Why Soviet totalitarianism was not Socialism

There are a number of reasons, not least the impossibility of a barely industrial country, impoverished by hideous and diastrous war, being able to develop a Socialist society without the succcessful capitalist base on which to build.

For me however, a particularly telling point is that both those who bitterly detest the USSR and those wo defend its achievements are in agreement about one central point. That the crucial decisions, for good or evil, from Lenin to Gorbachev, were essentially always in the hands of one man. This is not and cannot ever amount to Socialism.