In February 1917, Vladimir Lenin assumed power over Russia and sought to create the first socialist state formed by workers. While this may inspire some, to what extent can we regard the Russian communist experiment of the 20th century as a success story for social change? Most pertinently, did Stalin’s reign help the revolution achieve its original goals? This essay will analyze the social change in Russia from the creation of Lenin’s state in 1917 to the death of Stalin in 1953. Using a historical case study of the rise of Stalinism in the Soviet Union, I will argue that while the political and economic conditions matter for whether a movement for social change is successful or not, what is more important in predicting its success is the presence of a leader and their ability to implement a vision via effective means.

Firstly, the economic conditions for the rise of Stalinism were ripe before the communist revolution. On February 19th, 1861, the Russian Empire abolished serfdom⎯the latest European nation to do so.1 Although this was a technical social improvement for the serfs, the reality was that many ex-serfs continued to live in poverty and were subject to abuse by the higher classes, often serving as indentured servants. After years of endless low wages, poor living conditions, dangerous working conditions, and owning nothing, peasant discontent and suffering persisted into the early 20th century. This also coincided with the humiliation of Russia's defeat in the Russo-Japanese War in 1904, where Russia lost almost every major battle.2 This event was quite unbelievable for the Russian public, because they never expected that their nation⎯which they considered “European” and therefore more “advanced” during this period⎯would be defeated by an insignificant Asian country. This contributed to the outbreak of the Petrograd Riots, a way for peasants to show their anger over the atrocities of World War I, famine, and landlessness. In turn the February Revolution of 1917 commenced, ending the 300 year old Romanov dynasty: the last absolute European monarchy to fall.3

Secondly, the political conditions were ripe for social change. A key leader during the February Revolution was Vladimir Lenin. He was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and leader of the Communist Bolshevik Party who wanted to liberate Russia from tsardom and start a new era moving towards genuine economic equality in Russia.4 Under his direction, Russia became a one-party state governed by an ideology called Leninism, an evolved form of Marxism. While these belief systems are related, there are notable differences. Marx focused more on the progress and state of advanced capitalist countries, whereas Lenin focused mainly on less developed countries. Lenin believed that less developed economies could be pushed from feudalism to socialism, skipping the capitalist phase that Marx saw as essential for progress to socialism and eventually communism over thousands of years. Notwithstanding, Lenin was also pragmatic in his rule, allowing for policies such as the New Economic Policy (NEP), which allowed Russians to temporarily produce wealth and trade within a mixed-market economy. This enabled many peasants to meet their desperate need for food and clothes or gain profits from trading.5

As noted by authors Kitchens and Stewart, a significant catalyst for social change is outbreak of violence and war.6 The potential for violence was particularly important for Lenin, as many Russians still believed in capitalism, monarchy, and their traditional Russian heritage. While other political groups such as the Greens⎯a coalition of peasant militias primarily interested in maintaining property⎯challenged Lenin’s regime, his primary opponents named themselves the Whites; they rallied together to support the Tsar and the aristocracy. This ideological conflict led to  Russian civil war between these groups and the Reds (the Bolsheviks), leading to massive conflicts and clashes, causing up to thirteen million deaths.7 Even further, the civil war led to mass hunger and famine, with an estimated five million Russians killed by starvation alone.8 Continuing these tragic statistics, thousands of perceived opponents of the Bolsheviks were murdered by the Cheka(the Bolshevik secret police),9 and disease ran rampant amongst the poor. This sudden and substantial social change caused by the war was not a pleasant one, at least upon observing the number of casualties and deaths.

A power struggle broke out within the Communist Party when Lenin died of a brain aneurysm in 1924. Contrary to the warning Lenin expressed, Joseph Stalin took power after consolidating his domination of the bureaucracy. This was possible because Stalin established his patronage system within the party, ousted Trotsky, and was chosen to serve as the People's Commissar in 1917.10 He was then designated the Politburo and Orgburo Liaison Officer in 1919.11 This position enabled him to keep an eye on the party's personnel as well as its policies. That same year, he was also named Director of the Inspectorate of Workers and Peasants.12 This meant that his abilities were expanding to include employment for the government, granting him the power to supervise nearly all operations of executive branch agencies. This also meant presiding over a police state, which kept meticulous files for each party participant, most of which included highly sensitive and personal information about the party member in questiona naked expression of Stalin's absolute power over the government. Nevertheless, Stalin’s approach to enrollment resulted in a doubling of Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) membership from 340,000 in 1924 to 600,000 by 1925.13

As Stalin invited these new members into the government, most were highly loyal to his regime. These plants, therefore, gave him a large number of votes, allowing him to build an influential and solid power of patronage. Initially, Stalin chose to ally with Zinoviev and Kamenev, known enemies of Trotsky, to defeat the latter,14 using the former’s influence over local party groups to ensure that the Congress was comprised of people who supported Stalin in opposition to Trotsky.15 Trotsky was one of the most competent party members: a reality that threatened Stalin's power. Yet, as Trotsky found himself left-leaning, Stalin allied with the right-leaning side of the CPUS. Kamenev and Zinoviev were furious and began to openly criticize the NEP.16 This was irrelevant in the long run though, as Stalin eventually outmaneuvered both parties thereby removing all three of his primary political opponents. He also defeated the right by opposing the NEP and removing its influence. Through these efforts, Stalin assumed power and became the totalitarian dictator of the USSR by 1929, allowing him to exercise radical social change under his direction.

