev argued that Stalin's widespread purges of the "most advanced nucleus of people" among the Old Bolsheviks and leading figures in the military and scientific fields had "undoubtedly" weakened the nation.{{cite book |last1=Khrushchev |first1=Nikita Sergeevich |last2=Khrushchev |first2=Serge_ |title=Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev |date=2004 |publisher=Penn State Press |isbn=978-0-271-02861-3 |page=156 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=uv1zv4FZhFUC&dq=stalin+weaken+soviet+union+old+bolsheviks&pg=PT170 |language=en}}

Some Marxist theoreticians have disputed the view that the Stalinist dictatorship was a natural outgrowth of the Bolsheviks' actions as most of the original central committee members from 1917 were later eliminated by Stalin.{{cite web |last1=Grant |first1=Alex |title=Top 10 lies about the Bolshevik Revolution |url=https://www.marxist.com/top-10-lies-about-the-bolshevik-revolution-part-one.htm |website=In Defence of Marxism |language=en-gb |date=1 November 2017}} George Novack stressed the initial efforts by the Bolsheviks to form a government with the Left Socialist Revolutionaries and bring other parties such as the Mensheviks into political legality.{{cite book |last1=Novack |first1=George |title=Democracy and Revolution |date=1971 |publisher=Pathfinder |isbn=978-0-87348-192-2 |pages=307–347 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bLMgAQAAIAAJ |language=en}} Tony Cliff argued the Bolshevik-Left Socialist Revolutionary coalition government dissolved the democratically elected Russian Constituent Assembly due to a number of reasons. They cited the outdated voter-rolls which did not acknowledge the split among the Socialist Revolutionary party and the assemblies conflict with the Russian Congress of the Soviets as an alternative democratic structure.{{cite web |last1=Cliff |first1=Tony |author-link=Tony Cliff |title=Revolution Besieged. The Dissolution of the Constituent Assembly) |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1978/lenin3/ch03.html |via=Marxists Internet Archive}}

A similar analysis is present in more recent works such as those of Graeme Gill, who argues that "[Stalinism was] not a natural flow-on of earlier developments; [it formed a] sharp break resulting from conscious decisions by leading political actors." However, Gill notes that "difficulties with the use of the term reflect problems with the concept of Stalinism itself. The major difficulty is a lack of agreement about what should constitute Stalinism."{{cite book |last=Gill |first=Graeme J. |title=Stalinism |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3Pt35DCU580C |year=1998 |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |page=1 |isbn=978-0-312-17764-5 |access-date=7 October 2020 |archive-date=16 June 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130616092149/http://books.google.com/books?id=3Pt35DCU580C |url-status=live}} Revisionist historians such as Sheila Fitzpatrick have criticized the focus on the upper levels of society and the use of Cold War concepts such as totalitarianism, obscuring the system's reality.{{cite book |title=Beyond Totalitarianism: Stalinism and Nazism Compared |last1=Geyer |first1=Michael |author1-link=Michael Geyer |last2=Fitzpatrick |first2=Sheila |editor1-first=Michael |editor1-last=Geyer |editor2-first=Sheila |editor2-last=Fitzpatrick |author2-link=Sheila Fitzpatrick |year=2009 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-0-521-72397-8 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3wzDPQAACAAJ |doi=10.1017/CBO9780511802652 |access-date=7 October 2020 |archive-date=6 February 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210206043119/https://books.google.com/books?id=3wzDPQAACAAJ |url-status=live}}

Russian historian Vadim Rogovin stated that "Under Lenin, the freedom to express a real variety of opinions existed in the party, and in carrying out political decisions, consideration was given to the positions of not only the majority, but a minority in the party". He compared this practice with subsequent leadership blocs which violated party tradition, ignored proposals of opponents and expelled the Opposition from the party on falsified charges which culminated with the Moscow Trials of 1936–1938. According to Rogovin, 80-90% of the members of the Central Committee elected at the Sixth through to the Seventeenth Congresses were physically annihilated.{{cite book |last1=Rogovin |first1=Vadim Z. |title=Was There an Alternative? 1923-1927: Trotskyism: a Look Back Through the Years |date=2021 |publisher=Mehring Books |isbn=978-1-893638-96-9 |pages=494–495 |language=en}}

