1. Stalin and the Historians

2. [Russia] has also gained a glorious history
[Russia] has also gained a glorious history. Films and television programmes continually drive home the message that Russia is a great nation with a unique destiny. Some of Mr. Putin's ideological advisers believe Russians have spent far too much time being ashamed of their past. For example, a new manual for history teachers in Russian high schools now states that Joseph Stalin was "the most successful Soviet leader ever".
As for the purges, which killed millions, they are dismissed as a necessary evil. Mr. Putin, himself, recently said they weren't as bad as atrocities perpetrated by other nations.
BBC News, 25th February 2008

3. The Debate: How effective was Stalin?
Method → Result
Stalin was ruthless in pursuit of power and efficient in its use
Stalin in full control of USSR
Industrial infrastructure developed through planning
Opposition cut down by purges
Foreign policy, despite practical changes had an overall strategy.

4. The Debate: How effective was Stalin?
Method → Result
Because of these factors the USSR, despite the suffering, was able to defeat Nazi Germany.
Mostly pre 1991 historians (e.g: Conquest):
Stalin developed & controlled a system that worked.
Issue for dispute: the ‘cost’ of the system

5. The Debate: How effective was Stalin?
Flawed Totalitarianism
Stalin sought to centralise a system which kept falling to local initiatives
Foreign policy continually corrected – errors in judgment, as well as events
War with Germany paralysed system and victory came from transcending Stalinism

6. The Debate: How effective was Stalin?
Flawed Totalitarianism
The system didn’t necessarily work, and Stalin wasn’t necessarily in control
Mostly post 1991 historians (eg: Fitzpatrick):
Issue for dispute: Destalinization vs. Stalinism revived

7. The Issues for historians
Access to material: storage, access, glasnost
Work of émigrés & defectors
Westerners who visited USSR were often sympathetic to communism
Trotsky’s prolific output and seemingly authorative work
Cold War
Literature, eg: Solzhenitsyn

8. Ian Grey Stalin: Man of History (1979)
Most staunch Western defender of Stalin
Believed historians have been overly influenced by Trotsky
“Soviet Russia became stronger as a result of Stalin’s campaigns of industrialisation, collectivisation and social transformation.”

9. Martin McCauley Stalin & Stalinism (2003)
Senior lecturer in politics of Eastern
Europe at University of London
Widely published: academic books as well as textbooks
Stalin – brutal, appalling methods but achievement considerable
Industrialisation in particular meant victory over the Nazis & that USSR became one of the two superpowers after 1945.

10. Martin McCauley Stalin & Stalinism (2003)
“The Stalin revolution revitalised the
country.”
“[Stalin] launched a violent, phenomenally ambitious modernisation of the coutnry.”
“[Stalinism] was phenomenally successful and eventually a crashing failure.”

11. E. H. Carr A History of the Soviet Union (14 volumes 1950-1978)
A traditional Marxist perspective
Cambridge University, assigned to Latvia while working for UK foreign office in 1920s
Economical & political forces shaped Stalin, but Stalin still a strong figure.
Stalin as an ‘agent of history’: produced by the circumstances after the Bolshevik Revolution
If Stalin had not industrialised Russia, then someone else would have done so.

12. E. H. Carr A History of the Soviet Union (14 volumes 1950-1978)
Stalin combined immense achievements with utter brutality: “an emancipator and a tyrant.”
Stalin was “the great executor of revolutionary policy.”

13. Adam Ulam Stalin: The Man and his Era (1987)
Professor of History and Political Science at Harvard
USSR would have been better off without Stalin, any regime could have industrialised Russia.
Stalin impeded Soviet victory in
WWII, as the purges had liquidated
Russian manpower and expertise.

14. The Great Terror (1991) and lots, lots more…
Robert Conquest
The Great Terror (1991) and lots, lots more…
Worked for UK foreign office, freelance historian
Former communist who became disillusioned after 1945
Widened understanding of the Purges
Stalinism as a continuation of Leninism
His strong views opened up a huge debate: see Neal Ascherson & Ludo Martens

15. Past Questions:
May 2000
Assess the contributions of organisational and leadership qualities in maintaining in power two single-party rulers, each chosen from a different region.
November 2002
To what extent was the USSR an orthodox Communist state under either Lenin or Stalin?
May 2003
“In order to achieve and retain power a leader of a single-party state needed to be ruthless, blind to human suffering and yet charismatic.” To what extent do you agree with this assertion?