Stalin came to power at a time when the peasants were beginning to make a means to an end and could see for themselves a better life. However, it was Stalin's attempt to make Russia a super power, which ultimately came at a very high price for the Russian people.
             A common misconception of Lenin is that he was a hero of the Russian people. To the extent that he played a major part in the overthrow of the oppressive Tsarist regime, this is true. However, in protecting the revolution, he had ordered the imprisonment and execution of millions of Russians. These arrests and executions were carried out by his secret police called the Cheka. The role of the Cheka changed during the civil war into an organ of terror, dispensing summary justice including executions and making mass arrests.
             Things were not all bad however, for the Russian peasants from 1921 onwards as the policy became more relaxed with the taxation on the peasants and the halting of forced grain requisitioning. This was extended with the introduction of the new economic policy (NEP). This new type of peasant in Russia came to be known as a Kulak. The Kulaks could buy their own land and sell off the extra crops they produced -Lenin introduced the Kulaks to appease the people. These Kulaks however, were to suffer terribly under Stalin.
             An Examples of Lenin's pragmatism was the suffering of the Kulaks. In March 1921 the Red Army was used to put down an uprising by the sailors in the Krondstadt garrison who were rebelling against the rule of the Commissars' and calling for a true soviet republic of workers and peasants.
             What the people of Russia thought was bad under Lenin did not compare with what Stalin's political system of terror had in store for them. With Lenin's death and Stalin's rise as leader came a time of complete political upheaval. This is evidenced by the purges of the 1930s which sent millions of Russians to their deaths, or to ...