Lenin's Legacy

by Wesson, Robert

• ISBN13: 9780817969226
• ISBN10: 0817969225
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2018-01-01
• Publisher: Hoover Institution Press

Summary

This concise monograph traces Russian Marxism from its beginnings to mid-1977, shows how and why the party achieved power, how it has strengthened its position, and how it has undertaken to remold the country and to solve its internal problems. Wesson's study is the only up-to-date party history currently available. The book opens with background material on Russian discontent and endeavors to analyze the fundamental nature of Communist Party rule, taking into account new perspectives in Lenin's revolution, the Stalinist period, and the Khrushchev years, as well as the latest period not covered in earlier accounts. It treats the rise of Lenin, the struggle for power after Lenin and after Stalin, and the consolidation of Brezhnev's authority. As the most recent history of communism in the Soviet Union, it has great topical interest and is clearly written for the benefit of the student and general reader as well as the professional.

Author Biography

Dr. Robert Wesson, who received a Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1961, served with the Foreign Service in Brazil and Colombia after graduating from the Tuft University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in 1941. He served in the Navy from 1944 to 1946 and lived for a time in South America. He was a visiting professor at Bates College and a resident scholar at St. Antony's College at Oxford. In 1964 he joined the faculty of the University of California at Santa Barbara and in 1977 was named curator of the Russian-East European Collection of the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace. He had been a senior research fellow at Stanford since 1978. He wrote more than 30 books on political science, international affairs, biology and the evolutionary process, including Beyond Natural Selection and Cosmos and Metacosmos.

Table of Contents

Editor's Foreword	vii
Preface	ix
Chart	xii
Introduction	xv
The Russian Discontent	1	(286)
Lenin's Party: Formation and Waiting
The Marxist Vogue	11	(5)
The Advent of Lenin	16	(4)
Lenin's Movement	20	(8)
Hope and Failure	28	(4)
Disillusion and Decadence	32	(6)
Lenin and the Minorities	38	(3)
The Last Years of Waiting	41	(7)
The Conquest of Power
The End of Tsarism	48	(2)
Lenin Takes Charge and Fails	50	(6)
The German Connection	56	(6)
The Summer of Disruption	62	(6)
The Coup	68	(7)
The Party Becomes a Government	75	(8)
Brest Litovsk	83	(5)
Civil War	88	(6)
Consolidation of the Party	94	(6)
The Liquidation of Dissent
The End of Allies	100	(3)
The End of Factions	103	(5)
Lenin's Retreat	108	(3)
Lenin's Last Years	111	(4)
Lenin the Leader	115	(3)
The Advent of Stalin	118	(5)
Stalin Defeats Trotsky	123	(9)
Stalin Crushes Left and Right	132	(7)
Stalinism in Power
The Conquest of the Peasantry	139	(5)
Industrialization	144	(4)
The Great Purges	148	(13)
The Stalinist System	161	(5)
The Eve of the War	166	(2)
The War	168	(4)
High Stalinism	172	(6)
The Finale	178	(5)
The Khrushchev Era
The New Rulers	183	(5)
Khrushchev, the Challenger	188	(3)
The First Secretary versus the Prime Minister	191	(4)
De-Stalinization: First Round	195	(10)
The Defeat of the Old Guard	205	(5)
Khrushchev Victorious	210	(4)
The Troubled Vision	214	(8)
The Slippage of Power	222	(4)
Khrushchevism	226	(6)
The Fall	232	(3)
Brezhnev and Conservative Communism
The New Regime	235	(7)
Leonid Ilich Brezhnev	242	(3)
The Brezhnev Era: Consolidation	245	(6)
Brezhnev in Command	251	(4)
The Brezhnev Party	255	(16)
Conclusion
The Party Transformed and the Same	271	(8)
Appendixes
1. Figures on the Party	279	(6)
2. Women in the Party	285	(2)
Notes	287	(20)
Bibliographical Note	307	(6)
Index	313