ABSTRACT
Stalinism is a vague term. When not being employed as a pejorative description of all things Soviet, it is used as a shorthand way of designating official ideas, policies and practices in the Soviet Union in the long period of Joseph Stalin’s rule. This usage conventionally emphasises the peculiarities of those years. Countless books have appeared on the malignant personality of Stalin; indeed some authors have suggested that the peculiarities of governance between the late 1920s and 1953 can be traced predominantly to the paranoid, vengeful and conspiratorial mentality of the Party General Secretary. This has not been the opinion of all writers. Yet most works on the 1930s and 1940s concur in stressing that the Soviet state order under Stalin was importantly different from the forms it took both before and after his despotism. Examples abound. Under Stalin it was normal procedure to arrest, torture and kill millions of persons who had not broken the law or spoken against the state order. Under Stalin, too, central political life lacked broad consultation. Under Stalin, institutions were locked in perpetual rivalry with each other and his individual will shaped the outcome of most supreme affairs of state.
