The discussion turns to Joseph Stalin and his relationship with the legacy of Leninism. Stalin was a more "ideologically flexible" and savvy political operator than Trotsky, who was relentlessly focused on immediate and continuous revolution. While both Lenin and Trotsky employed political violence, the terror under Stalin was a different phenomenon because much of it was directed at high-ranking members of the Communist Party and the secret police in the Great Purge. The purges were motivated by Stalin's paranoia and the need to find scapegoats for the regime's failure to deliver prosperity and freedom. The assassination of Trotsky in 1940 is often seen as wrapping up the Great Terror, though arrests and executions continued.