"After the first severe disaster and defeat at the front Stalin thought that this was the end. In one of his speeches in those days he said: 'All that Lenin created we have lost forever...'

After this Stalin, for a long time actually ...ceased to do anything whatever..."

(Nikita S. Krushchev: 'The Secret Speech to the Closed Session of the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union'; Nottingham; 1976; p. 53).