On the 30th of August 1919 Fanya Kaplan, a member of the Social Revolutionaries, attempted to assassinate Lenin. Two bullets entered his body and were too dangerous to be removed. On her arrest she explained that she attempted to kill him because he closed down the Constituent Assembly -and described Lenin as “a traitor to the revolution.”
The Workers’ Opposition (1920-1) declared that Lenin’s leadership had violated ‘the spirit of the Revolution’ and championed workers’ control of industry.Meanwhile right-wing dissidents called for a prolonged period of state capitalism as Lenin and the Bolsheviks had gone too far too fast – and Russia was not ready for socialism.
From the attempt on his life in 1918 Lenin’s health began to deteriorate. With increasing severe headaches, which limited his sleep and fatigued him, Lenin decided he needed someone to help him control the Communist Party. Creating the new the post of Party General Secretary, his choice was Joseph Stalin. A decision he later regretted.
In an operation to remove one of the bullets, a blood vessel broke in Lenin’s brain paralyzing his right side and limited his ability to speak. Stalin became his “mouthpiece.”
With Lenin immobilized, Stalin increasingly took control of power. Lenin tried to bring Leon Trotsky back to challenge Stalin but it was too late. Stalin ruthlessly moved against all his opponents, including Leon Trotsky.
Lenin criticized Stalin’s “workers’ state” with bureaucratic distortions. In his last “will and testament” he stated, “I…..propose to our comrades to consider a means of removing Stalin….and appointing someone else that differs from Stalin in one weighty respect: be more tolerant, more loyal, more polite, more considerate of his comrades.”
Three days after writing this testament Lenin had his third stroke and he died on January 21, 1924.
Bolshevism under Stalin would now take a very different direction from its original path. Bolshevism, as defined by Lenin and his supporters, was characterized by strong organization, a commitment to world revolution, and a political practice guided by what Lenin called democratic centralism.
Stalin was totally focused on controlling Russia, and unlike Lenin he was not interested “in a world Socialist revolution.” Whether Bolshevism inevitably transmuted into “despotic Stalinism” or whether historical circumstances caused Stalin’s deformation is still in dispute.
Today Russia even though it’s no longer Communist, is considered to be the center of National Bolshevism, and almost all of the National Bolshevik parties and organizations in the world are connected to it.