a state structure without «oprichnina», without special services working against the citizens. Lenin wrote about this in «The State and Revolution». From this moment, the role of personality in history begins to increase. And it is not only the personality, authorized by the position, but any personality with intelligence, zeal, and talents. But then Stalin gets a legitimate rivalry. And this is not a part of his plans: there is enough competition. And he «corrects» Marxism to hide his personal goal.
If he did not do this, there would be complete nonsense: the dictatorship of the class in the absence of classes. With the help of the falsification of Marxism, very convincing /after all, the masses have accustomed to consider themselves classes/, with wild applause, he is implementing the second, after turning the position of General Secretary into the supreme post, secretive coup d'etat. That is, he usurps power and can represent any opponent as the class enemy.
However, one cannot play hide-and-seek with the history, and the wrong decision turns out to thousands of present and future problems, inconsistencies, fractures, and extremes.
Since the society was announced the «class» one, and it preserved the dictatorship of the proletariat and the corresponding ideology («of the irreconcilable class struggle»), as well as the bodies of violence and repression, then all the conflicts: interpersonal, group, and even ethnic /people constantly collide with each other on different occasions and grounds/, – were naturally regarded as the class ones, with all the ensuing consequences.
Naturally, career internecine struggle, not only among the party apparatus, flared up with renewed vigour and perseverance, using the rhetoric and tools of the state power. In addition, once you preserve the bodies of violence /and they cannot dismiss themselves/, you pay them for their work and reward for success, they continue to search for enemies and to find them regardless whether they exist or not, or simply fabricate the cases to justify their own work.
So, quite paradoxically, with the victory of socialism /instead of humanizing human relations/, the mass repressions take place. It was not Stalin, who did this in relation to the people. And it was not among the lowest classes /workers, peasants, minor officials/ but among those, who were fighting for the nomination or self-protection of the candidates for roles, positions, and achievements. Interpersonal competition turns into a fierce struggle, with the use of NKVD. Stalin did not sanction, but rather provoked this. The people themselves fought among themselves, confusing /sometimes deliberately/ interpersonal conflicts, presenting them as «class», attracting the attention of the authorities, sincerely believing that they are doing the right thing.
It is not even the mass character of victims, on which the traditional criticism of Stalinism has been fixated, but the mass character of participants of persecution, deceived and sincere executors of repressions, that is striking. It was not «the evil will» of the leader, not the innate blood lust of the Bolsheviks, but the distortion of Marxism that led them to tragedy. It was both cruel and senseless. This was the pay for the deliberate forgery of Marxism.
Repressions, therefore, emerged as a flash, like a continuation of the «class struggle» in a classless society. But it was an interpersonal, ordinary, competitive, ongoing struggle, however, with the use of methods and techniques of class struggle as a result of the Stalin's perversion of Marxism.
This perversion eventually led to the perversion of socialism, the break-down of all its foundations. To Stalin's credit, it should be recognized that in the practice of the following guidance, when he was alive, he corrected much of what had been set in the theory. In Marxism, it is impossible to distort one part without ruining all the integrity and consistency of the worldview concept. The dialectics of world development, as a guiding thread in this doctrine, cannot be canceled even by Stalin.
Having preserved the dictatorship of the proletariat, which historically had fulfilled its mission and therefore had become needless, Stalin initially brought the superstructure in contradiction to the construction of the socialist basis, having pinned down its further development. In a certain sense, he gave it a forced acceleration.
Socialism was growing, as a rigid construction, but not as a living organism. Command and mandative manner of management from top to bottom, almost without feedback, without liberties, but with the regulated freedom of discussion and creative work only by permission, for the trusted ones, cost us tremendous strength in the work, enormous efforts sometimes spent foolishly and in vain.
Stalin centralized the opportunity to think about society and the people on himself, having given others the right to rivalry against each other /he just forgot that he was not going to live forever/. Therefore, next rulers of the country failed to neither receive nor give others autonomy and curiosity in government. They thought only of devotion of the people, so they could use them to approach their communist paradise. Someday it had to echo.
When Nikita Khrushchev came to power, his personality left a noticeable impact on the government of the country. But no more than that. Nothing in its basis was not questioned or theoretically comprehended. All of his innovations came from his feelings, but not from the mind, and, therefore, did not make fundamental changes.
Having branded the public worshiping with shame, the cult of personality of Stalin, having condemned the repressions as «unsubstantiated» /and that's all, i.e. without the explanation of their causes/, did not affect the Stalin's falsification of Marxism, done for the sake of consolidation of personal power. And virtually he left everything intact. Even the so-called «national state», included in the Program of the construction of the communism, kept all signs of class dictatorship and did not change structurally. Therefore, the cult simply changed the name, and repressions changed the form. Now people were not shot for dissidence, were not sent for «personal viewpoint» to the camps, but they were expelled from the party, were dismissed from work, and the restless seekers of truth and justice were sent to the psychiatric hospitals.
The control system /superstructure/ remained immutable, giving the rulers the «infallibility», the ability to talk to people in a haughty manner and, if needed, with the power of weapons. The society of social equality and justice, for which the true Leninists had risen, fought and worked, sacrificing health, fate, and even lives, was made null and void by the party bureaucracy, which Josepf Stalin fostered and securely brought close to himself by corrupting it with privileges.
So, whatever improvements and reforms happened in the country, nobody, even in the upper classes, wondered. And they happened. All this was shattered on the rock of the system or was stuck in an endless posh chatter, covering the deterioration of life of the people. But it is important to note that under Khrushchev there was the secretive polarization of nomenclature: division on Leninists and Stalinists. The interpersonal competition did not stop. It took the form of clan, intergroup struggle, in which Khrushchev was defeated.
The epoch of «stagnation», which penetrated further into our history as the victory of the most conservative bureaucracy, was a period of boundless connivance, where the ruling elite once again shamelessly changed the name of the cult and, against this background, was fully let loose. Without further ado, constantly covering the chest of Leonid Ilyich with stars and orders, it was engaged exclusively in its own interests, gradually getting closer to the shadow economy, which was gaining strength and momentum, by charging it with /in addition to the existing privileges/ additional material recompense.
This period was the longest because the interpersonal competition in the career struggle subsided, finding a decent compensation in the economic permissiveness. The desired results were achieved faster beyond career growth, which was excessively stretched in time. Closing his eyes and letting a lot of things happen, Brezhnev, thus, much safer hooked the nomenclature, than Stalin's privileges. But it was under Brezhnev when the opposition of the ruling class to the working people was clearly indicated. The clans, fighting with each other, were standing shoulder to shoulder against the lower classes under the slogan «economical economy» for the people and impetuous enrichment for themselves.
Then there were the agony of military and bureaucratic socialism, the succession of deaths, one after another, of the elderly people, of the worthless, unable General Secretaries, exposing the full rebirth «of the dictatorship of the proletariat» into the dictatorship of nomenclative bureaucracy.
Certainly, the workers were innocent