From Lenin to Stalin
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"Like the tsars before him, Lenin planted the seeds for Stalin's harvest of terror." -Fred Coleman, author "In the struggle for power following... Lenin's death..., Stalin emerged as victor while [Leon] Trotsky was removed from all positions of power and later exiled (1929)."Source: Leon Trotsky, 2013 |
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Overview
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Most Soviet citizens acquiesced to the Stalinist government because they were accustomed to tsarist rule. They also believed that strict control over the citizens would bring a communist utopia sooner. |
The Catalyst
"Slaying the Stalinist dragon in Russia would have been easier if it had been some abhorrent exception to the traditional rule. Unfortunately, it was nothing of the kind. On the contrary, one thousand years of Russian history show the Stalinist terror to be an extreme version of what passed for centuries as the natural order of things. Despotic tsars like Ivan the Terrible were capable of Stalinist cruelty. Only the lack of modern technical means
limited their slaughter to thousands of people rather than millions." -Fred Coleman, author
Wicked Capitalism
The Soviet media romanticized the Stalinist government and tried to convince citizens of the corruption of capitalism. "The problems of the Capitalist West, such as poverty and crime... took up significant space and time in the Soviet media." Source: Life in communist Russia, 2001
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Source: Iconography of Power- Soviet Political Posters Under Lenin and Stalin, 1997