 Conversely, various Marxist observers—including Western historians Hill and John Rees—argued against the view that Lenin's government was a dictatorship, viewing it instead as an imperfect way of preserving elements of democracy without some of the processes found in liberal democratic states.Ryan contends that the leftist historian Paul Le Blanc "makes a quite valid point that the personal qualities that led Lenin to brutal policies were not necessarily any stronger than in some of the major Western leaders of the twentieth century".Ryan also posits that for Lenin, 'revolutionary' violence was merely a means to an end