The Western historiography of Stalin and Stalinism produced in the period 1925 to the present day is a strikingly varied body of work in which the nature of Stalin, his regime and his role within his regime have been and continue to be the subject of debate. This characteristic is all the more striking when we consider that from the earliest years of the period under study there has been a general understanding of the nature of the Stalinist regime, and of the policies and leader which have come to define it. This thesis analyses the principal influences on research which have led to this body of work acquiring such a varied nature, and which have led to an at times profoundly divided Western, and more specifically Anglo-American, scholarship. It argues that the combined impact of three key formative influences on research in the West over the period of study, and their interaction with each other, reveal recurring themes across the whole historiography, while also accounting for the variety of interpretations in evidence. The first impact identified is the lack of accessibility to sources during the Soviet period, which posed a constant and real obstacle to those in the West writing on Stalin and Stalinism, and the impact of the removal of this obstacle in the post-Soviet era. The second is the influence of wider historiographical trends on this body of work, such as the emergence of social history. Finally the thesis argues that evolving Western attitudes to Stalin and Stalinism over this period have played a key role in constructions of Stalin and his regime, demonstrating an on-going historical process of the othering of Russia by the West. The extent and nature of this othering in turn provide a central line of enquiry of the thesis. Tightly intertwined with all three impacts has been the changing global political context over the period in question which provides the evolving and influential contextual backdrop to this study, and which has given this body of work a deeply political and personal character.

This thesis examines a little studied aspect of the Soviet Union’s history, namely the activities of the mass membership of the Communist Party during the interwar period, specifically 1926-1941. Based on extensive research in central and regional party archives, it revisits a number of specialised scholarly debates by offering an account of key processes and events of the period, including rapid industrialisation and mass repression, from the viewpoint of rank-and-file communists, the group of people who had chosen to profess active support for the regime without however acquiring positions of political power. The account provided is in the form of an in-depth case study of the party organisation of the Red Putilov – later Kirov – machine-building plant in the city of Leningrad, followed by a shorter study of communist activism in another major Leningrad institution, the Red-Banner Baltic Fleet. It is shown that all major political initiatives of the leadership generated intense political activity at the bottom levels of the party hierarchy, as the thousands of rank-and-file members interpreted and acted on central directives in ways that were consistently in line with their and their colleagues’ interests. As these interests were hardly ever in harmony with those of the corresponding level of the administrative state apparatus, the result was a nearly permanent state of tension between the executive and political branches of the Soviet party-state at the grassroots level. The main argument offered is that ultimately, the rank-and-file organisations of the communist party were an extremely important but contradictory element of the Soviet Union’s political system, being a reliable constituency of grassroots support for the regime while at the same time placing significant limits on the ability of state organs to actually implement policy. This thesis therefore challenges interpretations of Soviet state-society relations based on binary narratives of repression from above and resistance from below. It identifies instead an element of the Soviet system where the line between society and the state became blurred, and grassroots agency became possible on the basis of a minimum level of active support for the regime. It is further argued that the ability of the mass membership to influence the outcome of leadership initiatives was predicated on the Marxist-Leninist ideological underpinnings of most major policies. In this way, this thesis also contributes to the recent literature on the role of ideology in the Soviet system. The concluding chapter considers the value of the overall findings of this thesis for the comparative study of 20th century socialist states.

The creative project Communism: a love story is a piece of literary non-fiction: a biography of the communist intellectual Guido Carlo Luigi Baracchi (1887-1975). It investigates Baracchi's privileged childhood as the son of the government astronomer and a wealthy heiress, his career as a university activist, his immersion in Melbourne's radical and artistic milieu during the First World War, his role in the formation of the Communist Party of Australia, his changing attitudes to communism during the 1920s and 1930s while in Australia and overseas and his eventual identification with the Trotskyist movement. The project explores the different strands of thought within Australian communism, the impact of Stalinisation on the movement both in Australia and overseas, and the personal and political difficulties confronting facing anti-Stalinist radicals. It examines the tensions between Baracchi's political commitments and his upbringing, and situates Baracchi's tumu ltuous romantic relationships (with Katharine Susannah Prichard, Lesbia Harford, Betty Roland and others) in the context of his times and political beliefs. The exegesis Engineering your own soul: theory and practice in communist biography and autobiography examines the political and artistic tensions within the biographical and autobiographical writings of Betty Roland and Katharine Susannah Prichard in the context of the development of the world communist movement.

The purpose of this essay is to examine whether the descriptions of Stalin's terror in history textbooks for high school changed from the 1950s until the 2010s. Since previous research shows that textbook content is influenced from different directions and that it dominates in teaching, therefore I want to find out what similarities and differences that exist in the textbooks. The survey is based on a qualitative approach because I want to have a profound picture of the descriptions of Stalin's terror. The results of the survey show that the number of casualties and the descriptions on the famine has changed over time. Furthermore, textbooks also found it difficult to distinguish between terror, politics and ideology. The analysis of the results linked to the theoretical bases, historical consciousness model and history didactic model. The analysis shows that the result always ends up in historical consciousness as the basis for reproducing change and continuity, but in some cases the result has also been connected with historical consciousness of identity formation. In the history didactic model, the result has fallen into the material history teaching subcategories, objective, purpose and classically purpose.

