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The purges were followed by a very high turnover of members of the Central Committee and in effect a new generation of leaders appeared, younger and more from the mass of workers and peasants than their predecessors. Members of this ‘second generation’ would dominate Soviet politics until the 1980s. The job‐slot system continued in the form it had reached in 1934, although there was now more stability and personal security. Examples of a new Stalinist generation were N. S. Baibakov and N. K. Patolichev, one a technocrat, the other a party generalist. The Central Committee was also much larger now, but had less real influence in politics, compared to the supreme leader and the Politburo/Presidium.

When Gorbachev moved to Moscow in November 1978, he became – at the age of 47 – the youngest member of the predominantly elderly Soviet top leadership team. He received rapid promotion, becoming a candidate member of the Politburo in 1979 and a full member in 1980, while retaining the Secretaryship of the Central Committee he had been accorded in 1978. It was only after the death of Leonid Brezhnev in November 1982, however, and the choice of Andropov to succeed him, that Gorbachev entered the inner circle of the leadership. He was unusual for a Politburo member in consulting widely among social scientists and in taking full advantage of Moscow's cultural life. Andropov, when he was dying, tried to elevate Gorbachev above Konstantin Chernenko and make him his heir apparent, but the old guard in the Soviet leadership prevented this. There was also an attempt to prevent Gorbachev becoming de facto ‘second secretary’ after Chernenko succeeded Andropov in March 1984, but Gorbachev eventually became the clear number two within the party hierarchy and the obvious, and in the end unanimous, choice to succeed Chernenko as General Secretary when the latter died in March 1985. Meantime, Gorbachev had begun to show that he was a potential leader of a different kind by impressing Margaret Thatcher and the British public on a visit to the UK in December 1984 and, in the same month, making a speech in Moscow which castigated Soviet stereotypical thinking and introduced some of the new ideas that were to become so important during his years as General Secretary.

This introductory chapter begins with a description of Stalin's relationship with his entourage in the years after World War II. It tells the story of an aging and distrustful despot who habitually picked on and humiliated his companions, and sought to infect the ruling circle with the suspicions and insecurities that characterized his own mental world. Such actions seem to confirm a widespread perception of Stalin in these years as a vain, capricious, and highly unstable individual, who was bent on petty revenge and short-term personal domination. However, this book argues that Stalin's behavior after the war followed a clear political logic. This was, in part, the logic of a dictator seeking to preserve his power in conditions of old age and chronic ill health. An overview of the succeeding chapters is presented.

This chapter looks at the political structures and decision-making procedures under which the postwar leadership operated. Through an examination of the Politburo and the Council of Ministers, the chapter describes the peculiar blend of personal rule and modern, regular, committee-based government that Stalin achieved in this period.

This chapter begins with a discussion of the Leningrad and Gosplan Affairs of 1949. Although, in many respects, aberrations in the postwar period — these were the only occasions on which a Politburo member was expelled and senior politicians executed — it is argued that Stalin's charges, though contrived, did rest on a rational basis. In addition to demonstrating that it was Stalin who orchestrated these affairs, the chapter describes how he took action to fill the vacancies created by these scandals and reestablish a balance within the leadership.

This chapter shows how, despite his frailties, Stalin used the XIX Party Congress as a means of exercising his dominance over the party by, among other things, restructuring “offices” and reassigning his colleagues' duties. It argues that Stalin's final offensive against Molotov and Mikoian starting in October 1952 was part of a rational bid on his part to stave off any thoughts of a succession. The attack on his Politburo colleagues was accompanied by a final lunge at a group of Jewish “doctor-murderers”.

After the Soviet Union’s successful second-place result in the 1952 Olympic Summer Games, its sports officials began to dream of hosting the great mega-event in Moscow. Able leaders like Konstantin Andrianov and Nikolai Romanov repeatedly pushed the party leadership to go along with their plans but to no avail. Joseph Stalin, who departed the world in 1953, had little interest in sport, and his successor, Nikita Khrushchev, was hostile. Everything changed when Leonid Brezhnev came to power. He was an ardent fan of sport who had supported teams and clubs in all the localities through which he passed on the way to the top of the Soviet hierarchy in 1964. Ten years later, after numerous false starts, the Soviet capital was awarded the Games. In this case, a single individual in an authoritarian state had a profound effect.

