Why didn't Lenin improve life in Russian villiages before his death?

score:19

Accepted answer

Lenin, and all the Bolsheviks, believed that the USSR needed to industrialise very rapidly, so that it could defend itself effectively against foreign attacks. The Russian Empire had performed poorly against the Germans. The allies attacked the Bolsheviks, and arguably only failed because their countries were war-weary.

There were two camps here. Bukharin believed that they should focus on rural prosperity, and that as farmers worked to increase their productivity, this in turn would lead to demand for industrial products and industrial growth.

Everybody else believed they should keep the peasants under the thumb and extract the maximum amount of grain out of them, and use it to feed industrial workers in the cities. Lenin, Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kamanev were all in this camp, and any one of them was more influential than Bukharin.

More post

Search Posts

Related post