ABSTRACT
Bolshevik victory in Russia’s civil war had fateful implications not only for Russia, but for the one-third of mankind subjected to Stalinist regimes by the 1950s: the Soviet empire naturally came to dominate the Eurasian landmass; after 1922 the international communist movement was systematically ‘Bolshevized’, to use the official jargon; and the awesome ‘triumphs’ of Stalinism rather queered the pitch for more humane socialisms. As Orwell rightly observed in his ‘Preface’ to a Ukrainian edition of Animal Farm in 1947, ‘destruction of the Soviet myth’ was ‘essential’ for ‘a revival of the socialist movement’ (Crick, 1980, 309). But, contrary to what determinists tell us, Stalin’s ascendancy wasn’t the inevitable outcome of inescapable economic, ideological, or military imperatives. As late as April 1929 even Stalin acknowledged that there were less draconian alternatives to his chosen policies (Stalin, 1952–5T, vol. 12, 66–7).
