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The Politics of Soviet De-Stalinization*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Robert C. Tucker
Robert C. Tucker
Affiliation:
The RAND Corporation
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Extract

A Review of the political situation in post-Stalin Russia may well begin with a reflection on its historical uniqueness. Stalin, who sponsored the “Russia first” theme in Soviet propaganda, established a real and momentous “first” for Russia by his own death. Never before had a totalitarian dictator of one of the world powers died, or been put to death, before his totalitarian system collapsed, or came near collapse, in war. Hitler and Mussolini, who lived long enough to bring down their systems in ruins, furnish no parallel.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 9 , Issue 4 , July 1957 , pp. 550 - 578
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1957

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References

1 Dubrovsky, S. M., “Protiv idealizatsii deyatel'nosti Ivana IV” (Against idealization of the activities of Ivan IV), Voprosy istorii, No. 8 (1956), p. 128.Google Scholar

2 Actual administrative direction of the work of the bureaucracy of local soviets is concentrated not in the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, but in a Department of Soviet Organs in the Council of Ministers. The functions of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet refer mainly to the activities of the Supreme Soviet itself. However, in a formal sense, the authority of this Presidium extends to the system of soviets.

3 All following citations of the report are taken from the purported text as issued by the State Department and published by the New YorK Times on June 5, 1956.

4 The concept of the party as the ruling class was introduced by Lenin, who said in August 1917: “Russia used to be ruled by 150,000 landlords. Why could not 240,000 Bolsheviks do the same job?”

5 Orlov, Alexander, The Secret History of Stalin's Crimes, New York, 1953, p. 206.Google Scholar

6 Dubrovsky, loc.cit.

7 Ibid.

8 Pravda, February 10, 1946.

9 Shevyakov, V. N., “K voprosu ob oprichnine pri Ivane IV” (On the question of the oprichnina under Ivan IV), Voprosy istorii, No. 9 (1956), p. 77.Google Scholar

10 Pravda, July 2, 1956.

11 Pravda, July 2, 1956.

12 This process of re-falsification was prepared in Soviet official documents published in late 1953 and early 1954, and was analyzed in some detail in the writer's study, “The Metamorphosis of the Stalin Myth,” World Politics, VII, No. 1 (October 1954), pp. 38–62.