Repression and Terror: Stalin in Control During the second half of the 1920s, Joseph Stalin set the stage for gaining absolute power by employing police repression against opposition elements within the Communist Party. The machinery of coercion had previously been used only against opponents of Bolshevism, not against party members themselves. The first victims were Politburo members Leon Trotskii, Grigorii Zinov'ev, and Lev Kamenev, who were defeated and expelled from the party in late 1927. Stalin …showed first 75 words of 2620 total…

…showed last 75 words of 2620 total…was only partially changed. Only under Mikhail S. Gorbachev was a more resolute attempt made to dismantle the totalitarian regime that was formed under Stalin and modernized under Leonid I. Brezhnev. However,the depth of the crisis that affected the whole structure of society and the state, as well as the misguided methods, subjectivism, and dilettantism of the new reformers, led in 1991 to the failure of most of the reforms and the resignation of Gorbachev.