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This chapter describes Stalinism as a dictatorship of dread. It shows how Joseph Stalin's slave state destroyed and uprooted millions in a series of violent interventions that showed no regard for either human lives or dignity. Kolkhoz peasants were bound to the land, while draconian disciplinary laws tied workers to the factories. The Bolsheviks' public sphere left few possibilities for eluding the Stalinist regime's prescribed rituals and rules of language. This chapter also considers how Stalin used violence to subjugate even the elite of the Bolshevik Party, along with his destruction of the Communist Party, his annihilation of the army officer corps, and the self-destruction of the state apparatus because of his reign of terror. Finally, it emphasizes Stalin's omnipotence as a ruthless despot, his implementation of a system of mass murder, the end of mass terror, and the different situations of violence during his rule.

Patrimonialism permeated Russian and Soviet cultures in a profound way. Patrimonialism won over bureaucracy, as the last chapter showed. This chapter shows that it came with a price: conflicts and political clans. Patrimonialism permeated the entire Bolshevik party. On all levels, party members thought of themselves as some version of the elect, the privileged. Party members regarded themselves as natural leaders. In the absence of countervailing institutions, such groups rapidly developed into cliques and patron-client groups. If there was more than one strong personality in the locality, a power struggle would erupt.

The so-called insurrection in October and November 1917 catapulted the Bolsheviks to power in Russia. The Russian Revolution, which began with the fall of the tsar in February 1917, led to a political crisis. Power was initially divided between the Provisional Government and the soviets, but Bolshevik extremists soon secured a dominant place in the latter. They were aided by Vladimir Lenin, who identified himself with the strongest forces of dissatisfaction. Despite this obvious political success, it remains perplexing why the Bolsheviks would launch an armed uprising that looked like a gamble. Lenin wanted a violent uprising to get a chance for an independent Bolshevik Party takeover and realize the personal dictatorship to which he aspired. It appears that overthrowing the Provisional Government through the Russian Revolution was not planned or expected.

This chapter considers Stalin’s approach to his own burgeoning leader cult. The existence of the cult in a nominally Marxist, collectivist state created the potential for considerable ideological and political tension. While Stalin tacitly promoted the cult, he made a point of describing it as a concession to popular tradition, criticizing its excesses, and insisting that cultic texts remained within acceptable parameters. The chapter focuses on specific case studies, including Stalin’s biography, and the various ways his image was projected in major Soviet political rituals and ceremonies.

This chapter provides background on the revolution and the civil war, presenting letters written by the peasantry to the Bolshevik Party and government leaders, expressing their discontent with material deprivations.

“Left Communism” was a faction within the Communist Party in Russia. Adopting the principles of the Russian Revolution of 1917, Left Communism had a dogmatic commitment to Marxism and an idealistic belief in the struggle for the perfect society. Opposition outside the party was suppressed gradually in the first half of 1918, but internal Communist opposition to Vladimir Lenin's policies persisted until after the end of the civil war. The distinctive signs of the Left Communist tendency first became visible in the form of opposition to Lenin's leadership. The Bolshevik Party's left wing vigorously opposed the new regime's actions in foreign affairs. When civil war broke out in May 1918, the communist left saw an opportunity to fight for the immediate implementation of the utopian communist goal. The doctrine of revolutionary culture, the roots of which could be traced to Aleksandr Bogdanov in the early 1900s, may well be the most exotic and certainly the most enduring contribution of Left Communism. This chapter explores the rise and fall of Left Communism in Russia during the early twentieth century.

The chapter explores how Stalin dealt with long-standing Bolshevik ambivalence toward the “working class” (and, indeed, toward the whole concept of “class” itself). Without ever abandoning the language of class, Stalin moved steadily toward a more inclusive vision of “the Soviet people.” The primary focus is upon his attempts to divert attention from a central Bolshevik symbol, the manual laborer, toward a newly legitimized “Soviet” or “people’s” intelligentsia.

The chapter reconstructs the intellectual history of council democracy from early anarchist interpretations of the Paris Commune over Karl Marx famous analysis of the Commune in The Civil War in France and Vladimir Lenin’s writings on the Russian Soviets to the Interwar council communists’ engagement with the German workers’ councils. The chapter argues, firstly, that Marx’ interpretation of the Commune sets the parameter for many subsequent theories of council democracy, and secondly, that Lenin’s analysis of the Russian soviets delivers an alternative theory of council democracy, insofar as he subordinates the councils to the Bolshevik party. The chapter ends with a preliminary discussion of the relation between the historical councils, theories of council democracy and the concept of the constituent power.

