Page "Stalinism" Paragraph 42

The historiography of Stalin is diverse, with many different aspects of continuity and discontinuity between the regimes of Stalin and Lenin proposed.

Totalitarian historians such as Richard Pipes tend to see Stalinism as the natural consequence of Leninism, that Stalin " faithfully implemented Lenin's domestic and foreign policy programmes ".

More nuanced versions of this general view are to be found in the works of other Western historians, such as Robert Service, who notes that " institutionally and ideologically, Lenin laid the foundations for a Stalin ... but the passage from Leninism to the worse terrors of Stalinism was not smooth and inevitable.

" Likewise, historian Edvard Radzinsky believes that Stalin was a real follower of Lenin, exactly as he claimed himself.