Stalin advocated the 'autonomisation' of formally independent Soviet republics within a Russian Federation, which could issue economic and financial directives. Lenin criticised the Russian chauvinism of Stalin and offered the nationalities a federal state with Russia as one of the constituent republics. Lenin, the internationalist, won this battle. Hence, at the start of the 'Union of Socialist Soviet Republics' each republic got their right of secession formally guaranteed. However, the USSR  became a highly centralised one-party empire through the 'Communist Party of the Soviet Union'. And in 1928 Stalin broke with Lenin's 'New Economic Policy' which included an open market and small capitalism under state supervision. The national communism of Stalin, who saw the Soviet Union surrounded by hostile bourgeois powers, relied only on itself for survival. Now ruthless collectivisation campaigns, especially in Ukraine, drove numerous peasants to cities where the Russian language was dominant and later millions into a devastating famine.