A review by genderterrorist
The Foundations of Leninism by Joseph Stalin

5.0

An astounding, critical, and necessary read for every communist. Stalin does to Lenin what Lenin did to Marx: expanded his thoughts and practice, synthesized them, and put them into historical perspective.

What I mean is this: Stalin notes that Leninism came from Lenin applying Marxism to a time of imperialism in pre-revolutionary Russia. Now while it is true that Lenin lived 5 years after the Bolshevik Revolution, he still died young, perhaps before he could apply Marxism to the gradually-developing USSR. Stalin steps in and does this adequately, going back to the core of Marxism, outlining its dialectical transition into Marxism-Leninism, and applying this to the USSR as it was then.

A superb read. One of the best Communist texts I believe I've ever read. I also appreciated how Stalin condemns what Kwame Nkrumah later deemed "neo-colonialism", though in the time of Stalin, that phrase had not been fully explored and studied.