The Political Thought of Joseph Stalin

This study of Stalin's political thought makes full use of documentation that has only recently become available from the former Central Party Archive in Moscow as well as Stalin's private library with his handwritten marginal notes.

Auteur

Erik van Ree is a lecturer at the Institute for East European Studies of the University of Amsterdam. He has published widely on the history of the USSR and on world communism, including books on Stalin's Korean Policy, and on the Soviet Politburo.

Résumé
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.

Contenu

Introduction 1. Jacobinism 2. Marxism, Leninism and the State 3. Proletarian revolution in a backward country 4. Marxist nationalism 5. Stalin. The years before October 6. The years under Lenin 7. Socialism in one country 8. Stalinist economics 9. The sharpening of the class struggle 10. Total unity 11. Stalin and the state 12. The cult of personality 13. Stalin on society, culture and science 14. Socialist in content, national in form 15. Did Stalin 'betray' the world revolution? 16. Revolutionary patriotism 17. The philosophy of revolutionary patriotism Conclusion Bibliography