Revisioning Stalin And Stalinism Complexities Contradictions And Controversies James Ryan Susan Grant Editors by James Ryan; Susan Grant (editors) 9781350122949, 9781350122994, 1350122947, 1350122998 instant download after payment.

This thought-provoking collection of essays, assembled in honour of renowned historian Geoffrey Roberts, analyses the complex, multi-faceted, and even contradictory nature of Stalinism and its representations. This volume ‘revisions’ Stalin in his various guises – despot and diplomat, soldier and statesman, rational bureaucrat and paranoid politician – and explores the complex picture that this created in Russia during the period. 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; and new perspectives on the cult of personality.
The Stalinist regime in the USSR was characterised by enormous complexity and contradiction. Committed to a vision of the complete emancipation of humanity and the onset of global communism, the Soviet state was rendered almost dysfunctional on the eve of the Second World War by waves of destructive violent purges. And yet, under the leadership of Joseph Stalin, the USSR withstood invasion and defeated Nazi Germany. It strove, unsuccessfully, to create a lasting peace in Europe, although in the process it contributed to a decades-long division of much of the world into ‘East’ and ‘West’.
Revisioning Stalin and Stalinism introduces and intervenes in thematic controversies that characterize the political and cultural-political history of the Stalin period in the USSR and in the Soviet-controlled Eastern Bloc. What is distinctive about the volume is the broad lens that it applies to the significance of Stalin and Stalinism as a study in political leadership. The essays contained here foreground the complex, multi-faceted, and often contradictory nature of Stalin, Stalinism, and Stalinist-style leadership and their representations. The volume ‘revisions’ Stalin and Stalinism in the particular sense that it underlines and captures these complexities. It also considers the ramifications of Stalinism outside the Soviet borders, especially in Central and Eastern Europe, and the transnational entanglements that shaped and were shaped by the Stalinist form of governance. Three important areas of debate are examined: controversies of Stalin’s leadership role; Stalin, Stalinism, and the Cold War; and new perspectives on the cult of personality. By way of conclusion, the place of Stalin and Stalinism in Russia today is explained.