Stalin Historiography and schools of thought

Liberal School

Anti-communist perspective. Prominent during Cold War.

Liberal historians

Richard Pipes

Robert Conquest

Robert Tucker

Alan Bullock

Intentionalist

Stress role of individual in influencing outcome of events (Alan Bullock)

Structuralist

Stress role of circumstances in influencing outcome of events

Revisionists

Re-assess nature of the revolution and role of Lenin, nature of Stalinism and Terror

Revisionist historians

Orlando Figes

Sheila Fitzpatrick

Post-revisionism

Use both 'pre' and 'post' glasnost writings to reach a conclusion

Soviet Historiography

1920's - stressed Bolshevik seizure of power of the masses (John Reed, Trotsky)

Marxist School

Critical of Stalin's, believe it was a betrayal to socialism

Marxist Historians

Isaac Deutscher, Mikhail Pokrovsky, Roy Medvedev

Robert Service on National Minorities

"The Principle of self-determination was implemented much more restrictedly than had been promised by Lenin before the October Revolution"

Robert Conquest on Stalin's Rise to Power

Stalins rise was due to his own skills and opponents weaknesses

E. H. Carr on Stalin's Rise to power

Due to party secretary and his position as General Secretary

Revisionist view on Stalin's Rise to power

Was due to social and cultural changes in party membership, rank and file of party enabled Stalin to gain power

Intentionalist view on Stalinism

Stalin was motivator of oppression and terror

E. H. Carr on Stalinism

Stalins policies were more of a product of the time and place.

Revisionist/Structuralist view on Stalin

Stalin was weak and opportunistic who was head of a chaotic system of government.

Isaac Deutscher on the Terror

Stalin used methods that his predecessors used - "As he suppressed his opponents he more than resembled Ivan the Terrible"

Dmitri Volkogonov on the Terror

Argues Lenin instigated culture of fear and terror - "Lenin did not merely inspire revolutionary terror, he was also the first to make it into a state institution"

Robert Conquest on the Terror

Not a single cause of the purges. Was a mix of "the consolidation of the dictatorship, the rise of individuals and the emergence of extreme economic policies"

Roy Medvedev on the Terror

Stalin had a "lust for power, boundless ambition". Argues he committed more and more crimes because he feared exposure. "Having wiped out most of the Lenin is old guard and almost all his erstwhile friends and comrades, Stine has good reason to be afraid"

Alec Nove on the Terror

Victims were made scapegoats for economic failings - "Shortages of consumer goods, breakdowns in supply, errors in planning could be put down to malevolent planning... or so the readers of Prava were supposed to belive"

Robert Thurston on the Terror

Stalin "did not carry out a systematic plot to purge the nation... he was sitting at the top of pyramid of lies and incomplete infornation and he must have known it."

Leon Trotsky on Stalin's Rise to power

"He knows how to meet them (Nepmen, bureaucrats, new party members etc.) on their own ground, he speaks their language and he know how to lead them."

Robert Service on religion in USSR

"only a twelfth if the Russian Orthodox Church's priests were left functioning in their parishes"

Fedor Belov on Holodomor

"The peasants ate dogs, horses, rotten potatoes, the bark of trees, anything they could find"

Hiroaki Kuromiya on Holodomor

"Ukrainian peasants were doubly suspect both for being peasants and for being Ukrainian"

Sheila Fitzpatrick on Industrialisation

Stalin had gigantonomia and wanted to build giant buildings (Magnitogorsk, White Sea Canal, Moscow Metro etc.). Cared more for quantity than quality.

Sheila Fitzpatrick on Standards of Living

"Peasants suffered most as a result of collectivization. But life in town was made miserable by food rationing, queues, constant Shortages if consumer goods including shoes and clothing, acute overcrowding of housing, the endless inconveniences associated with the elimination of private trade, and deterioration of urban services of all kinds. "

Robert Service on Industrialisation

"Disruption was everythsre in the economy. Ukraine, South Russia and Kazakhstan were starving.... Nevertheless the economic transformation was no fiction. The USSR under Stalin's rule had been pointed decisively j the direction of becoming and industrial, urban society. This had been his great objective."

Robert Service on the Terror

"Stalin had a Georgian sense of honour and revenge... Violence, dictatorship and terror were methods he and fellow Party veterans took to be normal. The physical extermination of enemies was entirely acceptable to them"

Sheila Fitzpatrick on popularity of Stalin

"Judging by the NKVD's soundings of public opinion, the Stalinism regime was relatively, though not desperately, unpopular in Russian towns."

Sheila Fitzpatrick on Education

"In order to create a proletarian intelligentsia, it was necessary to give working-class and peasant students preferential access to secondary and higher education."

Robert Service on Propaganda and Censorship

"more great intellectuals perished in the 1930s than survived"

Robert Service on Cult of Stalin

"The worship of Stalin had become a state industry"

SImon Sebag-Montefiore on the Terror

"The army had been the last force capable of stopping Stalin, reason enough for the destruction of its High Command."

Leonard Shapiro on OGPU

"in practice it never lacked the power to do whatever it wanted"

Simon Sebag-Montefiore on Stalin pre-1917

Stalin was far from being a grey blank, and was an indespensible party member.

Norman Stone on Industrialisation

Stalin did not have a master plan, he was 'simply putting one foot in front of the other as he went along'

Alec Nove on Second and Third 5 year plans

'Everywhere there were said to be spies, wreckers, diversionists. There was a grave shortage of qualified personnel, so the deportation of many thousands of engineers and technologists to distant concentration camps represented a severe loss'

Robert Service on the Terror

Stalin saw 'malevolent human agency in every personal or political problem he encountered'

Leonard Shapiro on Post-Kirov purges

'Stalins victory over the party'

Robert Service on responsibility for Purges

Stalin was architect of terror, but local officials used it for their own motives. Purges were carried out and depended on by local party organisations.

Roy Medvedev on Cult of Stalin

Stalin did not rely on terror alone. Relied also on support of people who 'deceived by cunning propaganda, gave Stalin credit for the successes of others and even in fact for "achievements" that were in fact totally fictitious.

Geoffrey Hosking

'the fruits of female emancipation became building blocks of the Stalinist neopatriarchal system'