Introduction

To write a book about Stalin’s political thought is a risky project. During the many years when I was occupied with it I was routinely treated to the ironic question: “Did he, then, have any political thought at all?” Decades after his leader’s death, Lazar Kaganovich said: “before anything else, Stalin was an ideological person. For him the idea was the main thing.” ¹ But the faithful Kaganovich, one of the Soviet leaders most responsible for the cult of Stalin’s personality, is not exactly an impartial witness. Few would agree with him that his boss had been a man of ideas. To focus a study of Joseph Stalin on his ideas is, therefore, a project of which the very relevance should be more or less shown in advance.