th the party members and in the day-to-day management of party affairs. He was strongly opposed to Trotsky and favored the NEP. His economic policy was based on decentralized economic planning and the acceptance of modest free enterprise and small land holdings. He had not spend a long period of exile in Western Europe, because of this he was unable to recognize Russia as anentity with all of Europe. Stalin was very brutal, his handling of recalcitrant national groups within Russia after the revolution shocked even Lenin. He mastered the details of the party structure, which let him have the support of the lower levels of the party when he clashed with other leaders. He also supported Bukharins position on economic development. In 1924 he enunciated, in opposition to Trotsky, the doctrine of socialism in one country, he urged that Socialism could be achieved in Russia alone. Stalins decisions to industrialize rapidly, to move against the peasants, and to reverse the Comintern policy aroused internal political opposition. These were all departures from the policies of Lenin. Lenin established the basic ideas of Soviet communism and Stalin put them into more brutal and controlling terms. Lenin ruled for a shorter time than Stalin did. Lenin set Russia up for modernization and reform and Stalin tore it down to create one of the worlds worst totalitarian regimes. The main similarities between the two are in their usurpation of power to gain their ends, their use of dictatorship, and their methods of suppressing dissent.9) Mikhail Gorbachev was responsible for the fall of Communism and the Soviet Union. If he had not taken such radical steps towards a future that had never been considered in Russia, the Soviet Union and Communism may have still existed in Russia today. A Russian leader never before held tenets similar to Gorbachev's after the Bolshevik Revolution. When Gorbachev came into power in 1985, Russia was in a going through hard...
