Why Did Stalin Lead The 1917 Revolution

Russia’s peasant revolutionary tradition goes back to the 16th century, but few of the uprisings led to significant changes in the imperial system, as they were spontaneous and leaderless (Rieber and Nelson 60). That is why Lenin felt that it was necessary to establish the highly organized Bolshevik Party to successfully lead the 1917 revolution - a decision that worked, but also ultimately led to a totalitarian rule of his successor Stalin. One of the biggest criticisms of Marxist theory is his vision of the proletariat uprising. In his writings, he argues that after being oppressed long enough, the worker will have “nothing to lose but his chains” and will rise against the capitalists to establish a society with public control of the means

That’s why his doctrine Leninism called for a small organized group of intellectuals to lead the revolution, as they would be the only ones who could see beyond the daily necessities and ensure the accomplishment of the long-term goals of the new system (Rieber and Nelson 57-64). To succeed, the newly formed Bolshevik Party needed the full trust and obedience of the people, a feat manageable by infiltrating trade unions and eliminating all potential enemies of the regime. In October 1917, Lenin and his party seized power with almost no opposition and won the civil war that followed to establish full leadership of the nation. While this partisan approach worked well for the period of the revolution, it was far from the fundamental Marxist ideas of a rule by the people and in the end would only perpetuate class differences between those in the party and the rest. Realizing that, Lenin developed the idea of the fair socialist government, which guaranteed low prices and equal wages without consuming too much money itself, in his book The State and

Although Stalin claimed he was following the ideas of Lenin and Marx, many of his policies diverged from their writings and his stricter, much more totalitarian mean of governing, known as Stalinism, shifted the political course of Soviet Russia (New World Encyclopedia). Stalinism put forward a new main principle of Russian socialism, which stated that everyone had to be paid in accordance to their performance (Rogovin). While this would make sense in the free market of a capitalist society, it did not have a place in the communist society of the USSR, as it is impossible to compare the work of a butcher to that of a doctor, or the importance of a teacher to that of a miner. Nevertheless, there was a clear preference for mental work over physical one, and the social inequality between different members of the working class and the “intelligentsia” - the intellectuals, furthered through the years even after Stalin’s death (Artir). The privileges, power, and influence of higher ranking citizens, however, are most clearly evidenced when looking at Stalin