The words Communism and Socialism are from the start often interchangeable and they still remain easily confused in modern use. The earliest recorded use of 'socialist' makes the point. An author writing in the Co-operative Magazine in 1827 states that 'the chief question between the modern Political Economists and the Communionists or Socialists is whether it is more beneficial that capital should be individual or in common'.
The holding of possessions in common has been a characteristic of utopian communities in many periods of history. Indeed ever since the first monks, the rejection of personal property has been an ideal in many religions.
In 17th-century England the new politics of the Commonwealth encourage dreamers such as Gerrard Winstanley and his sect of Diggers to insist that the land belongs to the people (though when they begin digging up sections of it for their own use, in 1649-50, they receive short shrift from other interested parties). In the French Revolution the extreme radicals, such as Babeuf, envisage the end of private ownership.
But it is in the early 19th century that socialism begins to find practical forms - most notably in the achievement of Robert Owen at New Lanark.
Instead the exercise of dictatorship, pioneered enthusiastically by Lenin and carried to far more extreme lengths by Stalin, has come to seem almost the point of the exercise. The Russian people are better educated than in former days, within the doctrinaire mindset of the Communist party, and years of mass misery have made possible an industrial miracle. But drab and terrified conformity has been, as yet, the most evident result of the great experiment.
The challenge of World War II unites Russia in a way that Communism has failed to. It also leaves the nation much better placed than previously to foster world revolution. Or to achieve Russian dominance? The distinction will become increasingly blurred.
Read more: http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?historyid=aa58#ixzz3zY4laoLv