The nature of Stalinisml has always been a highly contentious question, charged with political significance for almost all disputants. In the early Cold War period, when the political charge was most explosive, Soviet and Western commentators shared the assumption that what had emerged in the Soviet Union in the 1930s was both the historically inevitable outcome of the Bolshevik Revolution and a basically permanent and immutable new "Soviet system," though they disagreed vehemently about its nature. From the Soviet standpoint, the revolution had produced socialism. From the western standpoint (excluding a small group of Soviet sympathizers), the product was totalitarian dictatorship. From both, the system was the antithesis of Western democracy and was its major ideological competitor on the international scene. In the decades after Stalin's death, changes in the Soviet Union led both sides to reassess their judgments, particularly on the immutability of the Soviet system. Some features of Stalin's regime were repudiated or criticized in the Soviet Union, and there were Soviet attempts to separate the legitimate "Leninist" outcome of the Revolution from the temporary "excesses" of the Stalin period. In the West, revision of Cold War premises in other areas finally prompted Sovietologists to reexamine the totalitarian model, which now came under criticism for inherent political bias as well as for inappropriateness to contemporary Soviet reality.2 At the Bellagio conference organized by Robert C. Tucker in 1975, the term "Stalinism" was preferred to "totalitarianism," although the most vigorous objections to the totalitarian model related to the pre-Stalin period.3 Since then, political scientists have tended to move away from a totalitarian image of the Soviet Union before and after Stalin, while tacitly accepting its applicability to the Stalinist system.
{"title":"New perspectives on Stalinism?","authors":"S. Fitzpatrick","doi":"10.4324/9781351145206-6","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351145206-6","url":null,"abstract":"The nature of Stalinisml has always been a highly contentious question, charged with political significance for almost all disputants. In the early Cold War period, when the political charge was most explosive, Soviet and Western commentators shared the assumption that what had emerged in the Soviet Union in the 1930s was both the historically inevitable outcome of the Bolshevik Revolution and a basically permanent and immutable new \"Soviet system,\" though they disagreed vehemently about its nature. From the Soviet standpoint, the revolution had produced socialism. From the western standpoint (excluding a small group of Soviet sympathizers), the product was totalitarian dictatorship. From both, the system was the antithesis of Western democracy and was its major ideological competitor on the international scene. In the decades after Stalin's death, changes in the Soviet Union led both sides to reassess their judgments, particularly on the immutability of the Soviet system. Some features of Stalin's regime were repudiated or criticized in the Soviet Union, and there were Soviet attempts to separate the legitimate \"Leninist\" outcome of the Revolution from the temporary \"excesses\" of the Stalin period. In the West, revision of Cold War premises in other areas finally prompted Sovietologists to reexamine the totalitarian model, which now came under criticism for inherent political bias as well as for inappropriateness to contemporary Soviet reality.2 At the Bellagio conference organized by Robert C. Tucker in 1975, the term \"Stalinism\" was preferred to \"totalitarianism,\" although the most vigorous objections to the totalitarian model related to the pre-Stalin period.3 Since then, political scientists have tended to move away from a totalitarian image of the Soviet Union before and after Stalin, while tacitly accepting its applicability to the Stalinist system.","PeriodicalId":322280,"journal":{"name":"Debates on Stalinism","volume":"34 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1986-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124521201","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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