You raise a fair point. Stalin himself was a paranoid, power-hungry psychopath. I did not intend to argue that Stalin himself expected to bring about a communi

You raise a fair point. Stalin himself was a paranoid, power-hungry psychopath. I did not intend to argue that Stalin himself expected to bring about a communist utopia. It's more likely that he was a straight-out liar. Still, I think the USSR's government and society could only function, in the long run, if it offered progress in line with its promises, just as the US can only function by promoting a mythology of individual freedom and exceptional destiny. The promise made to the people was that economic totalitarianism would end. It never did, but we still don't know if that was because the USSR was irredeemably corrupt, or because the country was attacked by some of the world's most egregious assholes (the czarists, then the Nazis, then the capitalists).