Here is the paragraph before it:
The trauma of these years broke the Russian working class. By 1921, Lenin would go so far as to argue that the working class, “owing to the war and to the desperate poverty and ruin, has become declassed, i.e., dislodged from its class groove, and has ceased to exist as a proletariat.” The withering away of the state had reversed. In place of local working-class militias organizing themselves, the Bolsheviks were forced to professionalize the Red Army. In place of vibrant democracy and frequent elections, famine and unemployment discouraged political participation. In place of a multiparty state with competing parties, the other political parties turned on the Bolsheviks and were in turn banned under the exigencies of civil war. The material conditions for a healthy workers’ state were destroyed. Antidemocratic measures initially justified as wartime necessities mutated into virtues as the revolutionaries grimly hung on for dear life.
The USSR was under seige from all sides for the entirety of its existence
Yeah kinda weird to be critiquing Stalin for mass speed running of industrialization when he had Nazi Germany fermenting not that far from Russia’s borders.
Right? It's always so weird. Like, I get it, things didn't go according to plan, but the plan was for Germany to go communist first, then liberate all of Europe. Not for the CCCP to stand alone against the whole capitalist world for decades while the genocidal monsters fermented in the pit left by the failed German revolution. The plan was for the CCCP to ally with Europe and crush the Nazis before they could launch WWII. The plan was to build up military capacity to be able to hold off the Wehrmacht before Barbarossa. The plan was the create a fortified border in Finland to protect Stalingrad. There were so many plans, and they were all smashed against reality. You can't even say Stalin used the threat of invasion as an excuse, every western power sent invading armies in to the nascent CCCP during the revolution.
Like yeah, shit was fucked, but the situation was fucked too. Nothing went according to plan or turned out as people expected.
Plus, it's always just Stalin's fault, because he was the only member of the Communist Party and the millions of other party members were all Stalin wearing a variety of comedy mustaches.
But you see, it isn't real socialism unless you let western imperialists destroy your project and ravage your country. Otherwise, it's just authoritarian state capitalism :/