arged in respect to his hold on power (as “Father of the Revolution” Lenin’s status was unchallenged) and with serious opponents like Trotsky, anything, even ideology could become a malleable weapon in the political battle. Certainly this would be something that Stalin would develop into an art form - one that peaked at the show trials of the mid 30’s. Every enemy was a “Bukharinite” or a “Trotskite” or some other political shade of heresy to the one true creed of Stalinism. We can only speculate how Lenin’s theorizing would have changed had he lived longer and possibly been faced with the challenges Stalin was. Ultimately the essential fact is that ideology is one thing and practice is another. One is theory and the other is reality and THEORY rarely translates too precisely into REALITY. Let us now examine and compare how Lenin and Stalin put into practice, that what they preached.Lenin’s political practice was characterized by the elimination of all opposition and entrenchment of the one-party police state, the institutionalization of violence and terror as an instrument of policy, and the formation of the USSR as the successor of Imperial Russia. Alongside these he instituted the economic practices that became known as War Communism and the New Economic Policy.It did not take long for the true nature of Leninism to reveal itself in practice. As early as 27th October all anti-Bolshevik newspapers were closed down. On the 18th of January 1918, the freely elected Constituent Assembly met at the Tauride Palace. In the Assembly the Bolsheviks held only 175 seats while their rivals, the Socialist Revolutionaries held 410. On the 19th the Assembly was permanently dissolved on Lenin’s orders by armed Bolshevik guards. Laver observes that Lenin told Trotsky that the dissolution of the Assembly,“Means a complete and frank liquidation of the idea of democracy by the idea ...
