ABSTRACT
Can Stalinism be adequately defined? Elaborate early attempts were made to explain the phenomenon and its period, ranging from the crude model-making of Friedrich and Brzezinski (linking it to the genus of totalitarianism), to Sartre’s intricate politicophilosophical analysis. 1 None of these was especially successful, as most of these efforts were ultimately limited by the inability to find the balance between the man, the system that he presided over and the practical aspects of the exercise of power during this distinctive period. More recent work on the subject has added important dimensions to our understanding of the riddle of Stalinism, but the riddle nonetheless remains. The study of Stalinism has, beyond the work of the older totalitarian school and distinctive treatments such as that by the existentialist Sartre, split into the ‘traditionalists’, ‘neo-traditionalists’ and ‘revisionists’. ‘Which one of these’, concludes Sheila Fitzpatrick (a scholar very much at the heart of recent scholarly debate on Stalinism in the post-Soviet era), ‘will become the dominant paradigm of scholarship…is anybody’s guess’. 2 Invariably, an examination of Stalinism boils down to essences, for, as Ian Kershaw and Moshe Lewin put it, ‘in human affairs only entities with a history are subject to theorization and are definable’. 3 The historical tableau associated with Stalin and his regime is vast, and touches on virtually every aspect of human existence in the Soviet Union. And yet frustratingly simple questions still arise in studying it, such as, for example, ‘How did Stalin rule?’ 4
