Lenin was very ruthless, but I think it's a bit fairer to say that it was more out of necessity rather than political greed. Or at least, it was a bit easier to use that excuse. All that Communist political theory is nice and all, as well as the ideal of fighting for the common man, but once you have an actual country to run, and your main concern is just feeding your people and waging a war, then your priorities shift. So one example was famine in Ukraine. Both Lenin and Stalin faced famines in Ukraine, both being partly caused by the force grain seizures the Communists were doing as under the War Communism campaign. However, in the case of Lenin, the cause was also a gigantic civil war taking farmers away from their farms. When Lenin was faced with the prospect of millions starving, he reached out to the international community to help, and the Red Cross set up a relief agency led by Herbert Hoover, who successfully saved the lives of millions of Ukrainians. He let foreigners into the country, even though they were leaking information out as a bonus. Stalin chose to deny the famine in the 30's, and in fact caused it. He did not allow any foreign organizations to set foot and did his best to cover it up. Stalin saw how much could be done with this kind of War Communism rhetoric, and he applied it in peacetime to try to get to his political goals.