Actually what they taught us in the mid-80s was exactly the kind of anti-capitalist pro-commujnist crap you're spouting. Said crap bears no actual resemblance to what really happened, but wealth hating liberal NEA members don't consider the truth of how communism rose convenient.
No the bad economy in Russia was NOT caused by captialism. They didn't even have capitalism. Their bad economy was because they had a ruling class that owned almost everything and were inept. Part of the problem with a command economy is that when the person in command is a moron the economy is toast. Add to that the tremendous weight the Czarist lifestyle put on the economy (gold gilt palaces don't pay for themselves you know) and you have ruination ripe for rebellion (a rebellion which had been brewing since shortly before our Civil War and had been dealt with to varying intencities by half a dozen Czars, a couple of whom actually tried moving Russia away from serfdom and toward capitalism, other members of the ruling class didn't like that and helped the rebels for a while... the Russia revolution is really quite facinating and a worthy thing to study).
You don't remember correctly. Stalin killed people to protect himself. He was a blood thirsty dictator who wouldn't allow anyone he thought even had a chance of overthrowing him to live. One of the major groups of people he executed were surviving members of Lenin's revolution, they'd proven able to overthrow a dictator once and he wasn't going to give them a second chance. Now he might have labeled them kulaks, but that's just the kind of lie a blood thirsty dictator tells to make their pograms more palatable to the people.
this sounds like the story of good capitalists like you all:
http://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/k/u.htm Kulaks in WWI: Throughout the early twentieth century kulaks bought communal land where they could, but it was difficult to do so; the communes refused to sell their land despite threats and pressure. During World War I, kulaks came into a new era.
Kulaks bribed local officials to prevent conscription into the army, and lied in wait for the field of opportunity to soon open up. While hundreds of thousands of peasants were sent to the slaughter on the front, kulaks grabbed up the communal land in a free-for-all.
By 1917, the success of kulaks cannot be seen more clearly than in the amount of land they owned: over nine-tenths of Russia's arable land.
The most valuable commodity throughout the war was grain, and the kulaks understood this with absolute clarity: food prices climbed higher than any other commodity during the war. In 1916, food prices accelerated three times higher than wages, despite bumper harvests in both 1915 and 1916. The price of grain in 1916, already at two and a half rubles per pud, was anticipated to raise up to twenty five rubles per pud. Hoping to raise prices, the kulaks hoarded their food surplus as their lands continually increased.
Throughout 1916, the average urban labourer ate between 200 and 300 grams of food a day. In 1917, the urban populations of Russia were allowed to buy only one pound of bread per adult, per day. Workers sometimes went days without food.
As a result of the Soviet Land Decree of October 26, 1917, when the peasants took back their land from the kulaks, food slowly came back into the cities again. Though the Kulaks were overwhelmed by the peasants at home and those returning from the front, many responded later in the year, during the coming Civil War.[...]