" Many observers, including the present author, believe that the Soviet system as it developed under Stalin was a continuation of Leninism, and that the state founded on Lenin's political and ideological principles could only have maintained itself in a Stalinist form; such critics hold, moreover, that 'Stalinism' in the narrow sense, i.e. the system that prevailed until 1953, has not been affected in any essential way by the changes of the post-Stalinist era. "

― Leszek Kołakowski , Main Currents of Marxism: The Founders, the Golden Age, the Breakdown