"Thank you, our Stalin, for a happy childhood". Thank you, dear Marshal [Stalin], for our freedom, for our children's happiness, for life". Between the Russian Revolution and the Cold War, Soviet public culture was so dominated by the power of the state that slogans like these appeared routinely in newspapers, on posters, and in government proclamations. In this penetrating historical study. Jeffrey Brooks draws on years of research to explain the origins, the nature, and the effects of this unrelenting idealization of the state, the Communist Party, and the leader.
