ABSTRACT
The postwar history of the Soviet Union is, in many ways, strongly reminiscent of the patterns of prerevolutionary Russia. As these were in most respects the most productive parts of the Soviet Union, the loss for the country as a whole may have been as much as one-quarter of the total prewar wealth. Because so much of what happened in the Soviet Union before and after World War II was directly tied to the person of Stalin, it was to be expected that his death on March 5, 1953, would create some confusion. For most of the existence of the Communist party after the Revolution of 1917, the party wielded a commanding position that was the central feature of the Soviet political system. The great majority of its members had joined the organization after the 1930s, and few of them knew much about the Soviet Union that had existed before World War II.
