ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to identify the major components of Lenin's views about social change in backward areas. These provide a set of ideas from which was derived the ideology of Leninism propagated in the USSR after Lenin's death. The chapter highlights some of the ways in which the ideology of Soviet social change followed or departed from Lenin's declared intentions. It describes the policies derived from Lenin's works which may be said to have guided the actions of the leaders of the Soviet Union during the 1930s. The chapter shows that Leninism provided an ideological stimulus for and legitimation to the formation of a large-scale industrial system; whereas Lenin's views also contained idealistic socialist values concerning the organization of an industrial society. The theory of imperialism helped to legitimate the building of socialism in one country, but the form the Soviet industrial and political system has taken has departed considerably from Lenin's original views.
