Guided Questions and Historians’ Debate
Stalinism
Robert Tucker (Princeton U. 1970s)
Stalin’s Neo-Tsarist Marxism” or Stalin was continuation of autocratic rulers of Tsarist Russia and tactics similar to
Ivan the Terrible or Stalin's own "compulsive psychological need, born of neurosis, to prove himself a revolutionary
hero of Lenin-like proportions.”
Stalinist revolution from above used destructive or repressive means for what was, both in intent and in reality, a
constructive (as well as destructive) process.... Stalinism as revolution from above was a state-building process, the
construction of a power ful, highly centralized, bureaucratic, military-industrial Soviet Russian state1
Moshe Lewin (1985)
Situates Stalinism historically - emphasizing process over structure: "Stalinism is one phase of a chain of phases or
'models' through which the Soviet political system has passed.... [It] is one phase - a particularly virulent one,
perhaps even 'pathological,' which developed and then passed away almost at the same time as its founder. The
broader frame- work remained, however, a more complex and more durable breed” 2
The Stalinist polity was a "military-feudal" dictatorship - the revolutionary social changes resulted in a powerful
authoritarian impulse - "a social structure breeding authoritarianism." A second authoritarian model also
emerged, "bureaucratic in its attitudes, but not based intrinsically on coercion; oligarchic but opposed to
capricious autocracy," and it was this model that "would take over and considerably reshape the system after
Stalin's death." Trotskyist critique is, ironically, more appropriate to the post-Stalin than to the Stalin period. The
latter was less rule by bureaucrats than a (yes, totalitarian) personal autocracy that sought to swallow everything.3
Marshall Shatz (1986)4
Stalinism must be seen as a logical outcome of the historical course Russia had been following since 1917, the final
phase of a bitter rebellion against property and privilege which finally brought into positions of leadership
representatives of precisely the classes in whose name the October Revolu- tion had been carried out.... [This]
marked a fulfillment of the 'democratic' principles of the October Revolution - a fulfillment, be it stressed, not the
fulfillment, for had the times and the leaders been different, the costs, timing and methods might well have been
different also
Sheila Fitzpatrick (1999)5
Stalinism often connotes an ideology and /or a political system – here it is shorthand for the complex of institution,
structures and rituals that made up the habitat of the Soviet citizen in the Stalin era. Communist Party rule,
Marxist-Leninist ideology, rampant bureaucracy, leader cults, state control, social engineering, promotion of
workers, stigmatization of “class enemies:, police surveillance, terror etc., where people at every level sought to
protect themselves and obtain scarce goods were all part of Stalinism. The 1930s saw the development of much of
the distinctive Stalinist habitat, much of which survived into the post-Stalin era right up to Gorbachev’s perestroika
in the 1980s.
1
Henry Reichman. Reconsidering "Stalinism" (Review) Theory and Society, Vol. 17, No. 1 (Jan., 1988), pp. 57-89. (Quoting Tucker)
Moshe Lewin. "Society, State, and Ideology During the First Five-Year Plan," in The Making of the Soviet System: Essays on the History of
Interwar Russia (New York: Pantheon, 1985), 237-238.
3
Reichman 1988 pp. 57-89. (Quoting Lewin)
4 Marshall Shatz. "Stalin, the Great Purge, and Russian History: A New Look at the 'New Class,'" The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East
European Studies, 305:30.
5 Sheila Fitzpatrick. Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times–Soviet Russia in the 1930s. (New York: Oxford University Press,
1999), p. 3-4
2
Purges and Terror
Sheila Fitzpatrick (1999)6
Terror – meaning extralegal state violence against groups and randomly chosen citizen – was so frequently used
that it must be regarded as a systemic characteristic of Stalinism in the 1930s. Kulaks, priests, Nepmen, and
“bourgeoise specialists” were the chosen victims at the beginning of the decade and “former people” were
targeted after Kirov’s death ending in the Great Purges of the Communist elites. Its impact was greater, at least for
the urban population. . . Whether Stalin and the others literally believed in the conspiracies is a hard question to
answer – Stalin wrote as if he did believe. But this accusations probably represented psychological rather than
literal truth. But the leaders hoped the people would take them literally and this was often the case.
Orlando Figes (2007)
Stalin’s campaign to intimidate the population had no moral limits. There were disheartening public letters of
denunciation, “formulaic notices printed in their thousands in the Soviet press.” One read: “I, Nikolai Ivanov,
renounce my father, an ex-priest, because for many years he deceived the people by telling them that God exists,
and that is the reason I am severing all my relations with him.” Young people felt the need to break with their past,
often claiming that their parents were dead or had run away as a way of avoiding “the stigma of their origins.”