This chapter examines the nature and organisational structure of the Chinese Communist Party. It also explains the key policy players in China's politics, including the Politburo Standing Committee, the National People's Congress and the State Council. Moreover, it discusses the process of policy making, and the key government departments responsible for making Chinese social policy such as the Ministry of Labour and Social Security, the Ministry of Civil Affairs, the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Construction. During the formulation of the Labour Contract Law, the most controversial issue was the guiding principle of the Law. The final version of the Law is a compromise between the interests of the employees and the employers. Many social policies cannot achieve their policy goals as originally proclaimed. As the pace of marketisation and decentralisation intensifies, Chinese civil society is also developing.

This chapter examines the crisis years of 1931–1933. At the same time that the Stalinist leadership was turning to terror, it was also making inconsistent attempts at reform. The swings between liberalization and terror, which had their origins in the Politburo, provide an opportunity to study the alignment of forces at the highest echelons of political power.

This chapter examines the factors behind the move toward more moderate policies in 1934 and considers the role played by Sergei Kirov in these initiatives. It suggests that foreign policy considerations—the threat from Fascist Germany and the desire to conclude an anti-Fascist pact with France and its allies—largely determined the direction of Stalinist policy. On 19 December 1933 the Politburo adopted a highly classified resolution concerning the possibility of membership in the League of Nations and concluded regional mutual defense pacts with a number of Western countries in case of German aggression.

This chapter discusses changes in the makeup and activities of the Politburo, as well as political trends following Sergei Kirov's murder, which Stalin used as an excuse to eliminate his former political opponents—the leaders and members of the opposition movements active in the 1920s and early 1930s. Between 1935 and 1938 a large number of oppositionists were destroyed. In almost every case, the accusations of terror leveled against them included allegations of involvement in plans to kill Kirov.

This chapter examines the consolidation of Stalin's dictatorship. It considers changes in the fundamental institutions of power during the final weeks before the war with Germany, which established precedents that greatly influenced the model of power which took shape after the war. The discussions cover repression within the Politburo; Stalin's old and new comrades-in-arms; and the breakdown of the old decision-making system and the creation of a new one.

This chapter summarizes the main themes covered and presents some concluding thoughts from the author. By 1941, Stalin had consolidated his dictatorship and established one of the most brutal regimes that ever existed in Russia or indeed the world. It is argued that archival materials do not support the theory that there were factions within the Politburo. The conduct of both large-scale repressive measures and reforms was based on Stalin's proposals (or, in most cases, on his orders).

This chapter analyzes the transcript of the December 10, 1925 Politburo meeting, and suggests that the political struggle between Joseph Stalin and the Left is linked to the problem of grain production. It explains that Central Statistical Administration chief statistician P. I. Popov became a target for removal during the meeting for his publication of material about potential grain sales in 1925 and 1926, which was used by Lev Kamenev as evidence of increasing social differentiation among the peasantry.

This chapter analyzes three sets of Soviet Politburo transcripts from October 26 and November 2, 1925, and February 22, 1926 that focus on macroeconomic policies. It explains that during these meetings, People's Commissar of Finance Grigory Sokol'nikov proposed a combination of import restrictions and tight monetary policy to ensure a favorable trade balance and increase the supply of gold. The chapter also suggests that macroeconomic policy making devolved too easily into discussions of penalizing the microeconomic behavior of specific groups and classes.

This chapter analyzes the transcript of the January 2, 1927 Politburo meeting that focused on the setting of prices, and explains that discussion revolved around the so-called scissor crisis, which involved relatively high industrial prices that inhibited the production of agricultural goods and the grain supply. It also describes how Joseph Stalin sought microeconomic solutions to macroeconomic problems by attacking the ability of the cooperatives and trading agencies to resist price controls.