Not really, consider War Communism, Lenin's very own megacidal economic disaster.
This drove him to NEP, but clearly as a temporary expedient. Stalin, I believe, was quite right to judge that, if the revolutionary impulse that Lenin had begun was to continue -- particularly the capacity of the Party to drive that impulse -- then the NEP had to be abandoned. His industrialisation plans were fairly clearly War Communism updated.
Or, to put it another way, it was both eminently possible under what Lenin had begun and natural to its logic. Which is why we see similar things repeated elsewhere under Leninist regimes.
I sort-of understand this attempt to insulate Lenin from his consequences (which, of course, though much more indirectly, included Hitler -- Lenin raised the stakes of politics hugely: there was nothing a respectable Westerner might not value -- not life, liberty, culture, religion, property etc -- which was not put at risk in a Leninist takeover, this lead to some nasty, desperate choices), but it fairly obviously requires a heroic flying in the face of the evidence.
(2) Post-Soviet history
Yes, I am somewhat familiar, from my visit and much reading.
There are huge problems comparing Soviet and post-Soviet statistics. Not least of which is much of the former were just made up and then there is the 'comparing apples and oranges' problem. The real income of the Soviet elite just didn't connect very much to salary, for example. The property situation of almost everything controlled by a state which is controlled by an elite who pillages it does not conveniently compare in Gini terms to a vaguely-private-property based dispensation. Similarly in deducting from GDP the roughly 25% (we think) that went on defence spending.
But one would expect the transition to be, well, rocky. The fact that much of the transition has been actively sabotaged doesn't help. (I note that the Russian transition is clearly worse than the Eastern European one and that socialism had already produced stagnant or declining life expectancies.)
The criminal culture was created under the Soviet regime (again, a natural long-term consequence of Leninism -- corruption is the market for official dispensation; make such dispensation socially dominant and corruption will, eventually, become similarly dominant, which is why purges are necessary -- to break up corrupt networks). Said culture was made much more open under the following dispensation.
Re: A time to pause and reflect?...
Not really, consider War Communism, Lenin's very own megacidal economic disaster.
This drove him to NEP, but clearly as a temporary expedient. Stalin, I believe, was quite right to judge that, if the revolutionary impulse that Lenin had begun was to continue -- particularly the capacity of the Party to drive that impulse -- then the NEP had to be abandoned. His industrialisation plans were fairly clearly War Communism updated.
Or, to put it another way, it was both eminently possible under what Lenin had begun and natural to its logic. Which is why we see similar things repeated elsewhere under Leninist regimes.
I sort-of understand this attempt to insulate Lenin from his consequences (which, of course, though much more indirectly, included Hitler -- Lenin raised the stakes of politics hugely: there was nothing a respectable Westerner might not value -- not life, liberty, culture, religion, property etc -- which was not put at risk in a Leninist takeover, this lead to some nasty, desperate choices), but it fairly obviously requires a heroic flying in the face of the evidence.
(2) Post-Soviet history
Yes, I am somewhat familiar, from my visit and much reading.
There are huge problems comparing Soviet and post-Soviet statistics. Not least of which is much of the former were just made up and then there is the 'comparing apples and oranges' problem. The real income of the Soviet elite just didn't connect very much to salary, for example. The property situation of almost everything controlled by a state which is controlled by an elite who pillages it does not conveniently compare in Gini terms to a vaguely-private-property based dispensation. Similarly in deducting from GDP the roughly 25% (we think) that went on defence spending.
But one would expect the transition to be, well, rocky. The fact that much of the transition has been actively sabotaged doesn't help. (I note that the Russian transition is clearly worse than the Eastern European one and that socialism had already produced stagnant or declining life expectancies.)
The criminal culture was created under the Soviet regime (again, a natural long-term consequence of Leninism -- corruption is the market for official dispensation; make such dispensation socially dominant and corruption will, eventually, become similarly dominant, which is why purges are necessary -- to break up corrupt networks). Said culture was made much more open under the following dispensation.