The Right Opposition and Left Opposition have been held by some scholars as representing political alternatives to Stalinism despite their shared beliefs in Leninism due to their policy platforms which were at variance with Stalin. This ranged from areas related to economics, foreign policy and cultural matters."While Trotsky was strongly biased toward industrial development, there is little basis to suppose that he would have adopted Stalin’s forcible collectivization, slapdash economic planning, anti expert campaigns, or cultural know-nothingism. Neither Trotsky nor Bukharin would have pursued anything like Stalin’s pseudo-revolutionary “third period” foreign policy and his connivance in the advent of Hitler, another product of his political manoeuvring against the Bukharinists".{{cite book |last1=Daniels |first1=Robert V. |title=The Rise and Fall of Communism in Russia |date=1 October 2008 |publisher=Yale University Press |page=396 |isbn=978-0-300-13493-3 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=27JGzAoMLjoC |language=en}}{{cite journal |last1=Day |first1=Richard B. |title=The Blackmail of the Single Alternative: Bukharin, Trotsky and Perestrojka |journal=Studies in Soviet Thought |date=1990 |volume=40 |issue=1/3 |pages=159–188 |doi=10.1007/BF00818977 |jstor=20100543 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/20100543 |issn=0039-3797}}

As a form of Marxism, revolutionary Leninism was criticised as an undemocratic interpretation of socialism. In The Nationalities Question in the Russian Revolution (1918), Rosa Luxemburg criticised the Bolsheviks for the suppression of the All Russian Constituent Assembly (January 1918); the partitioning of the feudal estates to the peasant communes; and the right of self-determination of every national people of the Russias. That the strategic (geopolitical) mistakes of the Bolsheviks would create significant dangers for the Russian Revolution, such as the bureaucratisation that would arise to administrate the large country that was Bolshevik Russia.{{cite web |url=http://libcom.org/library/nationalities-question-in-the-russian-revolution-luxemburg |title=The Nationalities Question in the Russian Revolution (Rosa Luxemburg, 1918) |publisher=Libcom.org |date=11 July 2006 |access-date=2 January 2010 |archive-date=19 October 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181019085619/http://libcom.org/library/nationalities-question-in-the-russian-revolution-luxemburg |url-status=live}} In defence of the expedient revolutionary practice, in "Left-Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder (1920), Lenin dismissed the political and ideological complaints of the anti-Bolshevik critics, who claimed ideologically correct stances that were to the political left of Lenin. In Marxist philosophy, left communism is a range of left-wing political perspectives among communists. Left communism criticizes the Bolshevik Party's ideology as the revolutionary vanguard. Ideologically, left communists present their perspectives and approaches as authentic Marxism and thus more oriented to the proletariat than the Leninism of the Communist International at their first (1919) and second (1920) congresses. Proponents of left communism include Amadeo Bordiga, Herman Gorter, Paul Mattick, Sylvia Pankhurst, Antonie Pannekoek and Otto Rühle.{{cite journal |last=Ojeili |first=Chamsy |date=2001 |title=The 'Advance Without Authority': Post-modernism, Libertarian Socialism and Intellectuals |journal=Democracy & Nature |volume=7 |issue=3|pages=391–413 |doi=10.1080/10855660120092294}}