To enact the social change that Stalin and his comrades wanted, the system of government known as Stalinism was implemented in the Soviet Union. Stalinism, not wholly unlike Marxist-Leninism, focused more on one leader taking total control and having absolute power over the entire country. It, therefore, focused more on applying communism to establish a centralized, well-organized command economy. This was because Stalin was much more obsessed with central control of the country; he only trusted himself as capable of making all decisions. This was especially so with social changes that intersected with economic reform. While Lenin was open to ideas surrounding the free market, specifically the NEP, Stalin saw them as succumbing to capitalist forces. also believed that the free market could not facilitate the type of change he wanted for the Soviet Union, namely an accelerated industrialization, especially for armaments. He also wanted to ensure that all economic power was directed under his leadership to ensure that each one of his policies were carried out. Through his infamous five-year plans, Stalin prepared the USSR for war and developed the manufacturing capabilities of various heavy industries. During the second five-year plan alone, iron production rose dramatically from 6.2 to 70.3 million tons, and steel production rose dramatically from 5.9 million tons to 90.0 million tons. It was a seismic leap of success in production in heavy industries.

While Stalin was successful in his economic reforms in terms of his stated objectives, his actions led to devastating social costs throughout the Soviet Union. He created the Great Terror in order to remove all his political opponents, cultivated a climate of fear, and left alive only those who followed orders. Any rival or ally with personal power or even simply critical thinking skills were simply executed. In case of any hidden threats, Soviet soldiers captured by the Germans were all sent to gulags and left to die, because Stalin was afraid of them being sent back to the Soviet Union as German spies. Shockingly, up to 80 percent of the military officials and most industrial organizers in the party were also purged.17 For instance, Bukharin, an original Bolshevik revolutionary, was singled out for execution because he supported a freer economy and open markets.18 As these views contradicted Stalinism, there was no room for dissent. All lived under a great terror and were forced to follow Stalin’s rules without question.

To conclude, if we are to consider the huge industrial success of Stalinism, we can conclude that Stalin’s vision for the Soviet Union succeeded.  major contention in this question is what defines success. One perspective may be whether Stalinism successfully fulfilled the original goals of the Russian Revolution. If the original aim was to establish a nation with a well-planned economy boasting rapidly developing industries, Stalin arguably achieved this. , if the revolution sought to liberate the people of Russia and the nations of the Soviet Union from tyranny, this was clearly not achieved during the Stalinist period, as the Soviet Union lived in terror under Stalin’s dictatorship. Millions lost their lives to Stalinisma far cry from equality for all. Overall, whether a social movement was successful or not depends on the goals of that movement, all of which may be disagreed upon by those who started it and those who eventually took over. As always in history, it is a matter of perspective, not a clear, objective answer.

Notes

1 Lazar Volin, “The Russian Peasant and Serfdom.” Agricultural History 17, no. 1 (1943): p41

2 David Wolff, Bruce Menning, Shinji Yokote, John Steinberg, and Oye David Schimmelpenninck van der. The Russo-Japanese War in Global Perspective: World War Zero, Volume I. BRILL, 2005, p182.

3 Alexander Kerensky, “Why the Russian Monarchy Fell.” The Slavonic and East European Review 8, no. 24 (1930): p496.

4 Vladimir Lenin and Doug Lorimer. Democracy and Revolution, (Sydney: Resistance Books), 2001, p139

5 Sheila Fitzpatrick, Alexander Rabinowitch, and Richard Stites. Russia in the Era of the NEP: Explorations in Soviet Society and Culture (Bloomington: Indiana University Press), 1991, p54, p324

6 Megan A. Stewart and Karin E. Kitchens. “Social Transformation and Violence: Evidence from U.S. Reconstruction.” Comparative Political Studies 54, no. 11 (2021): 1939, p8, p9, p75

7 Markevich, Andrei, and Mark Harrison. “Great War, Civil War, and Recovery: Russia’s National Income, 1913 to 1928.” The Journal of Economic History 71, no. 3 (2011) p672–703

8 Jon Smele. The “Russian” Civil Wars, 1916-1926: Ten Years that Shook the World, (New York: Oxford University Press), 2017.

9 George Leggett, The Cheka: Lenin’s Political Police: The all-Russian extraordinary commission for combating counter-revolution and sabotage (December 1917 to February 1922), (Oxford, Clarendon Press), 1981, p98-100

10 David R. Egan and Melinda A. Egan, Joseph Stalin: An annotated bibliography of English-language periodical literature to 2005, (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press), 2007.

11 Michael Lynch, Origins and Development of Authoritarian and Single-Party States, (London: Hodder Education), 2013.

12 Thomas M. Twiss, Trotsky and the Problem of Soviet Bureaucracy, (Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books), 2015, 101

13 Thomas Harold Rigby, Communist Party Membership in the U.S.S.R., 1917-1967, 1968, (Princeton: Princeton University Press),127

14 Ted Gottfried and Melanie Reim. The Stalinist Empire: The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union, (Brookfield, CT: Twenty-First Century Books), 2002, 36

15 Paul Grey, Rosemarie Little, Robin McPherson, and John Etty. Cambridge IGCSE and O Level History Option B: The 20th Century Coursebook, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 2023, 227

16 Smele, Jon, Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926, (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield), 2015, 241

17 Robert Conquest, The Great Terror: A Reassessment, (London: Pimlico), 2008, p462-476

18 Joseph Stalin, Leninism: Volume Two, (London: Routledge), 2019, p1-9, p21-31, p88-100

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