Why "Stalin ruined Lenin's good USSR" is a Myth

I have attended numerous socialist and communist society meetings at my university (University of Manchester). As a staunch opponent of both ideologies, I should first stress that members of such societies are overwhelmingly well-meaning people. Yet, certain facts about the gut-wrenching history of socialist states are not well-known in the West across the political spectrum, and this needs to change.

The following argument seeking to defend socialism in the USSR came up in the aforementioned gatherings. The early Soviet project was about workers' democracy; it's just that the bureaucracy Lenin himself warned about took over the Bolshevik party, bringing about Stalinism.

I find it astonishing that this myth remains so widespread amongst students at one of Britain's leading universities. In Russia, where I'm from, the atrocities of the Lenin era are well-known in political circles (the few that exist, of course). Yet, it appears that, while the gulag, like apartheid, became a common name in the West, the horrors of the Lenin era remain little-known here.

The Lenin period in the RSFSR and later the USSR was marked by a ferocious onslaught on any thought that went against the regime’s ideology. The notorious Stalin-era secret police, the NKVD, was not the first body created by the Bolsheviks to suppress dissent. It was preceded by the Cheka – the All-Russian Emergency Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage – founded in 1917. The word "counter-revolution", of course, being a euphemism for "opposition to the state".

On 2 September 1918 the Cheka’s "Red Terror" decree was issued. It ordered the imprisonment of notable members of opposition parties as well as the forced labour of traders, officers hostile to the government, and "reactionary-minded" priests. This reiterated the earlier call by the Sovnarkom, the supreme Bolshevik authority, for the forced labour of newspaper editors "siding with the German bourgeoisie" as well as for shooting "counter-revolutionary agitators".

It’s not like the right to vote is particularly important when thinking is illegal, but the 1918 RSFSR Constitution explicitly barred monks and clergy from voting. [Russian original] [English translation]

Indeed, Lenin himself issued the following instructions in 1922:

The greater the number of representatives of the reactionary clergy and the reactionary bourgeoisie that we succeed in shooting on this occasion, the better because this "audience" must precisely now be taught a lesson in such a way that they will not dare to think about any resistance whatsoever for several decades. [Russian original] [University of Oregon’s English translation]

But it could be argued that these are examples of Soviet government bodies betraying Marxist socialist and communist principles. Far from it. Unless, of course, we argue that Marx and Lenin were not communist authors.

This horrific violence was a direct result of Marxist-Leninist ideology and the way in which it approached – or, rather, denied – the human and justified fanatical authoritarianism.

Lenin famously advocated for a "dictatorship of the proletariat": "rule won and maintained by the use of violence by the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, rule that is unrestricted by any laws". [Russian original] [English translation] He believed that, while "socialism is opposed to violence against men in general", "apart from Christian anarchists and Tolstoyans, however, no one has yet drawn the conclusion from this that socialism is opposed to revolutionary violence". [Russian original] [English translation]

In other words, violence is good as long as it’s in the name of "the proletariat" and against the evil classes. In principle, this means there is nothing wrong with violence against people born into the wrong family. I wonder if there is a legal term for that.

Indeed, Lenin did not come up with these insane ideas, they find their precursors in one of the founding Marxist texts – Marx and Engels’ The Communist Manifesto. This vitriolic text warrants an article of its own, but let me just list some of its ideas.

From the opening page, the Manifesto presents humanity as divided into two groups – the oppressed proletariat and the oppressive bourgeoisie (p. 41). It then advocates the "violent overthrow" of the bourgeoisie by the proletariat (p. 50). What does "violent" mean? Well, the Manifesto aims at the "abolition of... the bourgeoisie itself" (p. 56) and state ownership of all means of communication (p. 64) – there you have a justification for censorship and oppression. And who is the bourgeoisie, maybe Elon Musk types? No, it includes even shopkeepers (p. 44)! Add to this the belief that members of the elite could also join forces with the proletariat (p. 48) and you get a perfect justification for a brutal fanatical dictatorship ruled by wealthy intellectuals like Lenin and Trotsky.

Why are we disenfranchising entire groups of people? Because they were born into the wrong class. But that’s unfair! Morality doesn’t exist anyway (p. 62). But why are we ruled by wealthy intellectuals who aren’t even working class? Well, they are the good ones, because they said so, and who are you to question their ideas?

Of course, I’m not saying that a group of students draped in Palestinian flags and pensioners having a communal lunch and talking about socialism, then proceed to execute those who disagree with them. Nor am I red-scaring anyone into thinking socialism is lurking around the corner. But – and this shouldn’t be a controversial view – we should all call out inhumane ideologies and those who follow them, even if out of ignorance.