Historically, the Dutch-German communist left has been most critical of Lenin and Leninism,{{cite web |url=https://www.marxistsfr.org/archive/gorter/1920/open-letter/index.htm |title=Herman Gorter, Open Letter to Comrade Lenin, 1920 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171202053038/https://www.marxistsfr.org/archive/gorter/1920/open-letter/index.htm |archive-date=2 December 2017}}{{cite web |author-link=Antonie Pannekoek |last=Pannekoek |first=Anton |date=1938 |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/pannekoe/1938/lenin/ |title=Lenin As Philosopher |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171026235546/https://www.marxists.org/archive/pannekoe/1938/lenin/ |archive-date=26 October 2017 |via=Marxists Internet Archive}}.{{cite magazine |author-link=Otto Rühle |last=Rühle |first=Otto |date=1939 |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/ruhle/1939/ruhle01.htm |title=The Struggle Against Fascism: Begins with the Struggle Against Bolshevism |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170831083917/https://www.marxists.org/archive/ruhle/1939/ruhle01.htm |archive-date=31 August 2017 |magazine=Living Marxism |volume=4 |issue=8 |via=Marxists Internet Archive}} yet the Italian communist left remained Leninist. Bordiga said: "All this work of demolishing opportunism and 'deviationism' (Lenin: What Is To Be Done?) is today the basis of party activity. The party follows revolutionary tradition and experiences in this work during these periods of revolutionary reflux and the proliferation of opportunist theories, which had as their violent and inflexible opponents Marx, Engels, Lenin, and the Italian Left."{{cite web |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/bordiga/works/1951/fundamental-theses.htm |title=Fundamental Theses of the Party |first=Amadeo |last=Bordiga |author-link=Amadeo Bordiga |date=1951 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171202153010/https://www.marxists.org/archive/bordiga/works/1951/fundamental-theses.htm |archive-date=2 December 2017 |via=Marxists Internet Archive}} In The Lenin Legend (1935), Paul Mattick said that the council communist tradition, begun by the Dutch-German leftists, also is critical of Leninism.{{cite magazine |author-link=Paul Mattick |last=Mattick |first=Paul |date=1935 |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/mattick-paul/1935/lenin-legend.htm |title=The Lenin Legend |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171026235543/https://www.marxists.org/archive/mattick-paul/1935/lenin-legend.htm |archive-date=26 October 2017 |magazine=International Council Correspondence |volume=2 |issue=1 |via=Marxists Internet Archive}} Contemporary left-communist organisations, such as the Internationalist Communist Tendency and the International Communist Current, view Lenin as an essential and influential theorist but remain critical of Leninism as political praxis for the proletarian revolution.{{cite web |url=http://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2017-10-06/the-significance-of-the-russian-revolution-for-today |title=The Significance of the Russian Revolution for Today |date=6 October 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171202052726/http://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2017-10-06/the-significance-of-the-russian-revolution-for-today |archive-date=2 December 2017}}{{cite web |url=http://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2015-01-21/lenin-s-legacy |title=Lenin's Legacy |date=21 January 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171202054538/http://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2015-01-21/lenin-s-legacy |archive-date=2 December 2017}}{{cite web |url=http://en.internationalism.org/ir/96/leninists |title=Have we become 'Leninists'? – part 1 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171202052958/http://en.internationalism.org/ir/96/leninists |archive-date=2 December 2017}}

Nonetheless, the Bordigism of the International Communist Party abides Bordiga's strict Leninism. Ideologically aligned with the Dutch-German left, among the ideologists of contemporary communisation, the theorist Gilles Dauvé criticised Leninism as a "by-product of Kautskyism".{{cite web |author-link=Gilles Dauvé |last=Dauvé |first=Gilles |date=1977 |url=https://libcom.org/files/Gilles%20Dauv%C3%A9-%20The%20Renegade%20Kautsky%20and%20his%20Disciple%20Lenin.pdf |title=The Renegade Kautsky and his Disciple Lenin |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170113130846/https://libcom.org/files/Gilles%20Dauv%C3%A9-%20The%20Renegade%20Kautsky%20and%20his%20Disciple%20Lenin.pdf |archive-date=13 January 2017}} In The Soviet Union Versus Socialism (1986), Noam Chomsky said that Stalinism was the logical development of Leninism and not an ideological deviation from Lenin's policies, which resulted in collectivisation enforced with a police state.{{cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/11/books/the-other-killing-machine.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm |title=The Other Killing Machine |first=Steven Merritt |last=Miner |date=11 May 2003 |newspaper=The New York Times |access-date=19 February 2017 |archive-date=27 November 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181127120049/https://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/11/books/the-other-killing-machine.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm |url-status=live}}{{cite web |url=http://www.chomsky.info/articles/1986----.htm |first=Noam |last=Chomsky |author-link=Noam Chomsky |title=The Soviet Union Versus Socialism |publisher=Our Generation |date=Spring–Summer 1986 |access-date=8 October 2013 |archive-date=24 September 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150924051230/http://www.chomsky.info/articles/1986----.htm |url-status=live}} In light of the tenets of socialism, Leninism was a right-wing deviation from Marxism.{{YouTube|id=yQsceZ9skQI|title=Chomsky on Lenin, Trotsky, Socialism & the Soviet Union}}.

