Levellers 183doned any practice of workers’ democracy (“soviets”)
and instituted an autocratic DICTATORSHIP. Military, eco-
nomic, and even family life was strictly controlled by
the central STATE. The socialist government in Russia
soon became more BUREAUCRATIC, cruel, and oppressive
than the czarist regime. Poverty, a state secret police,
massive executions, and imprisonments showed the
vicious side of communism. Rivalries among Bolshevik
Party leaders (especially STALIN, TROTSKY, and BUKHARIN)
led to political purges, show trials, and brutality. Fear
and misery spread in the country. Many upper- and
middle-class Russians left the country, moving prima-
rily to France. Leftists in Western Europe and America
supported this new Soviet socialist system and advo-
cated its establishment in other countries. Lenin recog-
nized the destructive demise of his socialist ideal and
attempted to reform it with more decentralized, free-
market reforms, but he died soon after the revolution,
and his plans were never implemented. Instead, his
most ruthless follower, Joseph Stalin, took over the
Soviet leadership and instituted a terrible TOTALITARIAN
state that terrorized its own people and dominated its
(East European) neighbors. The dreams of liberation
and prosperity in Marxism-Leninism turned into the
nightmare of the USSR. Officially atheistic, the Soviet
Union persecuted the CHRISTIANS, Jews, and Muslims
within its borders. The deceit, foreign subversion, and
imperialism of the USSR state made it difficult for
other countries to deal or negotiate with it. The cold
war of 1950–87 between the Western powers and the
Soviet empire reflected this tension. After 70 years of
DESPOTISM, poverty, and mistrust, the Russian people,
led by Premier Gorbachev, abandoned the Soviet sys-
tem for a MODERN REPUBLICand a mixed economy.
However, the legacy of Leninist violence and concen-
trated, arbitrary state power unfortunately persists in
contemporary Russia.Further Readings
Carr, E. H. The Bolshevik Revolution,3 vols. New York: W. W.
Norton, 1978.
Harding, N. Lenin’s Political Thought,2 vols. New York: St. Mar-
tin’s Press, 1977, 1981.Levellers
A political group in 17th-century England that advo-
cated social “levelling” or EQUALITY. The most radical
EGALITARIANof these Levellers were the so-called Dig-
gers, or agrarian COMMUNISTS, who sought to equalize
all property and land. Gerrard Winstanley was a lead-
ing theorist of this agricultural commune-style of
economy. He took his inspiration from a radical PURI-
TA Nreading of the Bible, holding that the early CHRIS-
TIANShad “all things in common.” For him, private
ownership of property, especially excessive wealth, was
a sign of original sin, greed, and injustice. These reli-
gious Levellers also saw the emergence of agrarian
communism as ushering in a new millennium and the
return of Christ.
Politically, these English radicals advocated popular
rule, the abolishing of MONARCHY, the nobility, and the
state church. Each community should be governed
democratically, distinctions of rank and aristocracy
eliminated, and the voting (SUFFRAGE) right extended.
Political, economic, social, and religious independence
was their ideal. Some of their notions of popular SOV-
EREIGNTYand government LEGITIMACYfound their way
into John LOCKE’s SOCIAL-CONTRACT ideas year later,Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, ca. 1920.(LIBRARY OFCONGRESS)