The Stalinist Era

Placing Stalinism in its international context, David L. Hoffmann presents a new interpretation of Soviet state intervention and violence. Many 'Stalinist' practices - the state-run economy, surveillance, propaganda campaigns, and the use of concentration camps - did not originate with Stalin or even in Russia, but were instead tools of governance that became widespread throughout Europe during the First World War. The Soviet system was formed at this moment of total war, and wartime practices of mobilization and state violence became building blocks of the new political order. Communist Party leaders in turn used these practices ruthlessly to pursue their ideological agenda of economic and social transformation. Synthesizing new research on Stalinist collectivization, industrialization, cultural affairs, gender roles, nationality policies, the Second World War, and the Cold War, Hoffmann provides a succinct account of this pivotal period in world history.

Introduction; 1. Prelude to Stalinism; 2. Building socialism (1928–33); 3. Socialism attained (1934–38); 4. The Second World War (1939–45); 5. The postwar years (1946–53); Conclusion.

David L. Hoffmann is Distinguished Professor of History at the Ohio State University. He has authored three books on Stalinism, Peasant Metropolis: Social Identities in Moscow, 1929–1941 (1994), Stalinist Values: The Cultural Norms of Soviet Modernity, 1917–1941 (2003), and Cultivating the Masses: Modern State Practices and Soviet Socialism, 1914–1939 (2011), and edited two further books, Russian Modernity: Politics, Knowledge, Practices (2000) and Stalinism: The Essential Readings (2002). He has held fellowships from Harvard University, Cornell University, Stanford University, the Woodrow Wilson Center, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the International Research and Exchanges Board, the Mellon Foundation, and the Social Science Research Council.