What was Vladimir Lenin's response to Western socialists and Marxists who began to distance themselves from the terror and dictatorial methods of the new Soviet regime?

Answer 1

It soon became apparent that socialist revolutions in western Europe were not going to erupt and help support Lenin's "experiments" in creating a workers Dictatorship within the USSR.Nowhere in Marxist thought was it predicted that Marxists would fall away from a Marxist revolution.

Push-back could be expected from the bourgeoisie, capitalist leaders, imperialists, but not from other Marxists.

The problems that Lenin had to deal with were problems he himself had created. The workers of powerful trade unions did not carry out a revolution against a capitalist-bourgeoisie regime. The Bolsheviks leaped over standard Marxist teachings and deposed an undeveloped capitalist regime. The revolution was led by Marxist revisionists that were soon to call themselves Marxist-Leninists.

Lenin and Trotsky were intellectuals. They were not powerful trade union 'bosses".

Lenin's response to the Western Left was to basically say that he and his followers could not be expected to be bound by any laws or democratic protocols.

Lenin took to writing about his methods. He redefined his dictatorship with great bluntness claiming that his power rested on extreme coercion. He overlooked his intellectual role and claimed that the "proletariat revolution" would and could not take any "prisoners". Western socialists needed to be reminded that no class ever voluntarily gave up its own power.

The problem was that he could not define exactly whom his opposition consisted of. If he did than the true answer was that the opposition was the workers and left wing communists.

Stalin would later use Lenin's arguments to justify the great purges against his own party.

The cults of personality were being developed in the USSR and included Lenin and Stalin. Mussolini in Italy and later Hitler in Germany.

They were "classes" within themselves and opposition was treason.