army was used to put down an uprising by the sailors in the Krondstadt garrison who were rebelling against the "..arbitrary rule of the commissars' and calling for a true soviet republic of workers and peasants". The revolt was put down by units of the Cheka and the Red army. This was a very significant event because the Krondstadt sailors were vehement supporters of the Bolsheviks and had been stalwarts of the revolution so for Lenin to put them down in such a ruthless manner showed the way in which he was prepared to use force to silence political opposition. The Krondstadt sailors were accusing the Bolshevik leaders of betraying the revolution and not acting in the best interests of the people of Russia, by silencing the sailors in such a way, it can be argued that all Lenin did, in effect, was prove them to be correct.The fact that Stalin reverted Lenin's policy of NEP was a significant break with the policy of Lenin. Stalin, once in power, brought about the forced collectivization of agriculture and used this to pay for his plans for the large scale industrialization of Russia which was still, by western standards, a backward power. It can be argued, therefore, that Stalinism could not have come from Leninism because of the reversal by Stalin of Lenin's policy. However because of differences in the policies of the two leaders it does not mean that the political method of Lenin, for example the use of the secret police, could not have influenced that of Stalin.The other main hallmark of the Stalinst era except that of collectivization has to be that of the Terror. Although Lenin had used the secret police to capture political enemies and ensure that opposition was silenced, as in the case of the Krondstadt rebellion, there was not the use of terror on such a large scale as there was under Stalin. The terror started in 1934 after the assassination of Kirov, the first secretary of the Leningrad party. Kirov lead a majority which vote...
