Russia: How the Bureaucracy Seized Power

Lenin, in his last period of active life, became increasingly aware of the dangers posed by the power of the bureaucracy. At the eleventh party congress in 1922 (the last he attended) he sounded this warning:

“The [state] machine refused to obey the hand that guided it. It was like a car that was going not in the way the driver desired but in a dire... See more

“Undoubtedly, we have done, and will still do, a host of stupid things...Why do we do these foolish things? The reason is clear: firstly, because we are backward country; secondly, because education in our country is at a low level; and thirdly, because we are getting no outside assistance. Not a single civilized country is helping us. On the contr... See more

‘Specialists’ and skilled administrators of the old regime could not be replaced; they had to be kept on, even at the cost of bribing them with privileges. In the town of Vyatka in 1918, for example, no fewer than 4,476 out of 4,766 officials were the same individuals who had previously served the Tsar.