ABSTRACT
Although the Bolshevik Revolution took place in 1917, the party did not fully revolutionize Russian society until the 1930s. Despite the extensive changes that took place between 1917 and 1929, on the eve of Stalin’s triumph the country was strikingly similar to what it had been on the morrow of Lenin’s revolution. In 1929, the Soviet economy was still dominated by small-scale and backward peasant agriculture. Its industrial sector, notwithstanding the socialized “commanding heights,” still could not meet the nation’s needs and lagged behind the modern industrial establishments in the West. Russia, in fact, had basically the same industrial base that had existed in 1913. In short, in 1929, the majority of the population lived much as they had before 1917.
