ABSTRACT
STALINISM grew out of, even as it destroyed, a movement that had been deeply attached to the letter of Marxism. The older leaders of the Stalinist movement, who had once known what it meant to live in a non-totalitarian atmosphere, were trained in a school of exegetics that sharpened wits through prolonged polemics over the meaning of Marxist doctrine. In the world of their youth, a ready capacity to cite Marxist classics, and to cite them with some relevance, could bring prestige and political preferment. But the new Stalinist functionaries, those who were themselves products of Stalinism and had never lived in any other milieu, showed very little interest in Marxist or any other form of speculative thought. They no longer needed to engage in debates with brilliant opposition leaders, as Stalin had once done.
