Word: lenin
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...could such a monster gain absolute ascendancy over the Soviet Union? In this book Medvedev backs away from his earlier position that Stalinism was essentially an aberration on the road to a more benevolent Communism envisioned by Lenin. The historian has re-examined the totalitarian system created by Lenin and now suspects that Stalinism sprang from Leninism, as many American Sovietologists have concluded. Though Medvedev never fully confronts this issue, he emphatically makes one crucial point: when Lenin banned all opposition groups and factions in 1921, the ensuing one-party dictatorship was "a very important condition for Stalin's usurpation...
From the opening moment, when the spotlights flicked on to illuminate a towering statue of Lenin, it was clear that the days of fully scripted, party- orchestrated politics had -- at least for a moment -- come to an end. Assembled in the Kremlin's Palace of Congresses were the delegates to the Soviet Union's brand-new Congress of People's Deputies, a forum where doctrine could be questioned, where the unexpected could happen, and where the unmentionable could be spoken for all the nation to hear...
...good, that it is their responsibility to keep local authorities in line. Only that sociological change will make possible the economic and political reforms that Gorbachev, Deng and other reformers insist are necessary. Thus far, no Communist regime has found a way out of this dilemma. Lenin once said, "Give me four years to teach the children, and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted." His political heirs are finding that it is a difficult task indeed...
...ground it is much the same at first. Behind the hard eyes of a young passport officer lurk the ghosts of his country's history: Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, Lenin, Stalin and all those they once ruled, the entire tragic parade of persecutors and persecuted. And when the officer finally grunts his assent and one is readmitted to the Soviet sanctum, one still imagines great steel doors clanging shut...
...resembles an Egyptian pyramid built out of colossal stones, carefully assembled and ground to fit together. A mass of dead stone, an impressive monumentality of construction, which once served majestic ends now beyond our reach, a huge structure with such a modicum of useful space inside. Inside -- the mummy, Lenin. Outside -- the wind of the desert. Sand. That's the image...