Reflections on Stalinism

Reflections on Stalinism PDF Author: J. Arch Getty
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 150177557X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 245

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Book Description
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?

Reflections on Stalinism

Reflections on Stalinism PDF Author: J. Arch Getty
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 150177557X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 245

Get Book Here

Book Description
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
ISBN: 0520237471
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 412

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Book Description
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.

Thank You, Comrade Stalin!

Thank You, Comrade Stalin! PDF Author: Jeffrey Brooks
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400843928
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
Thank you, our Stalin, for a happy childhood." "Thank you, dear Marshal [Stalin], for our freedom, for our children's happiness, for life." Between the Russian Revolution and the Cold War, Soviet public culture was so dominated by the power of the state that slogans like these appeared routinely in newspapers, on posters, and in government proclamations. In this penetrating historical study, Jeffrey Brooks draws on years of research into the most influential and widely circulated Russian newspapers--including Pravda, Isvestiia, and the army paper Red Star--to explain the origins, the nature, and the effects of this unrelenting idealization of the state, the Communist Party, and the leader. Brooks shows how, beginning with Lenin, the Communists established a state monopoly of the media that absorbed literature, art, and science into a stylized and ritualistic public culture--a form of political performance that became its own reality and excluded other forms of public reflection. He presents and explains scores of self-congratulatory newspaper articles, including tales of Stalin's supposed achievements and virtue, accounts of the country's allegedly dynamic economy, and warnings about the decadence and cruelty of the capitalist West. Brooks pays particular attention to the role of the press in the reconstruction of the Soviet cultural system to meet the Nazi threat during World War II and in the transformation of national identity from its early revolutionary internationalism to the ideology of the Cold War. He concludes that the country's one-sided public discourse and the pervasive idea that citizens owed the leader gratitude for the "gifts" of goods and services led ultimately to the inability of late Soviet Communism to diagnose its own ills, prepare alternative policies, and adjust to new realities. The first historical work to explore the close relationship between language and the implementation of the Stalinist-Leninist program, Thank You, Comrade Stalin! is a compelling account of Soviet public culture as reflected through the country's press.

Stalin's Millennials

Stalin's Millennials PDF Author: Tinatin Japaridze
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1793641870
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 173

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Book Description
This book examines Joseph Stalin’s increasing popularity in the post-Soviet space, and analyzes how his image, and the nostalgia it evokes, is manipulated and exploited for political gain. The author argues that, in addition to the evil dictator and the Georgian comrade, there is a third portrayal of Stalin—the one projected by the generation that saw the tail end of the USSR, the post-Soviet millennials. This book is not a biography of one of the most controversial historical figures of the past century. Rather, through a combination of sociopolitical commentary and autobiographical elements that are uncommon in monographs of this kind, the attempt is to explore how Joseph Stalin’s complex legacies and the conflicting cult of his irreconcilable tripartite of personalities still loom over the region as a whole, including Russia and, perhaps to an even deeper extent, Koba’s native land—now the independent Republic of Georgia, caught between its unreconciled Soviet past and the potential future within the European Union.

After the Party

After the Party PDF Author: Andy Croft
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781907103476
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
"Twenty years after the demise of the Communist Party of Great Britain, eight former members, all of whom who stayed in the party until the bitter end, reflect here on some of the personal, political and cultural changes of the last twenty years. The paths of Dave Cope, Andy Croft, Alistair Findlay, Stuart Hill, Kate Hudson, Andy Pearmain, Mark Perryman and Lorna Reith have followed very different political trajectories since 1991 - taking them into the Green Party, the Labour Party, the CPB, SLP, Respect and no party at all. But most have remained politically active" (4ème de couv.).

