of the most overlooked political legacies of Lenin, was the creation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics as a geopolitical entity on the 1st of January 1923. This was one rare issue where there was a practical disagreement between Lenin and Stalin in regard to a matter of policy, while the former was still alive. Stalin, who headed the People’s Commissariat for Nationalities, wished to deprive the Soviet republics of even their formal independence by turning them into autonomous republics within the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (RSFSR). Under his model, Ukraine, Belorussia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia would be part of an enlarged RSFSR. Service remarks that Lenin thought Stalin’s project smacked of Russian imperial dominance and his counter proposal was to federate the RSFSR on equal terms with the other republics. As we know it was this proposal that came to pass. Lenin’s first move in the sphere of economics was the decrees on land and on workers’ control of industry which abolished private property in productive resources (above all in land and capital), which had been the economic foundation of the old ruling group. These decrees effectively abolished the two basic classes of tsarist Russia – the landed nobility and the moneyed bourgeoisie. At this time the Russian economy which was in very bad shape, was further strained by the worsening civil war. This drastic situation necessitated drastic action from Lenin and the economic program he instituted became known as War Communism. War Communism was characterized by increased central control of the economy, the nationalization of banks, factories and the abolition of private trade. In the country, where it was more difficult for the Bolsheviks to gain control, Lenin sanctioned the unrestrained use of violence. The forced requisitioning of grain for below market prices became state policy and this in turn led to terrible confli...
