What is Leninism and how does it differ from Marxism?
Leninism is a political ideology developed by Vladimir Lenin that builds on Marxism by adding theories of the vanguard party, imperialism, and proletarian revolution under conditions specific to agrarian, underdeveloped societies. Lenin argued that a tightly organised revolutionary vanguard party was necessary to lead the working class to power, a position not fully elaborated by Marx and Engels. The term Leninism entered common political usage at the fifth congress of the Communist International in 1924, when Grigory Zinoviev applied it to denote vanguard-party revolution.
What was Lenin's vanguard party theory?
Lenin's vanguard party theory, developed in What Is To Be Done? in 1902, held that a disciplined revolutionary party recruited from the working class must lead the political campaign to overthrow capitalism. Lenin distinguished this from the economic campaign of trade-union struggle, which he saw as insufficient for socialist transformation. The party operated on the principle of democratic centralism, allowing free debate until a policy was agreed, after which all members were bound by the decision.
Why did Lenin argue the socialist revolution would happen in Russia first?
In Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism published in 1916, Lenin argued that advanced capitalist countries exported surplus capital to colonies, allowing them to maintain domestic labour peace and delaying revolution at home. He identified Imperial Russia as the weakest link in the global capitalist system because its industrialisation was financed by foreign capital and it lacked a powerful revolutionary bourgeoisie. The April Theses of 1917 framed the October Revolution as the first socialist revolution in the world rather than a local national event.
What was Lenin's New Economic Policy and why was it introduced?
The New Economic Policy (NEP), introduced in March 1921 and running until 1929, replaced grain requisitions with an agricultural tax and allowed limited private commerce and internal free trade under state bank management. Lenin introduced it to resolve food-shortage riots by the peasantry after the Civil War and to rebuild the urban working class, which had been depleted by years of armed conflict. The NEP was intended as a temporary measure to stabilise the economy before a planned industrialisation of Russia could proceed.
Did Lenin oppose Stalin becoming his successor?
Lenin privately and actively opposed Stalin's consolidation of power. In his Testament, Lenin warned the Communist Party that Stalin had "unlimited authority concentrated in his hands" and urged his removal as General Secretary. Lenin allied with Leon Trotsky in 1922 to counter Stalin's growing bureaucratic influence, and proposed reforms to democratise the Central Committee and recruit ordinary workers into its lower organs. Lenin's Testament was suppressed after Lenin died on the 21st of January 1924, and Stalin retained his position.
Is Stalinism considered a continuation of Leninism or a break from it?
Historians are divided. Richard Pipes argued Stalin faithfully implemented Lenin's programs, while Robert Service wrote that Lenin laid institutional foundations for Stalin but that the passage to Stalinist terror was not inevitable. Robert Vincent Daniels characterised Stalinism as a counter-revolution in Soviet cultural life that reversed Lenin's policies on sexual equality and minority rights. Nikita Khrushchev, in his 1956 Secret Speech, contrasted Lenin's collective leadership and personal persuasion with Stalin's despotism and mass executions of Old Bolsheviks who had worked with Lenin.