Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Stalinism ‘From Below’?: Soviet State, Society, and the Great Terror

  • Chapter
Everyday Life in Mass Dictatorship

Part of the book series: Mass Dictatorship in the Twentieth Century ((MASSD))

  • 852 Accesses

Abstract

My aim in this chapter is twofold: first, to assess the impact of what has been termed the post-Soviet ‘archival gold rush’ and the resultant transformation in our understanding of state-society relations under Stalin; and second, to summarise and critique the latest western research on the Great Terror of 1937–38 in an attempt to explore the social preconditions of, and popular responses to, mass repression and its victims.1 As a political historian, I combine ‘from above’ and ‘from below’ methodologies in order to demonstrate how recent socio-cultural and everyday life approaches to the study of Stalinism have expanded the horizons of ‘traditional’ political history and its practitioners.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
eBook
USD 16.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book
USD 119.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Notes

  1. M. Geyer with assistance from S. Fitzpatrick, ‘Introduction: After Totalitarianism — Stalinism and Nazism Compared’, in M. Geyer and S. Fitzpatrick (eds), Beyond Totalitarianism: Stalinism and Nazism Compared (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 34–5.

    Google Scholar 

  2. J-H. Lim, ‘Mapping Mass Dictatorship: Towards a Transnational History of Twentieth-Century Dictatorship’, in J-H. Lim and K. Petrone (eds), Gender Politics and Mass Dictatorship: Global Perspectives (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2010), p. 3.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  3. L. Siegelbaum and A. Sokolov, Stalinism as a Way of Life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), p. 6.

    Google Scholar 

  4. J. Plamper, ‘Beyond Binaries: Popular Opinion in Stalinism’, P. Corner (ed.), Popular Opinion in Totalitarian Regimes: Fascism, Nazism, Communism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 64–80, quotes at pp. 64 and 75.

    Google Scholar 

  5. L. T. Lih, O. V. Naumov, and O. V. Khlevniuk (eds), Stalin’s Letters to Molotov, 1925–1936 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), p. 210.

    Google Scholar 

  6. S. Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), pp. 198–237. This ‘camp’ is sometimes referred to as the ‘Columbia School’ of Foucauldian-influenced scholars around Kotkin to which is counterposed the ‘Chicago School’ around Sheila Fitzpatrick. For details, see Plamper, ‘Beyond Binaries’, pp. 68–9.

    Google Scholar 

  7. J. Hellbeck, ‘Speaking Out: Languages of Affirmation and Dissent in Stalinist Russia’, Kritika, Vol. 1/1 (Winter 2000), 71–96, quotes at 85 and 92. For a more detailed account, see J. Hellbeck, Revolution on my Mind: Writing a Diary under Stalin (Cambridge, MA:, 2006). Also B. Studer, B. Unfried, and I. Herrmann (eds), Parler de soi sous Staline: La construction identitaire dans le communisme des années trente (Paris: Fondation Maison des sciences de l’homme, 2002). For a contrary interpretation, see D. M. Vyleta, ‘City of the Devil: Bulgakovian Moscow and the Search for the Stalinist Subject’, Rethinking History, Vol. 4/1 (January 2000), 37–53.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. See, for example, N. Lugovskaya, The Diary of a Soviet Schoolgirl, 1932–1937 (Moscow: Glas Publishers, 2003).

    Google Scholar 

  9. L. Viola, ‘Popular Resistance in the Stalinist 1930s’, in L. Viola (ed.), Contending with Stalinism: Soviet Power and Popular Resistance in the 1930s (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003), pp. 18–26.

    Google Scholar 

  10. See J. J. Rossman, Worker Resistance under Stalin: Class and Revolution on the Shop Floor (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), pp. 6–17 and 231–6.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  11. T. H. Rigby, ‘Mono-organisational Socialism and the Civil Society’, in C. Kukathas, D. W. Lovell, and W. Maley (eds), The Transition from Socialism: State and Civil Society in Gorbachev’s USSR (Melbourne: Longman Cheshire, 1991), pp. 107–22, quotes at pp. 112–14. For a crass rendition of the totalitarian view — ‘By the mid-1930s, Stalin’s regime had gained control over individual thought’ — see V. Shlapentokh, ‘The Destruction of Civil Society in Russia (1917–1953)’ in the same volume, pp. 82–106, quote at p. 99.

    Google Scholar 

  12. S. Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism. Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 191.

    Google Scholar 

  13. A. G. Latyshev, ‘Riadom so Stalinym’, Sovershenno sekretno, No. 12 (1990), 19.

    Google Scholar 

  14. J. A. Getty and R. T. Manning (eds), Stalinist Terror: New Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 15.

    Google Scholar 

  15. P. M. Hagenloh, ‘“Socially Harmful Elements” and the Great Terror’, in S. Fitzpatrick (ed.), Stalinism: New Directions (London: Routledge, 2000), pp. 286–7.

