In carrying on the revolution Stalin became the interpreter of Marxism-Leninism. Under his rule the state, which Marx had visualized as “withering away,” became even stronger, an agent of sheer oppression. The army, navy, secret police, and all political structures of the state grew ever more powerful and permanent. Slave labor camps multiplied. Soviet society became ironclad, more rigid than under the most autocratic Czar. Army officials, Party henchmen, industrial managers, all emerged as classes, each jealous of the other. The “workingman,” whom Marx had extolled, was now an inferior class, exploited and downtrodden. Stalin carried to the extreme Lenin’s concepts of the Party as a fanatical, disciplined group. To Stalin the Party was not only a tool to seize and maintain power but also a method of liquidating all personal opposition and a means of educating the masses in the communist way of life. The Party, for this reason, was kept “pure,” meaning completely loyal, disciplined, and blindly obedient. Party schools, cadre training, and regimented discipline were needed to saturate the members in communism. Weaklings were purged, expelled and exiled to Siberia, or executed. In Soviet Russia, and all her satellites, the Party was constantly “Bolshevized”—made “more perfect in communism.” One result of this insistent demand for discipline under Stalin was the increasing crystallization of Marxism-Leninism—already a harsh and regimented code—into an even more rigid, static, and often sterile body of doctrine. Like a shrinking garment, communist doctrine pressed ever more tightly on communists everywhere. Every action now had to be “justified” by theory. If the theory didn’t fit, then it had to be reinterpreted. To deviate was to court disaster. Stalin, though not so good a theorist as Lenin, liked to pose as Marxism-Leninism’s “expert” interpreter. This ossification of communist doctrine, under which the individual was afraid to take any initiative, contributed largely to the violent reaction against Stalin after his death. His successors realized that _some_ breathing room was absolutely essential, although during Stalin’s reign they were content to serve, without protest so far as the record shows, as the executors of his policies. Stalin also identified communism with nationalism and imperialism: _Russian_ nationalism and _Russian_ imperialism. To him, communism seemed an ideal vehicle for Russian world conquest, and so, once communism was firmly entrenched in Russia, he embarked on a policy curiously similar to that of Czarist imperialists like Peter the Great and Catherine the Great.