ABSTRACT
Stalinism can partly be explained by the Soviet regime's search to catch up with and overtake the West. During the late Middle Ages, Russia had been isolated from Europe by Mongol occupation. When Russia freed itself from the Mongol yoke, and started to become a European power, it found that it lacked the technology and culture of the West. Furthermore, it was an undeveloped peasant society, embracing an enormous geographical expanse. The challenge was to change and modernise the country. Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, Alexander II, Witte, Stolypin – these leaders were all exercised with the problem of transforming this backward society. Defeats in the Crimean War and the First World War, as well as humiliation in the Russo-Japanese war, were a reminder of the price of failure. In 1917, the Bolsheviks inherited these traditional Russian preoccupations. Stalin thus belonged to a long line of Russian rulers who had to deal with the problem of Russia's development, and he was not alone in using the state to try and force society to embrace ‘progress’ more quickly. It is thus possible to understand Stalin's model of modernisation as having roots in traditional foreign policy considerations (Gerschenkron 1962: 148).
