Surprised nobody here has yet mentioned the Kronstadt Rebellion. Those here who believe Lenin was a genuine communist and not merely a totalitarian dictator who dishonestly used communist rhetoric to further his own ends initially included the people who engaged in the Kronstadt Rebellion.
This rebellion occurred after the end of the Russian Civil War.
The goal of the rebellion was to return the Communist Party to its stated aims including elected soviets and away from the dictatorship it was setting up. These were the specific demands:
1.In view of the fact that the present Soviets do not express the will of the workers and peasants, immediately to hold new elections by secret ballot, the pre-election campaign to have full freedom of agitation among the workers and peasants;
2.To establish freedom of speech and press for workers and peasants, for Anarchists and left Socialist parties;
3.To secure freedom of assembly for labor unions and peasant organizations;
4.To call a nonpartisan Conference of the workers, Red Army soldiers and sailors of Petrograd, Kronstadt, and of Petrograd Province, no later than March 10, 1921;
5.To liberate all political prisoners of Socialist parties, as well as all workers, peasants, soldiers, and sailors imprisoned in connection with the labor and peasant movements;
6.To elect a Commission to review the cases of those held in prisons and concentration camps;
7.To abolish all politotdeli (political bureaus) because no party should be given special privileges in the propagation of its ideas or receive the financial support of the Government for such purposes. Instead there should be established educational and cultural commissions, locally elected and financed by the Government;
8.To abolish immediately all zagryaditelniye otryadi (Bolshevik units armed to suppress traffic and confiscate foodstuffs);
9.To equalize the rations of all who work, with the exception of those employed in trades detrimental to health;
10.To abolish the Bolshevik fighting detachments in all branches of the Army, as well as the Bolshevik guards kept on duty in mills and factories. Should such guards or military detachments be found necessary, they are to be appointed in the Army from the ranks, and in the factories according to the judgment of the workers;
11.To give the peasants full freedom of action in regard to their land, and also the right to keep cattle, on condition that the peasants manage with their own means; that is, without employing hired labor;
12.To request all branches of the Army, as well as our comrades the military kursanti, to concur in our resolutions;
13.To demand that the press give the fullest publicity to our resolutions;
14.To appoint a Traveling Commission of Control;
15.To permit free kustarnoye (individual small scale) production by one's own efforts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kronstadt_rebellionIn the end, their naivete in believing Lenin led them to fail to press their initial advantage (control of the port and battleship) and to seek negotiations, which gave time for Lenin and Trotsky to bring the Red Army down on them and led to full scale fighting and death on both sides and ultimately imprisonment for most of the surviving rebels.
This evidence of backlash though from sailors and others who had been committed communists, the modern equivalent, I suppose being a midterm election, is what led Lenin to backtrack and to implement the NEP.
In regards to the initial industrialization of the Soviet Union (this is Stalin, not Lenin), I dispute it was that great of a success. Even leaving aside that the output figures for steel and the like are certainly exaggerated, it's not that big a deal because:
1.It was done at heavy cost. Stalin confiscated the agricultural output to buy western equipment to increase heavy industrial output. This led to mass starvation in the Soviet Union. Czarist Prime Minister Stolypin had the same idea but through incentives rather than the brute force employed by Stalin.
2.Unlike in the west, The Soviet Union did not have to invent the wheel. It's a lot easier to develop a steel industry once the template has been created and the Soviet engineers could learn from and avoid the mistakes made in the west.
3.A command economy is good at mass heavy industry because it could focus (nearly) all effort on the output of a handful of goods. At the same time the Soviet Union was doing this, Soviet consumers (AKA the people) were suffering from a lack of consumer goods.
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