Stalinism Revisited

Stalinism Revisited PDF Author: Vladimir Tismaneanu
Publisher: Central European University Press
ISBN: 9789639776630
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 456

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Book Description
Stalinism Revisited brings together representatives of multiple generations to create a rich examination of the study and practice of Stalinism. While the articles are uniformly excellent, the book's signal contribution is to bring recent research from Eastern European scholars to an English-speaking audience. Thus the volume is not just a "state of the discipline" collection, in which articles are collected to reflect that current situation of scholarship in a given field; instead, this one includes cutting edge scholarship that will prompt more of the same from other scholars in other fields/subfields. I would recommend this book highly to anyone interested in understanding the technology of Stalinism in both thought and practice. Nick Miller Boise State University The Sovietization of post-1945 East-Central Europe---marked by the forceful imposition of the Soviet-type society in the region---was a process of massive socio-political and cultural transformation. Despite its paramount importance for understanding the nature of the communist regime and its legacy, the communist take-over in East Central European countries has remained largely under-researched. Two decades after the collapse of the communist system, Stalinism Revisited brings together a remarkable international team of established and younger scholars, engaging them in a critical re-evaluation of the institutionalization of communist regimes in East-Central Europe and of the period of "high Stalinism." Sovietization is approached not as a fully pre-determined, homogeneous, and monolithic transformation, but as a set of trans-national, multifaceted, and inter-related processes of large-scale institutional and ideological transfers, made up of multiple "takeovers" in various fields. Theoretically minded and empirically sound, the collection adds key elements to our comparative understanding of Stalinist regimes in their various historical permutations. The richness of the source material employed and its comparative scope recommend Stalinism Revisited as a major, synthetic contribution to the study of East-Central Europe's Sovietization. Constantin lordachi Central European University, Budapest

Contending with Stalinism

Contending with Stalinism PDF Author: Lynne Viola
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801487743
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
Resistance has become an important and controversial analytical category for the study of Stalinism. The opening of Soviet archives allows historians an unprecedented look at the fabric of state and society in the 1930s. Researchers long spellbound by myths of Russian fatalism and submission as well as by the very real powers of the Stalinist state are startled by the dimensions of popular resistance under Stalin.Narratives of such resistance are inherently interesting, yet the topic is also significant because it sheds light on its historical surroundings. Contending with Stalinism employs the idea of resistance as a tool to explore what otherwise would remain opaque features of the social, cultural, and political history of the 1930s. In the process, the authors reveal a semi-autonomous world residing within and beyond the official world of Stalinism. Resistance ranged across a spectrum from violent strikes to the passive resistance that was a virtual way of life for millions and took many forms, from foot dragging and negligence to feigned ignorance and false compliance. Contending with Stalinism also highlights the problematic nature of resistance as an analytical category and stresses the ambiguous nature of the phenomenon. The topics addressed include working-class strikes, peasant rebellions, black-market crimes, official corruption, and homosexual and ethnic subcultures.

Stalinism and Nazism

Stalinism and Nazism PDF Author: Henry Rousso
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 0803290004
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
In this volume Europe?s leading modern historians offer new insights into two totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century that have profoundly affected world history?Nazi Germany and the Stalinist Soviet Union. Until now historians have paid more attentionøto the similarities between these two regimes than to their differences. Stalinism and Nazism explores the difficult relationship between the history and memory of the traumas inflicted by Nazi and Soviet occupation in several Eastern European countries in the twentieth century. ø The first part of the volume explores the origins, nature, and organization of Hitler?s and Stalin?s dictatorial power, the manipulation of violence by the state systems, and the comparative power of the dictator?s personal will and the encompassing totalitarian system. The second part examines the legacies of the Nazi and Stalinist regimes in Eastern European countries that experienced both. Stalinism and Nazism features the latest critical perspectives on two of the most influential and deadly political regimes in modern history.

Late Stalinism

Late Stalinism PDF Author: Evgeny Dobrenko
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300252846
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 585

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Book Description
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.

Industry, State, and Society in Stalin's Russia, 1926-1934

Industry, State, and Society in Stalin's Russia, 1926-1934 PDF Author: David R. Shearer
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801483851
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
In an effort to crush the syndicate movement and establish tight political control over the economy, Stalinist leaders intervened with a program of radical reforms. Shearer demonstrates that many professional engineers, planners, and industrial administrators actively supported the creation of a powerful industrial state unhampered by domestic social and economic constraints.