Spin Dictators: The Changing Face of Tyranny in the 21st Century

Abstract

ments reflect a multifarious and divided society. A contribution to the uses of history and the studies of collective memory, this last chapter examines the ways in which a society deals and comes to terms with a greatly complex and traumatic past. Revisioning Stalin and Stalinism, a collection of well-written and informative but somewhat disparate ten essays, sheds some new light on the Soviet leader—his flawed personality, his system of beliefs, his undeniable influence and power, and some of his political choices. However, the book only supplements, but does not replace more general studies of the man himself, his Weltanschauung, and his regime, like Graeme Gill’s Stalinism (1990), Evan Mawdsley’s The Stalin Years (1998), David L. Hoffmann’s The Stalinist Era (2018), Mark Edele’s Debates on Stalinism (2020), and Ronald G. Suny’s Red Flag Wounded: Stalinism and the Fate of the Soviet Experiment (2020), to name only a few of the best studies that offer interested readers a much more complete portrait of Stalin and Stalinism.