One thing that has stuck me as interesting as we have continued learning about the Soviet Union is how the communist dream was drastically altered from the point of the Bolsheviks taking power to the Soviet Union’s fall in 1991. During the revolution and through Lenin’s reign, the Soviets were pushing towards a pure Marxist system; however, after Stalin took power this drastically changed.

Of the many problems that the Soviet Union had throughout its existence, I believe that Stalin was the most detrimental. After Stalin took power the Soviet Union took a drastic turn in the other direction. Stalin took away many policies that Lenin put into place, including the NEP, weakening the economy and thus slowing the creation of a more powerful state. Along with this, Stalin is also credited with being one of the worst mass murderers in history. However, unlike many others like Hitler, Stalin slaughtered his own people, thus further weakening the Soviet Union.

Another of Stalin’s detrimental behaviors was his enormous ego. In creating the Stalin “cult of personality”, he further moved the Soviets away from true Marxism and further towards the creation of his own private state. One such example of this would be the hipsters we talked about in class today. Many of these teenagers went back and re-read the things that Lenin had wrote and realized that Stalin was changing Lenin’s ideas in order to fit his agenda. These teenagers were among the many people that Stalin had executed or thrown into work camps.

I feel that it could definitely be argued that Stalin was the worst thing that ever happened to the Soviet Union. His many ridiculous policies along with his practice of deifying himself led to many problems within the Soviet Union including deviation from the true Marxist doctrine, lack of initial economic gains, and massive loss of population. Had Stalin never taken power I feel that the Soviet Union could have achieved a much greater level of power and would have lasted significantly into the current century. This goes to show that while communism is arguably a good system in theory, human flaws and errors have the potential to ruin the system in ways that capitalism would never allow.