[WS:] This reminds me of an old Soviet joke. As Comrade Stalin was addressing the plenary session of the CP someone sneezed. Comrade Stalin paused and asked "Who sneezed?" Silence. "Ok, then" said Comrade Stalin, "take the first row and shoot them." When the security marched the first row of delegates out, Comrade Stalin asked again "Who sneezed?" Silence again. "OK then" said Stalin, "take the second row." After the second row was marched out, Stalin asked again " Who sneezed?" At this time an old man in the third row thought to himself "What do I have to lose? We are going to be next, and I am old anyway, I lived my life, so let me do something for these younger guys here" He then stood up and said, "Comrade Stalin, I did." Comrade Stalin smiled and replied "na zdorovie" (Russian equivalent of "bless you")
But more seriously, what seems to be missing from this piece is Trotsky's (and Gramsci's) idea of Russia lacking a "civil society" (which made the revolutionary takeover of the state possible in the first place) and the need to building a "proletarian civil society" instead of a bourgeois one after the revo. So at least the idea was there. But what happened instead was building not even a bourgeois civil society but a quasi feudal one, if that term is appropriate. What explain this? Why did not they follow Trotsky's idea of building a proletarian civil society instead? Was what Stalin did merely conjuring up costumes from the past as Marx said in the 18th brumaire, or the actual turning back the clock to the past? The same can be asked of Mao and his cultural revolution.
My conjecture, which I cannot prove of course, is that it was turning back the clock. It is so, because all leaders are guilty of the same thing, unless proven otherwise. Every person's self is socially constructed by interaction with others in society. There is no such thing as individual self. It follows that leaders acquire a different self than non-leaders and if this process goes unchecked the leaders invariable acquire a self-perception of being demi- gods. And if they also have the power to act on this belief, we have a throwback to a quasi feudal past (or charismatic authority relations as Weber would say.) Examples are abound - Napoleon, Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, Saddam, Gaddafi - they all turned a revolutionary project of one sort of another into a restoration of authority relations from the past, mythological if not real.
Beware of leaders! Judge them guilty unless proven innocent.
Wojtek