When lenin was in charge of the bolsheviks, he didn't seem to mind some free market reforms. But after the power struggle follwing his death, stalin really twisted the communist system into a totalarianist state that more or less remained so until its collapse. If trotsky was in charge, more likely he would've have demonstrated to the world that communism wasn't so bad and wasn't about tyranny. So many people wouldn't have died of famine, the nazis may not have been in power if htere was no conceived threat of communism, and the soviets would've been a much more motivated country without constant fear from above threatening them.

Any of the Bolsheviks would've been better than Stalin. Hitler killed 20 million Russians, but Stalin more than doubled that.

Lennin was as bad a Stalin. He created the GULAG, the rusian concentration camps.

Anything is better than Stalin's regime. Trotsky would have continued with some of Lenin's brutal methods and the whole ideology of establishing Communism is pretty brutal to begin with. But Stalin was paranoid and had a strong tendency to murder and purge when he had any doubts about ... anyone. How could you do worse?

I think noone could say. Stalin was for sure one of the worst men ever existed . Lenin for his part was a very bad guy and like Stauro said he created the Gulags etc. Trotsky was a semi-paranoid too. At least Stalin stopped trying to export communism to Europe for a while.

Originally Posted by godofthunder9010

Anything is better than Stalin's regime. Trotsky would have continued with some of Lenin's brutal methods and the whole ideology of establishing Communism is pretty brutal to begin with. But Stalin was paranoid and had a strong tendency to murder and purge when he had any doubts about ... anyone. How could you do worse?

In Spain we have a proverb that says: " It is better a bad man known rather than a good one unknown."

Originally Posted by staurofilakes

Lennin was as bad a Stalin. He created the GULAG, the rusian concentration camps.

The one of the many reasons why Lenin created GULAG is to supress Political Opponents and to silence anyone still loyal to the Czar. The threat against Lenin's Leadership was real. Stalin's reasons to eliminate and dismantle the Soviet Beaurucracy were paranoid, so therefore it is positive that Stalin was surely more ruthless than Lenin. Thus, Stalin's schemes were done on a larger scale.