but the coalition of liberals and moderate socialists brought to power was itself overthrown by the Bolshevik coup d'etat of 25th October 1917. Rule was thenceforth through the communist party, and repression was part of the system, from Lenin to Gorbachev, though most markedly in the Stalin era when the country was brutally industrialized. Economic growth was mixed but by no means unsatisfactory till the 1980s, {18} however, after which all aspects languished until the Gorbachev reforms, which quickly and unexpectedly led to the breakup of the Soviet empire.