There were parents who implored their children to submit such letters in order to ensure access to higher
education or professional advancement. 7
Robert Service (2005)8
“By playing with the fate of his subordinates, he risked destabilizing the whole state order as had happened in
1937-1938. The institutions controlling society, the economy and culture needed to maintain their authority. . . .
Institutions certainly mattered. But they received their orders without being able to amend the contents. . . the
leaders of each institution were in post solely at his whim and [were] mere extensions of Stalin’s declared wishes.
Politics in any generally accepted sense had ceased. An administrative behemoth ran the USSR whose master was
the pockmarked little psychopath. According to such imagery, Stalin was totalitarianism in human form.”
Collectivization & the Five Year Plans
Sheila Fitzpatrick (1982)9
These actions produced immediate outrage and chaos in the countryside. Rather than hand over their animals,
many peasants slaughtered them on the spot or rushed to the nearest town to sell them. . . Officials were often
beaten, stoned or shot at by unseen assailants as they approached or departed from villages. . . The regime
reacted in two ways. The OGPU (successor to the Cheka and the GPU) came to arrest the expropriated kulaks and
other troublemakers and organized mass deportations to Siberia, the Urals and the north. And second, the party
backed away and blamed local authorities for exceeding instructions.
Robert Service (2005)10
“Dizzy with Success (a speech published in Pravda in 1930) involved gargantuan hypocrisy. Although he was
primarily culpable for the recent acceleration, Stalin did not admit blame. For a whole year he had goaded party
officials to bully peasants into collective farms [and] issued fearsome directives on dekulalisation. . . But he had a
highly developed instinct for self-preservation. Embitterment against him was intense in society. The time had
come to place the blame on those who had faithfully implemented his wishes.”
Yalta and Potsdam
6
Fitzpatrick 1999 p.7, 21
Orlando Figes. The Whispers. (New York: Metropolitan/Henry Holt, 2007)
8 Robert Service. Stalin: A Biography. (Cambridge: Belknap Press-Harvard, 2005) pp. 537-538.
9 Shelia Fitzpatrick. The Russian Revolution 1917-1932. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982) pp. 125-126.
10
Service 271-272.
7
Robert Service (2005)11
“Clever though he was, Stalin was no diplomatic genius. Yet the Big Three had conflicting interests and he took
advantage. Stalin had been given his inch and he aimed to take a mile. . . [After the death of FDR]. . . Stalin had
enjoyed being taken seriously as a politician by Churchill and Roosevelt for the duration of the hostilities.”
Heir to Lenin & Bolshevik Revolution
Sheila Fitzpatrick (1982)12
The Orthodox Soviet approach has always stressed continuity, perceiving the political system of the Stalin era as
Socialist (although post-1956 writings admit “distortions” of Socialism accompanying Stalin’s cult-of-personality)
and thus a legitimate and historically inevitable outcome of the October Revolution. The orthodox Western
approach also stressed continuity, though classified the system as totalitarian dictatorship rather than Socialism.
But there have be recent doubts about the continuity – Western scholars have questioned assumption that
Stalinism was a logical or necessary outcome of original Bolshevikism while Soviet Marxists have attempted to
rescue Lenin and the Revolution for the odium of responsibility for Stalin’s terror.
Sheila Fitzpatrick (1982)13
“It was also Stalin’s innovation to use the secret police against Communist political opponents and in the Great
Purge, against the Communist elite as a whole . . . This was not wholly without roots in earlier Bolshevik tradition.
Lenin had no inhibitions about arresting non-Communist political opponents. . . Under Lenin, a sharp distinction
was drawn between opposition from outside the party and dissidence within it.”
Robert Service (2005) On Art
Stalin, like every communist, insisted that culture was not confined to the poems of Puskin, but covered literacy,
numeracy, hygiene, shelter, food conscientiousness and efficiency. There was almost a religious ecstasy in political
sermons he and his fellow leaders delivered on the “cultural front.” Writers were designated as “engineers of
human souls.” (p. 299)
Sheila Fitzpatrick (1982) 14:154) For historians, however, there is still a great deal to be said for emphasizing
continuity, . . . but [considering the Stalinist 1930s] in terms of the preceding era of revolution – on one hand we
can discern processes of consolidation, routinization and imposition of order on a disrupted society on the other
hand we can indentify residual “revolutionary” elements that produce further disruptoion and undermine the
process of stabilization. In historical terms, the Stalin era was the outcome of the Russian Revolution – not the
intended, inevitable, or desirable outcome, no doubt, but the actual outcome, the only one that exists. Stalinism
(regardless of how we define that term) represented a conclusion or settlement of the Russian Revolution. The
question is, what kind of settlement?
11
Service 467-468
Fitzpatrick 1982 p. 154.
13 Fitzpatrick 1982 p. 156.
14
Fitzpatrick 1982 p 147
12