Chris Doss :
This is part of my point. There was almost no working class. There were a huge mass of illiterate peasants who believed that witches sucked blood from cows, Jews used Christian children to make matzoh and wanted to be led by a God-man (why was it so easy to believe in Trotskyist wreckers? From witches and grand Jewish plots to rule the world it's not a very big leap.) Theodor Oizermann, in Marksizm i Utopizm, which will probably never be translated, makes sort-of this point. Leninism was not destroyed by "Stalinism" -- it was subsumed into a wider ideology brought about by Russian culture, material conditions in the country and the pressing need to industrialize the country ASAP. Or anyway that is my provisional theory.
^^^^^^
Why was there a pressing need to industrialize the country ASAP ?
Charles