The vanguard-party revolution of Leninism became the ideological basis of the communist parties in the socialist political spectrum. In the People's Republic of China, the Chinese Communist Party organised itself with Maoism (the Thought of Mao Zedong), socialism with Chinese characteristics.{{cite book |first=Zheng |last=Yongnian |date=2009 |title=The Chinese Communist Party as Organizational Emperor |pages=61}} In Singapore, the People's Action Party (PAP) featured internal democracy and initiated single-party dominance in the government and politics of Singapore.{{cite book|first=Peter |last=Wilson |date=2002 |title=Economic growth and development in Singapore |pages=30}} In the event, the practical application of Maoism to the socio-economic conditions of Third World countries produced revolutionary vanguard parties, such as the Communist Party of Peru – Red Fatherland.{{cite book |first=Kenneth M. |last=Roberts |date=1988 |title=Deepening Democracy?: The Modern Left and Social Movements in Chile and Peru |pages=288–289}}

• Anti-imperialism
• "He who does not work neither shall he eat"
• Luxemburgism
• National delimitation in the Soviet Union
• Neo-Leninism
• Wars of national liberation
• Yellow socialism

{{Reflist}}

Selected works by Vladimir Lenin

• The Development of Capitalism in Russia, 1899.
• What Is To Be Done? Burning Questions of Our Movement, 1902.
• The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism, 1913.
• The Right of Nations to Self-Determination, 1914.
• Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, 1917.
• The State and Revolution, 1917.
• The Tasks of the Proletariat in the Present Revolution (The "April Theses"), 1917.
• "Left-Wing" Childishness and the Petty Bourgois Mentality, 1918.
• Left-Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder, 1920.
• "Last Testament" Letters to the Congress, 1923–1924.

Histories

• Isaac Deutscher. The Prophet Armed: Trotsky 1879–1921, 1954.
• Isaac Deutscher. The Prophet Unarmed: Trotsky 1921–1929, 1959.
• Moshe Lewin. Lenin's Last Struggle, 1969.
• Edward Hallett Carr. The Russian Revolution From Lenin to Stalin: 1917–1929, 1979.

