POLITICS, SOCIETY AND STALINISM IN THE USSR Politics, Society and Stalinism in the USSR Edited by John Channon ~ in association with ~ PALGRAVEMACMILLAN First published in Great Britain 1998 by MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world This book is published in Macmillan's Studies in Russia and East Europe series Chairman of the editorial board: Michael Branch Series ISBN 978-0-333-71018-0 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978-1-349-26531-2 ISBN 978-1-349-26529-9 (eBook) DOl 10.1007/978-1-349-26529-9 First published in the United States of America 1998 by ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INC., Scholarly and Reference Division, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 ISBN 978-0-312-21126-4 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Politics, society and Stalinism in the USSR I edited by John Channon. p. em.- (Studies in Russia and East Europe) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-312-21126-4 (cloth) I. Soviet Union-Politics and govemment-1917-1936. 2. Soviet Union-Politics and govemment-1936-1953. I. Channon, John. II. Series. DK267.P627 1998 947.08-dc21 97-40880 CIP © School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London 1998 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1998 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London WIP 9HE. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 I 07 06 05 04 03 02 0 I 00 99 98 Contents Notes on the Contributors Vll 1 Introduction 1 John Channon 2 Joseph Stalin: The Making of a Stalinist 15 Robert Service 3 Stalinism: The Primacy of Politics 35 E.A. Rees 4 The Origins of the Stalinist State: Power and Politics in Moscow, 1928-32 69 Catherine Merridale 5 Stalinism and Party Organization (1933-48) 93 Silvio Pons 6 The Leader Cult: Propaganda and its Reception in Stalin's Russia 115 Sarah Davies 7 Stalinism and the Graphic Arts 139 Stephen White 8 Stalinism and the Working Class in the 1930s 163 Donald Filtzer 9 Stalin and the Peasantry: Reassessing the Postwar Years, 1945-53 185 John Channon Index 211 v Notes on the Contributors John Channon was formerly Senior Lecturer in Russian Economic History at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies in the University of London, and is currently Regional Team Leader in the Caucasus for a European Union Tacis agricultural project. He has written extensively on the peasantry and agriculture in Russia and the former Soviet Union. Sarah Davies is Lecturer in History at the University of Durham. Donald Filtzer is Reader in European Studies at the University of East London, and Honorary Visiting Fellow at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies. He is the author of a three­ volume history of Soviet labour and has also written a short history of the Khrushchev period. Catherine Merridale lectures in European History at the University of Bristol. Her publications include Moscow Politics and the Rise of Stalin (1990), on which much of her present contribution is based. She is currently working on death, mourning and remembrance in twentieth-century Russia. Silvio Pons is lecturer in Contemporary History at Bari University, Italy and a researcher at the Gramsci Foundation, Rome. He has written extensively on the Soviet system under Stalin and in the post-Stalin era, Stalin's foreign policy, and Communist politics in the 1930s and 1940s. E.A. Rees is Senior Lecturer in Soviet History at the Centre for Russian and East European Studies at the University of Birmingham. Among his more recent publications are The Soviet Communist Party in Disarray: the XXVIII Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and Stalinism and Soviet Rail Transport 1928-1941. Robert Service is Professor of Russian History and Politics at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies in the University of London. In addition to numerous articles he has written an account of the Bolshevik party after 1917, a textbook Vll Vlll Notes on the Contributors on the Russian Revolution and a three-volume history of Lenin's political life. Stephen White is Professor of Politics at the University of Glasgow, and President (1994-7) of the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies. A graduate of Dublin, Glasgow and Oxford, his recent writings include The Bolshevik Poster (1988), After Gorbachev (4th edn, 1994) and Russia Goes Dry: Alcohol, State and Society (1995). .