Before Stalinism Book

Anyone with the slightest understanding of political issues will know that ideas are one thing - implementing them is another. If the objective conditions or the social base giving rise to such ideas are undeveloped or destroyed, all the good intentions in the world will prove fruitless.

So far, this book is providing an excellent source for anyone looking to chart the gradual erosion of soviet democracy after 1917. It will also provide a nasty surprise for simplistic pro-capitalist theorists that the Bolshevik party was not made up of cackling evil madmen, but that the process of degeneration affected soviet society as a whole, as opposed to stemming from the political machinations of a few "evil" men.