This chapter describes the situation of the Jews in Soviet Russia and the Soviet Union in the years between 1921 and 1941. Here, their victory in the civil war enabled the Bolsheviks to apply the ideological principles they had developed for dealing with the ‘Jewish question’. National issues were seen by all the Bolsheviks as instrumental. They were to be judged on how they advanced the interest of the world revolution and the Soviet state. Where national groups were supported, this was a tactical alliance, like the alliance with the peasantry. The ultimate goal was the creation of a new socialist man who would be above petty nationalist divisions, and a single world socialist state. All those responsible for Jewish policy within the Bolshevik party sought this final goal; the only difference between them was their view on how long Jewish separateness could be tolerated. The aim was assimilation—a new version of the view that the Jews were to be given everything as individuals and nothing as a community.

This chapter describes the Bolsheviks’ creation of a new kind of public sphere in the 1920s. Although intolerant of opposition or dissent, they expected ordinary people to participate in routine forms of Soviet life such as meetings and conferences: unlike in the tsarist era, Russians now had to know how to speak in public. The Bolsheviks were themselves very active as speakers in their own public or semi-public gatherings (meetings, congresses, plenums), and their words were disseminated to an audience of newspaper readers or party functionaries: like their Duma predecessors, the Bolsheviks relied heavily on their stenographers. The chapter ends with a discussion of the shift to Stalinist rhetoric in the early 1930s.

This chapter begins with an account of the early phases of the Russian Civil War, ending at the moment in August 1918 when the Bolsheviks surrendered Kazan. Russia was reduced to a small rump state that could no longer be described as an empire. The chapter then recaps the processes of imperial challenge, state failure, and social collapse over the previous four years that led to this moment of decolonization. The book ends with a description of how the new Soviet regime rebuilt the state and reconquered much of the territory of the former Russian Empire. It suggests that Soviet power was imperial in nature, but also that it was deeply affected by the process of decolonization that preceded it, most notably in the federal structures of the state, the attempts to build a multi-ethnic elite, and the troubled efforts to deal with the weaknesses of a post-colonial society.

This chapter explores some of the ambiguities in Vladimir Lenin’s manual entitled “Left-Wing” Communism, an Infantile Disorder, with particular emphasis on its main concern: striking a balance between the model of the workers’ international it presents and its verification by mass action. While the Bolshevik Party’s program had worked out an adequate model to resolve the relation between the organizational form and the initiative of the masses, the chapter argues that each phase of the program needs to be measured up against the parameters of class composition and the model of subjective and party initiative. In particular, it considers the problematic relation between a revolutionary model and the initiative of the masses, both in its generality and its particularity, and how this problem is exacerbated by the exceptionality of the period of class struggle at a continental level, by the harshness of the struggle itself, and the terrible decision of both contenders. It contends that “Left-Wing” Communism contains the residue of a “Leninism” that is not singular and becomes characteristic of a historical phase of international communism.

The role of the Russian intelligentsia in the revolution has often been downplayed due to their alleged alienation from practical affairs, their commitment to some kind of abstract doctrine, and their moral disconnection from the autocracy and class privilege. The cultural dichotomy between this theorizing elite and the toiling masses is evident, for example, in the prestige conferred on academic pursuits in Russia and in the long-standing classification of the Soviet population into workers, peasants, and “toiling intelligentsia.” However, the simple distinction between intellectuals and masses does not provide an adequate explanation for revolutionary and post-revolutionary Russia. This chapter examines the role of the intelligentsia, particularly the literary intellectuals, in bringing about the revolutionary movement in Russia. It also looks at the rise of the rebellious quasi-intelligentsia and their association with the Bolshevik Party of Vladimir Lenin, their link to Communism and the Russian Revolution, and the emergence of Joseph Stalin as leader of the quasi-intelligentsia.

The chapter considers how Stalin talked and wrote about the controversial subject of the role of artists and the arts in the USSR. It examines his efforts to justify a broad “Soviet” rather than a narrowly “proletarian” culture, and to promote a heterogeneous vision of the USSR as a place where artists were expected to serve the political goals of the party-state while also enjoying creative freedom. The chapter pays particular attention to Stalin’s evaluations of individual works of “socialist realist” art, including film.

Lenin conceived of a “party of a new type” that would enshrine the principles of strict centralization and discipline: an “organizational weapon” geared toward building the base for revolution against Tsarism and seizing power when the moment arrived that it could succeed.

This chapter describes the experiences of Inna Aronovna Gaister after her parents were arrested in 1937 during the Great Purge. Inna's parents were Jews who had joined the Bolshevik Party during the civil war. Inna's father was accused of being a member of political opposition, while her mother was sent to Akmolinsk Camp for being “wives of traitors to the motherland.” After their arrest, Inna assumed the responsibility for protecting her two sisters with the help of her nanny. They experienced starvation and disease in World War II. Inna was later arrested as a “child of enemies of the people” in 1949 and exiled to Kazakhstan.