The Soviet experience from 1918 to 1921 represents a utopian experiment with socialism. The Bolshevik revolutionaries attempted to implement a Marxian social order. Examination of the texts of Lenin, Bukharin, Trotsky, and various other party documents of the time demonstrates the intent to build socialism immediately. The Bolshevik cadre possessed a strong faith in the imminent world revolution and therefore believed in the Trotskyite concept of "permanent revolution."¹ As Trotsky pointed out, "The Bolsheviks categorically rejected as a caricature the idea imputed to them by the Mensheviks of creating a "peasant socialism" in a backward country. The dictatorship of the proletariat in Russia was for the Bolsheviks a bridge to a revolution in the West. The problem of a socialist transformation of society was proclaimed to be in its very essence international."²