Beginning of Essay
Both Lenin and Stalin adopted well-structured economic policies in order to build their country into a well-established and powerful state" Both Lenin and Stalin had enormous power to change Russia as the leaders of the 'Dictatorship of the Proletariat'; the quest ....

Middle of Essay
.... money was simply worthless. With the ban on private trade there was a break down of the currency system and rural communities reverted back to a barter economy. The Bolshevik party forcibly seized all surplus grain from the peasants causing resistance from peasants by hiding grain and not producing more than was needed for themselves - Russia had gone back to subsistence farming. This lead to a drop in production with some historians claiming that by 1921 there was more than a 60% percent drop in agricultural productivity since pre-war Russia. The peasant reaction is justified considering that some historians estimate well over 5 million peasa ....