This thesis investigates Stalin’s post-WW2 anti-cosmopolitan campaign by comparing the lives of two Soviet-Jewish artists. Zinovii Tolkachev was a Ukrainian artist and Pavel Antokol’skii a Moscow poetry professor. Tolkachev drew both Jewish and Socialist themes, while Antokol’skii created no Jewish motifs until his son was killed in combat and he encountered Nazi concentration camps; Tolkachev was at the liberation of Majdanek and Auschwitz. Both men were excoriated during the “anti-cosmopolitan” campaign. Using primary sources, I examine their art and the balance between Judaic and Soviet references, the accusations made and the connections between the attacks, the Holocaust, and Soviet paranoias of that era. While anti-Semitism played a role, I highlight the authorities’ reaction to their style and content. This moment in cultural policy was part of a continuum of reactions to World War II and included themes that went beyond the native anti-Semitism of the period.

<p>This essay is about the Workers Communist Party. My method for the analyzing part in this essay is qualitative methods such as text and idea analysis. I have chosen the words of Claudin to describe which ideological standpoints Workers Communist Party have. First I write about the background to why Workers Communist Party was formed in 1977. The background is the big split of extreme left wingers from the left party, which formed several organisations such as The Communist Marxist-Leninist Revolutionary Party and The Communist Organization for Marxist-Leninists. The first was neo-stalinistic, the second was maoistic. The ideology of Workers Communist Party is at most stalinistic. But the question of worldwide peace takes the party a bit off from the Stalinist ideology. Somehow, the politics of Workers Communist Party is at most similar to radical social-democratic or ordinary left-wing politics. The most important questions for the party are equality, democracy in state and economy and, at last, work and safety for all people. In Swedish elections, Workers Communist Party has failed. At 1979 they had 15 mandates in eleven counties in the northeast part of Sweden. At 2006, Workers Communist Party only has two mandates in the county of Gällivare in the northeast of Lapland.</p>

Constructed in successive stages beginning in 1935, the Moscow metro was designed to be the foremost transportation system in Stalinist Moscow as well as a symbol of socialist might and a metonym for the future socialist society. Soviet officials heralded the metro as an underground palace promoting the values of socialism, and the artwork therein was meant to reflect these values. When Sverdlov Square station opened in 1938, it was decorated with bas-sculptures in the newly sanctioned socialist realist style; the artist, Natalia Danko, chose to depict pairs of male and female folk dancers from seven of the largest nationalities of the Soviet Union. Her sculptures celebrated an idealized view of folk culture that sought to glorify the Soviet state by reflecting ideals such as the joy of every day life and the friendship of the peoples. This thesis employs semiotics to reveal the ambiguity with which viewers may have read these signs, and to demonstrate the polyvalent nature of artistic production. Semiotic theory is useful in order to show how the official discourse of Socialist Realism could be both contested and reinforced through public art. The thesis contends that the Moscow metro, one of the superlative Soviet projects of the 1930s, can be understood as an ambiguous space where meaning was open to diverse interpretations.

Constructed in successive stages beginning in 1935, the Moscow metro was designed to be the foremost transportation system in Stalinist Moscow as well as a symbol of socialist might and a metonym for the future socialist society. Soviet officials heralded the metro as an underground palace promoting the values of socialism, and the artwork therein was meant to reflect these values. When Sverdlov Square station opened in 1938, it was decorated with bas-sculptures in the newly sanctioned socialist realist style; the artist, Natalia Danko, chose to depict pairs of male and female folk dancers from seven of the largest nationalities of the Soviet Union. Her sculptures celebrated an idealized view of folk culture that sought to glorify the Soviet state by reflecting ideals such as the joy of every day life and the friendship of the peoples. This thesis employs semiotics to reveal the ambiguity with which viewers may have read these signs, and to demonstrate the polyvalent nature of artistic production. Semiotic theory is useful in order to show how the official discourse of Socialist Realism could be both contested and reinforced through public art. The thesis contends that the Moscow metro, one of the superlative Soviet projects of the 1930s, can be understood as an ambiguous space where meaning was open to diverse interpretations.

In the annals of Soviet historiography, discord and rebellion mark the cultural form of the Khrushchev Thaw. Following the U.S.S.R.s loss of its Great Leader in 1953, a diffusion of political authority met a re-evaluation of established ideology; the dominant discourse of Soviet socialism shifted and, through the subsequent clash of orthodox and liberal forces, imparted a critical aesthetic to 1950s Soviet culture. But while the narrative of dissonance privileged by most historical texts cites the sharpness of post-Stalinist art, poetry, and literature as external evidence of a struggle, little attention has been paid to the internal logic of cultural production. Soviet cultural communication based itself on a mutual mythology that pursued both a dialogue of inclusivity and a sense of accountability. By re-examining how producers of culture managed their responsibilities to the state, to the public, and to their art against the Soviet ideal of the collective and its discourse of comradely persuasion, this thesis pursues the expression of Soviet thought by way of Soviet ideology in the malleable discourse of 1953-1958. / Graduate / 0582 / 0724

In the annals of Soviet historiography, discord and rebellion mark the cultural form of the “Khrushchev Thaw.” Following the U.S.S.R.’s loss of its Great Leader in 1953, a diffusion of political authority met a re-evaluation of established ideology; the dominant discourse of Soviet socialism shifted and, through the subsequent clash of orthodox and liberal forces, imparted a critical aesthetic to 1950s Soviet culture. But while the narrative of dissonance privileged by most historical texts cites the sharpness of post-Stalinist art, poetry, and literature as external evidence of a struggle, little attention has been paid to the internal logic of cultural production. Soviet cultural communication based itself on a mutual mythology that pursued both a dialogue of inclusivity and a sense of accountability. By re-examining how producers of culture managed their responsibilities to the state, to the public, and to their art against the Soviet ideal of the collective and its discourse of comradely persuasion, this thesis pursues the expression of Soviet thought by way of Soviet ideology in the malleable discourse of 1953-1958. / Graduate / 0582 / 0724