Question by royale.mint: Did Lenin plan to make Russia more authoritarian from the beginning?
Before the October revolution in 1917, had Lenin planned to create a more authoritarian one-party state.
Did he just use the situations such as civil war and the economic crisis to his advantage in order to create this one-party state?
Answers and Views:
Answer by Werebear 5000
thats a good question. i’m not totally sure, but i do know that during and after the revolution and civil war, Lenin expressed disappointment about the brutality and oppression that occurred in russia. on his deathbed, he wrote denouncing almost all the major party leaders, including Kamenev, Zinoviev, Trotsky and Stalin for their ambition and heartlessness.
i know that earlier in his life Lenin saw Marx’s word as gospel, and Marx typically advocates a “dictatorship of the proletariat.” this isn’t dictatorship of a person, but a class. Marx for some reason never gave much consideration to democracy, although Bolsheviks were big into, even going so far as to advocate military officers elected by their squads. of course, that didn’t work out.
as to the one party system, i don’t think Lenin fully understood the problems it could cause, as it had not been practiced in the past. it was also something of a wartime necessity, along with the rest of the Red Scare, which was initiated in response to the White Scare and was important for removing dissenters from Russia.
i certainly don’t think Lenin used the civil war to his own personal advantage. while he was ambitious (everyone who ends up in control of a country is), he had principles, and he wouldn’t have done something against the people.
Lenin wrote a book fairly early in his revolutionary career called The Development of Capitalism in Russia. i haven’t read it, but if you really want a sense of Lenin’s early views, here it is:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1899/devel/index.htm
Read all the answers in the comments.
What do you think?
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