Reading:  

Note this is rather extensive as I teach this material in other courses.  I intend to be relatively brief on this topic and treat it mainly from the perspective of the western European Left.  You can be selective but you do need some context.  

Leninism

Secondary -

Albert Lindemann, A History of European Socialism, pp176-178 (on Leninist theory), pp197-206 (on the Bolshevik Revolution and consolidation of power)

Information sheet on the Causes of the 1917 Revolutions

Primary -

Albert Fried and Ronald Sanders (eds), Socialist Thought. A Documentary History

• Lenin, “What Is To Done”, pp458-460 or the online extracts here

• Lenin, “The State and Revolution” (1918), pp471-475 or the online extracts here

• Lenin, April Theses (1917)

Conditions for Membership of Comintern (The Communist International) (1920)

Stalinism

Secondary -

Albert Lindemann, A History of European Socialism, pp257-266, pp273-286

Information sheet on Stalinism in the 1930s

Primary -

Lenin, Testament (1922) (on who should succeed him in the party leadership)

Stalin's defence of rapid industrialisation: Speech Delivered at the First All-Union Conference of Leading Personnel of Socialist Industry February 4, 1931

Stalin, Speech in the Kremlin Palace to Graduates of the Red Army Academy, 4 May 1935 ("Cadres decide everything")

Stalin's analysis of contemporary threats to the Soviet Union, Speech at the Plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, March 3, 1937

Example of the Cult of Personality: Hymn to Stalin

The official line justifying the Purges: The Short Course (extract)

Website

Revelations from the Soviet Archives: an Internet collection of recently released documents

Political Criticisms of Stalinism

Albert Fried and Ronald Sanders (eds), Socialist Thought. A Documentary History

•  Trotsky, “The New Course”, pp491-497

On Stalin's personality:

Svetlana Alliluyeva, Twenty Letters to a Friend (1967) (a psychological insight into Stalin's personality from his daughter)

Nikita Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers (1971) (a psychological insight into Stalin's personality from a close colleague and future leader of the Soviet Union)

Questions on your reading:

Leninism

Lenin, “What Is To Done”

1. What  does Lenin mean by the "vanguard party" and how does he justify its necessity?

Lenin, "The State and Revolution"

1. What does Lenin mean by the "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" and how does he justify its necessity?

2. When and why will the state "wither away" in Lenin's view?

Stalinism

Stalin,  Speech Delivered at the First All-Union Conference of Leading Personnel of Socialist Industry February 4, 1931

1. How does Stalin explain the necessity of rapid industrialisation?

Stalin, Speech at the Plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party 1937

1. What threats are directed against the Soviet Union, according to Stalin?

2. Why is the "class struggle" sharpening in his view?

Continuity between Lenin and Stalin?

Reading Trotsky, Alliluyeva and Khrushchev and with your own knowledge of Russian history and Marxist philosophy, 

1. Assess the extent to which Stalinism can be seen as 

• a product of the Russian environment

• a product of Stalin's personality

• an inevitable outgrowth of Marxism-Leninism

The Schism in the Left

Conditions for Membership of Comintern (The Communist International)  

1. What policies and characteristics of Comintern created such a decisive rupture within the forces of the Left in the interwar period and beyond?