Reflections on Stalinism

Reflections on Stalinism PDF

Author: J. Arch Getty

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2024-06-15

Total Pages: 245

ISBN-13: 150177557X

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Reflections on Stalinism distills decades of historical thought and research, bringing together twelve senior scholars of Soviet history who began their careers during the Cold War to examine their views of Stalinism. They present insights into the role of personality in statecraft, the social underpinnings of dictatorship and state terrorism, historians' attachments to their subjects, historical causality, the applicability of Marxist categories to Soviet history, the relationship of Soviet history to post-Soviet Russia, and more. Essays address the transformation of a peasant country into a superpower and the causes and scale of domestic bloodshed. Reflections on Stalinism ultimately tackles an age-old question: Do powerful people make history or are they the product of it?

Stalinism for All Seasons

Stalinism for All Seasons PDF

Author: Vladimir Tismaneanu

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2003-10-15

Total Pages: 412

ISBN-13: 0520237471

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This history of the Romanian Communist Party (RCP) traces its origins as a tiny, clandestine revolutionary organization in the 1920s, to its years in national power from 1944 to 1989, and to the post-1989 metamorphoses.

Stalin's Quest for Gold

Stalin's Quest for Gold PDF

Author: Elena Osokina

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2021-09-15

Total Pages: 461

ISBN-13: 1501758527

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Stalin's Quest for Gold tells the story of Torgsin, a chain of retail shops established in 1930 with the aim of raising the hard currency needed to finance the USSR's ambitious industrialization program. At a time of desperate scarcity, Torgsin had access to the country's best foodstuffs and goods. Initially, only foreigners were allowed to shop in Torgsin, but the acute demand for hard-currency revenues forced Stalin to open Torgsin to Soviet citizens who could exchange tsarist gold coins and objects made of precious metals and gemstones, as well as foreign monies, for foods and goods in its shops. Through her analysis of the large-scale, state-run entrepreneurship represented by Torgsin, Elena Osokina highlights the complexity and contradictions of Stalinism. Driven by the state's hunger for gold and the people's starvation, Torgsin rejected Marxist postulates of the socialist political economy: the notorious class approach and the state hard-currency monopoly. In its pursuit for gold, Torgsin advertised in the capitalist West, encouraging foreigners to purchase goods for their relatives in the USSR; and its seaport shops and restaurants operated semilegally as brothels, inducing foreign sailors to spend hard currency for Soviet industrialization. Examining Torgsin from multiple perspectives—economic expediency, state and police surveillance, consumerism, even interior design and personnel—Stalin's Quest for Gold radically transforms the stereotypical view of the Soviet economy and enriches our understanding of everyday life in Stalin's Russia.

Everyday Stalinism

Everyday Stalinism PDF

Author: Sheila Fitzpatrick

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 1999-03-04

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13: 0195050002

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Focusing on urban areas in the 1930s, this college professor illuminates the ways that Soviet city-dwellers coped with this world, examining such diverse activities as shopping, landing a job, and other acts.

Stalinism Revisited

Stalinism Revisited PDF

Author: Vladimir Tismaneanu

Publisher: Central European University Press

Published: 2009-11-10

Total Pages: 454

ISBN-13: 6155211817

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Deals with the period of takeover and of 'high Stalinism' in Eastern Europe (1945–1955). These years are considered to be fundamentally characterized by institutional and ideological transfers based upon the premise of radical transformism and of cultural revolution. Both a balance-sheet and a politico-historical synthesis that reflects the archival and thematic novelties which came about in the field of communism studies after 1989.

An Ideology in Power

An Ideology in Power PDF

Author: Bertram Wolfe

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-02-17

Total Pages: 406

ISBN-13: 1315303132

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Originally published in 1969 and representing a quarter of a century’s work of one of the USA’s most respected scholars in Soviet affairs, this volume discusses the question of what happens to an ideology in power, by focusing on the evolution and uses of Marxism in Soviet practice. As well as analyzing totalitarian behaviour, the author offers advice for Western policy from analysis of the past.

The Political Thought of Joseph Stalin

The Political Thought of Joseph Stalin PDF

Author: Erik van Ree

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2003-08-27

Total Pages: 440

ISBN-13: 1135786046

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This book presents a comprehensive analysis of the political thought of Joseph Stalin. Making full use of the documentation that has recently become available, including Stalin's private library with his handwritten margin notes, the book provides many insights on Stalin, and also on western and Russian Marxist intellectual traditions. Overall, the book argues that Stalin's political thought is not primarily indebted to the Russian autocratic tradition, but belongs to a tradition of revolutionary patriotism that stretches back through revolutionary Marxism to Jacobin thought in the French Revolution. It makes interesting comparisons between Stalin, Lenin, Bukharin and Trotsky, and explains a great deal about the mindset of those brought up in the Stalinist era, and about the era's many key problems, including the industrial revolution from above, socialist cultural policy, Soviet treatment of nationalities, pre-war and Cold War foreign policy, and the purges.

Late Stalinism

Late Stalinism PDF

Author: Evgeny Dobrenko

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2020-07-14

Total Pages: 585

ISBN-13: 0300252846

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How the last years of Stalin’s rule led to the formation ofan imperial Soviet consciousness In this nuanced historical analysis of late Stalinism organized chronologically around the main events of the period—beginning with Victory in May 1945 and concluding with the death of Stalin in March 1953—Evgeny Dobrenko analyzes key cultural texts to trace the emergence of an imperial Soviet consciousness that, he argues, still defines the political and cultural profile of modern Russia.

Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev: Commissar, 1918-1945

Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev: Commissar, 1918-1945 PDF

Author: Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev

Publisher: Penn State Press

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 1016

ISBN-13: 9780271023328

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Nikita Khrushchev&’s proclamation from the floor of the United Nations that &"we will bury you&" is one of the most chilling and memorable moments in the history of the Cold War, but from the Cuban Missile Crisis to his criticism of the Soviet ruling structure late in his career the motivation for Khrushchev&’s actions wasn&’t always clear. Many Americans regarded him as a monster, while in the USSR he was viewed at various times as either hero or traitor. But what was he really like, and what did he really think? Readers of Khrushchev&’s memoirs will now be able to answer these questions for themselves (and will discover that what Khrushchev really said at the UN was &"we will bury colonialism&"). This is the first volume of three in the only complete and fully reliable version of the memoirs available in English. In this volume, Khrushchev recounts how he became politically active as a young worker in Ukraine, how he climbed the ladder of power under Stalin to occupy leading positions in Ukraine and then Moscow, and how as a military commissar he experienced the war against the Nazi invaders. He vividly portrays life in Stalin's inner circle and among the generals who commanded the Soviet armies. Khrushchev&’s sincere reflections upon his own thoughts and feelings add to the value of this unique personal and historical document. Included among the Appendixes is Sergei Khrushchev&’s account of how the memoirs were created and smuggled abroad during his father&’s retirement.

Stalinism

Stalinism PDF

Author: Sheila Fitzpatrick

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 396

ISBN-13: 0415152348

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First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.