ABSTRACT
The economy is fully politicized and, less often noted, the polity is fully "economized". In this sense, Stalinism resembles pre-capitalist state formations. In particular, Stalinism erases the boundaries between the state and civil society. Indeed, Stalinism could be said to have been committed to the eradication of civil society. There are a number of striking similarities, then, between the structure of Stalinism as a domestic political economy, on the one hand, and the structure of the Soviet bloc as a regional hierarchical system, on the other. Stalinism, therefore, is best understood as a two-tiered system combining a Stalinist domestic political economy with a Stalinist regional political economy. Such a two-tiered structure produces parallel domestic and regional dynamics. The domestic structure of Stalinism had the peculiar effect over time of gradually reducing the power of the party and expanding, just as gradually, the power of society.
