To what extent had Lenin established a totalitarian regime?

Question by Jatt Life: To what extent had Lenin established a totalitarian regime by his death in 1924?

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Answer by spiffer1
Basically Lenin had a coterie of dedicated Marxists around him. They were working on an egalitarian, socialist society. One of the problems with this is Lenin and such others as Trotsky were idealists. When Lenin fell ill, one non-such idealist (likely not even a Marxist but rather and opportunist) named Stalin whose wife (conveniently) was Lenin’s nurse managed to worm his way through the coterie. When Lenin died (there are rumours Stalin’s wife had a hand in this in some way) Stalin was there to complete the task of taking over and then turning the Soviet Union into a dictatorship and police state, failing to follow the Marxist model (which seems would not have worked in the first place) and therefore turning the Soviet Union into something of what was (and would have been to Marx himself) a nightmare.

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