This thought-provoking collection of essays analyses the complex, multi-faceted, and even contradictory nature of Stalinism and its representations.
Stalinism was an extraordinarily repressive and violent political model, and yet it was led by ideologues committed to a vision of socialism and international harmony. The essays in this volume stress the complex, multi-faceted, and often contradictory nature of Stalin, Stalinism, and Stalinist-style leadership, and. explore the complex picture that emerges. Broadly speaking, three important areas of debate are examined, united by a focus on political leadership:
* The key controversies surrounding Stalin's leadership role
* A reconsideration of Stalin and the Cold War
* New perspectives on the cult of personality
Revisioning Stalin and Stalinism is a crucial volume for all students and scholars of Stalin's Russia and Cold War Europe.
Author(s): James Ryan, Susan Grant
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Year: 2020
Language: English
Pages: 264
City: London
Cover page
Halftitle page
Title page
Copyright page
Dedication
Contents
Notes on contributors
Acknowledgements
Note on transliteration
Introduction: Revisioning Stalin and Stalinism
Interpreting Stalinism: Controversies and contestations
Part One The Controversial Vozhd’: Stalin as Leader and Statesman
1 The many lives of Joseph Stalin: Writing the biography of a ‘monster’
The first draft: The Stalin cult
Breaking the Manichaean binary
Retrieving the historical Stalin
Personal reflections on writing a biography of Stalin
2 Stalin’s purge of the Red Army and misperception of security threats
Civil war and military vulnerabilities
The 1920s: Dangers in peacetime
The Great Terror and military purge
3 Stalin and the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939: The new historiography
Historiographical currents, East and West: 1936–91
Historiography since the end of the Cold War
4 Brute force and genius: Stalin as war leader
Overture at Tsaritsyn
Geopolitics and geostrategy
Stalin and the pre-war development of the Soviet armed forces
The cruel romance with Germany: Stalin’s motives
Shock and denial
Penitence and resilience
Part Two Challenging Stalinist Models: Cults of Personality
5 The Stalin cult in comparative context
Forms and functions: Iconography
Biography and history
Rituals and cult practices
Post-mortem cults
Conclusion
6 From heroic lion to streetfighter: Historical legacies and the leader cult in twentieth-century Hungary
Persistence, change, legacy
Monarchy, nationalism and the leader cult
Hungarian communism and the leader cult
Post-communist legacies: The return of the cult
Conclusions
Part Three New Ways of Understanding the Stalinist System: The Cold War
7 Revisioning Stalin’s Cold War
Histories
Novelty
Realpolitik
Moralism
A broader landscape
Villain
Reflections
8 Working towards the Vozhd’? Stalin and the peace movement
Post-war Soviet foreign policy
Emergence of the peace movement
Stalin: Man of peace
The Stockholm Appeal
The World Peace Council
Vienna peace congress
After Stalin
Conclusion
9 Constructing a confession: The language and psychology of interrogations in Stalinist Czechoslovakia
The interrogation department: Powers, structure, purpose
On attaining confessions: Between torture, psychology, and language
Language and ‘question protocols’
Conclusion
Part Four In Lieu of an Epilogue
10 Reckoning with the past: Stalin and Stalinism in Putin’s Russia
Re-Stalinization of the ruling elite?
Re-Stalinization of Russian society?
Reckoning with repression
Conclusions
Notes
Select Bibliography
Geoffrey Roberts Select Bibliography
Index
