The “Lenin Levy” and the Social Origins of Stalinism: Workers and the Communist Party in Moscow, 1921-1928

Abstract

Shortly before Lenin's death in early 1924, the Thirteenth Party Conference undertook an ambitious program to recruit thousands of workers into the Communist party. Subsequently known as the Lenin Levy—in memory, ironically, of the party's main adversary of mass worker recruitments—this campaign, which was repeated in 1925 and 1927, marked a key stage in the social and organizational history of the Soviet Communist party, for it brought the party into close contact with the shop floor for the first time since 1917.Western historians are divided over the significance to be attached to this episode. Many echo the views held by prominent party leftists that worker recruitments were a cosmetic response to the problem of bureaucratism and a convenient means to swamp the party with members obedient to the secretariat.