Stalinism

Stalinism is a totalitarian branch of socialism developed and implemented in the Soviet Union by Joseph Stalin. After his death, the worst forms of totalitarian rule were condemned by Nikita Khrushchev.

Trotskyist perspective

Leon Trotsky has developed a theory, explaining Stalinism in Marxian terms. According to him, Stalinism was not a form of socialism because of lack of any democratic workers' control. Instead, the system was run by a parasitic bureaucracy whcih did not constitute a social class on it own. The bureaucracy eventually initiated a transition to capitalism, to ensure their own domination in the economy.

Stalinist USSR was therefore described by Trotsky as a degenerated workers' state. States based on the Soviet model are sometimes descibed as deformed workers' states because they have never been healthy workers' states.