Other authors

• {{cite magazine |last1=Blackledge |first1=Paul |title=What was Done an extended review of Lars Lih's Lenin Rediscovered |url=http://www.isj.org.uk/index.php4?id=218&issue=111 |magazine=International Socialism |number=11 |date=3 July 2006}}
• {{cite book |editor1-last=Budgen |editor1-first=Sebastian |title=Lenin Reloaded: Toward a Politics of Truth |editor2-last=Kouvelakis |editor2-first=Stathis |editor3-last=Žižek |editor3-first=Slavoj |editor3-link=Slavoj Žižek |url=https://www.dukeupress.edu/lenin-reloaded |location=Durham |publisher=Duke University Press |date=2007 |isbn=978-0822339410}}
• {{cite book |last1=Liebman |first1=Marcel |author1-link=Marcel Liebman |title=Leninism Under Lenin |publisher=The Merlin Press |date=1980 |isbn=0-85036-261-X}}
• {{cite book |last1=Medvedev |first1=Roy |author1-link=Roy Medvedev |title=Leninism and Western Socialism |publisher=Verso Books |date=1981 |isbn=0-86091-739-8}}
• {{cite book |last1=Harding |first1=Neil |title=Leninism |publisher=Duke University Press |date=1996 |isbn=0-8223-1867-9}}
• {{cite book |last1=Stalin |first1=Joseph |author1-link=Joseph Stalin |title=Foundations of Leninism |publisher=University Press of the Pacific |date=2001 |isbn=0-89875-212-4}}
• {{cite book |last1=James |first1=C.L.R. |author1-link=C. L. R. James |title=Notes on Dialectics: Hegel, Marx, Lenin |publisher=Pluto Press |date=2005 |isbn=0-7453-2491-6}}
• {{cite book |last1=Wilson |first1=Edmund |author1-link=Edmund Wilson |title=To the Finland Station: A Study in the Writing and Acting of History |publisher=Phoenix Press |date=2004 |isbn=0-7538-1800-0}}
• {{cite book |last1=Gorter |first1=Herman |author1-link=Herman Gorter |title=Non-Leninist Marxism: Writings on the Workers Councils |last2=Pannekoek |first2=Antonie |author2-link=Antonie Pannekoek |last3=Pankhurst |first3=Sylvia |author3-link=Sylvia Pankhurst |last4=Rühle |first4=Otto |author4-link=Otto Rühle |publisher=Red and Black Publishers |location=St Petersburg, Florida |date=2007 |isbn=978-0-9791813-6-8}}
• {{cite book |last1=Le Blanc |first1=Paul |author-link1=Paul Le Blanc (historian) |title=Lenin and the Revolutionary Party |publisher=Humanities Press International, Inc. |date=1990 |isbn=0-391-03604-1}}
• {{cite book |last=Gregor |first=A. James |author-link=A. James Gregor |title=The Faces of Janus: Marxism and Fascism in the Twentieth Century |title-link=The Faces of Janus |date=2000 |pages=133 |location=New Haven, CT |publisher=Yale University Press |isbn=0-300-07827-7}}
• {{cite book |last1=Lenin |first1=V. I. |author1-link=Vladimir Lenin |last2=Žižek |first2=Slavoj |author2-link=Slavoj Žižek |title=Lenin 2017: Remembering, Repeating, and Working Through |year=2017 |publisher=Verso Books |isbn=978-1786631886}}
• {{cite book |last1=Kolakowski |first1=Leszek |author1-link=Leszek Kolakowski |title=Main Currents of Marxism |volume=2 |publisher=Clarendon Press |date=1978}}
• {{cite book |last1=Marcuse |first1=Herbert |author1-link=Herbert Marcuse |title=Soviet Marxism: An Analysis |publisher=Columbia University Press |date=1958}}
• {{cite book |last1=Lukacs |first1=Georg |author1-link=Georg Lukacs |title=History and Class Consciousness |publisher=MIT Press |date=1972}}
• {{cite book |last=Sebestyen |first=Victor |author-link=Victor Sebestyen |title=Lenin: The Man, the Dictator, and the Master of Terror. |publisher=Pantheon Books |date=2017 |isbn=9781101871638}}
• {{cite book |title=Lenin: A New Biography |last=Volkogonov |first=Dmitri |author-link=Dmitri Volkogonov |year=1994 |translator-last=Shukman |translator-first=Harold |translator-link=Harold Shukman |publisher=HarperCollins |location=London |isbn=978-0-00-255123-6}}

{{Library resources box}}

{{Commons category|Leninism}}

Works by Vladimir Lenin

• [http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/ What Is To Be Done?].
• [http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/index.htm Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism].
• [http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch01.htm#s1 The State and Revolution].
• [http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/index.htm "The Lenin Archive"].
• [http://www.marx2mao.com/Lenin/FCCI19.html "First Conference of the Communist International"].

Other thematic links

• [http://members.optushome.com.au/spainter/Liebman.html "Marcel Liebman on Lenin and democracy"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110927013619/http://members.optushome.com.au/spainter/Liebman.html |date=27 September 2011 }}.
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20080416210712/http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/other/intellectuals-state.html "An excerpt on Leninism and State Capitalism from the work of Noam Chomsky"].
• Rosa Luxemburg. [http://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1904/questions-rsd/index.htm "Organizational Questions of the Russian Social Democracy"].
• Karl Korsch. [https://web.archive.org/web/20091028121450/http://geocities.com/~johngray/lenphl13.htm "Lenin's Philosophy"].
• [http://www.leninism.org/ "Cyber Leninism"].
• {{usurped|1=[https://web.archive.org/web/20071009131445/http://leninist.biz/en/HTML "Leninist Ebooks"]}}.
• Anton Pannekoek. [http://www.marxists.org/archive/pannekoe/1938/lenin/index.htm "Lenin as a Philosopher"].
• Paul Mattick. [http://www.marxists.org/archive/mattick-paul/1935/lenin-legend.htm "The Lenin Legend"].

{{Communism}}

{{Soviet Union topics}}

{{Authority control}}

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Category:Vladimir Lenin