6 SOCIAL SCIENTIST construction can begin in a single backward country like Russia, its completion had to await proletarian revolutions in the major developed capitalist countries. He thus saw the need for a prolonged period of peaceful co-existence between the single socialist country that existed then and the large number of capitalist countries that encircled it. He found that socialism can be victorious on a world scale only if socialism wins in its competition with capitalism in economic production. Building a socialist society in the Soviet Union was thus the key to the international transition of capitalism to socialism. Did Lenin's successors act according to the directive issued by him? Academicians and political activists in the Soviet Union assert that they did not. Mentioning Stalin by name, they accused him of betraying Lenin's legacy. No serious student of the economy and polity of the Soviet Union when its leadership was in the hands of Stalin however can ignore the epoch-making victories won by the Soviet Union in the three decades when Stalin was at its head. Without in any way minimising the negative aspects of Stalin's leadership, let us catalogue here the great achievements of that period. Firstly, it was at that time that the Soviet Union recorded breathtaking developments in economic construction. In the matter of a single decade, the Soviet Union had such industrial, agricultural and all-round development as had taken several decades for the capitalist countries to achieve. The advances registered during the First and Second Five Year Plans were so impressive that a large number of bourgeois intellectuals in capitalist countries and national revolutionary activists in colonial countries were attracted towards planned economy. In our own country, it was the 'Soviet experiment' that prompted the intellectual-administrator, the late M. Visweswarayya, to write a book under the title 'Planning in India'. Never before in history had such a development taken place and never had so many millions been attracted towards socialism. Secondly, supported by these epoch-making advances in economic construction, the Soviet Red Army, the State and its people were able to win such a resounding military victory over the forces of fascism in Europe and militarism in Asia that democrats and champions of peace world over were attracted towards the Soviet Union and the socialist system. The economic development of the thirties and the military victories of the forties made the Soviet Union a force to reckon with. It was this that made the Soviet Union, in the subsequent period, a 'super' power, approximately equal to the mightiest capitalist power in the world, the United States. Thirdly, through the Soviet State and through the Communist International (till the latter was dissolved in 1943), the Soviet leadership was able to translate the Leninist slogan 'Workers and oppressed peoples of the world, unite' into a reality. It was in this period that gigantic revolutionary movements developed in China, the