ABSTRACT
Russian communism was the first movement to take state power under the banner of the ideas of Karl Marx and Engels. In economically and politically undeveloped Russia, socialists faced the persecutions of the secret police and a complete absence of democracy. It was an overwhelmingly rural society, with a few centers of large-scale, usually foreign-owned industry and some militant workers’ organizations. The Party claimed its repression was a justified response to both internal and external problems. A poverty of theory combined with an unfortunate “wealth” of narrow national and bureaucratic self-interest masquerading as universal revolutionary morality. Stalinist state power was in many ways simply an expression of the self-interest of a new class of bureaucrats and managers in a backward country. Revolutionaries were further threatened by the way developments in the Soviet Union violated their understanding of social life. A minority proletariat had taken power against the wishes of the majority of the country.