    Google Scholar 

  16. D. Shearer, ‘Social Disorder, Mass Repression, and the NKVD during the 1930s’, in B. McLoughlin and K. McDermott (eds), Stalin’s Terror: High Politics and Mass Repression in the Soviet Union (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2003), pp. 85–117. See also D. R. Shearer, Policing Stalin’s Socialism: Repression and Social Order in the Soviet Union, 1924–1953 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009).

    Google Scholar 

  17. J. A. Getty and O. V. Naumov, The Road to Terror: Stalin and the Self-Destruction of the Bolsheviks, 1932–1939 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), p. 471. A slightly abbreviated English translation of the Order can be found here on pp. 473–80.

    Google Scholar 

  18. A massively detailed work is M. Iunge (Junge), G. Bordiugov and R. Binner, Vertikal’ bol’shogo terrora. Istoriia operatsii po prikazu NKVD No. 00447 (Moscow: Novyi khronograf, 2008).

    Google Scholar 

  19. M. Iunge (Junge) and R. Binner, Kak terror stal ‘bol’shim’. Sekretnyiprikaz no. 00447 i tekhnologiia ego ispolneniia (Moscow: AIRO-XX, 2003), p. 136.

    Google Scholar 

  20. A. Weiner, ‘Nature and Nurture in a Socialist Utopia: Delineating the Soviet Socio-Ethnic Body in the Age of Socialism’, in D. L. Hoffmann (ed.), Stalinism: The Essential Readings (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003), pp. 243–74.

    Google Scholar 

  21. For details, see M. Gelb, ‘An Early Soviet Ethnic Deportation: The Far-Eastern Koreans’, Russian Review, Vol. 54/3 (July 1995), 389–412.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. On the important issue of Stalin’s’ spymania’, see J. Harris, ‘Encircled by Enemies: Stalin’s Perception of the Capitalist World, 1918–1941’, Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 30/3 (June 2007), 513–45.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. For details on the purges in the Comintern, see A. Iuvatlin, Komintern: idei, resheniia, sud’by (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2009), pp. 333–72

    Google Scholar 

  24. M. Panteleev, Agenty Kominterna: Soldaty mirovoi revoliutsii (Moscow: Iauza, 2005), pp. 275–93

    Google Scholar 

  25. W. J. Chase, Enemies within the Gates?: The Comintern and the Stalinist Repression, 1934–1939 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001)

    Google Scholar 

  26. K. McDermott and J. Agnew, The Comintern: A History of International Communism from Lenin to Stalin (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996), pp. 142–57.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  27. See A. Iuvatlin, Terror raionnogo masshtaba: ‘Massovye operatsii’ NKVD v Kuntsevskom raione moskovskoi oblasti 1937–1938 gg (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2004)

    Google Scholar 

  28. Oleg Hlevnjuk, ‘Les mécanismes de la “Grande Terreur” des années 1937–1938 au Turkménistan’, Cahiers du Monde russe, Vol. 39/1–2 (January–June 1998), 197–207

    Google Scholar 

  29. M. Ilic, ‘The Great Terror in Leningrad: A Quantitative Analysis’, in Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 52/8 (December 2000), 1515–34

    Article  Google Scholar 

  30. C. Hooper, ‘Terror of Intimacy: Family Politics in the 1930s Soviet Union’, in C. Kiaer and E. Naiman (eds), Everyday Life in Early Soviet Russia: Taking the Revolution Inside (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), pp. 61–91.

    Google Scholar 

  31. W. Z. Goldman, Terror and Democracy in the Age of Stalin: The Social Dynamics of Repression (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 8.

    Google Scholar 

  32. See D. Shearer, ‘Elements Near and Alien: Passportization, Policing, and Identity in the Stalinist State, 1932–1952’, Journal of Modern History, Vol. 76/4 (December 2004), 835–81

    Article  Google Scholar 

  33. P. Hagenloh, Stalin’s Police: Public Order and Mass Repression in the USSR, 1926–1941 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), pp. 89–146.

    Google Scholar 

  34. On the coercive propensities of the Bolsheviks evident since the October Revolution, see P. Holquist, ‘State Violence as Technique: The Logic of Violence in Soviet Totalitarianism’, in A. Weiner (ed.), Landscaping the Human Garden: Twentieth-Century Population Management in a Comparative Framework (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), pp. 19–45.

    Google Scholar 

  35. S. Davies, Popular Opinion in Stalin’s Russia: Terror, Propaganda and Dissent, 1934–1941 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 70.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  36. M. Dobson, ‘“Show the Bandit-Enemies No Mercy!”: Amnesty, Criminality and Public Response in 1953’, in P. Jones (ed.), The Dilemmas of De-Stalinization: Negotiating Cultural and Social Change in the Khrushchev Era (London: Routledge, 2006), pp. 21–40, esp. pp. 23 and 29–32. Also

    Google Scholar 

  37. M. Dobson, Khrushchev’s Cold Summer: Gulag Returnees, Crime, and the Fate of Reform After Stalin (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009).

    Google Scholar 

  38. T. Martin, The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923–1939 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001), pp. 311–43, quote at p. 317.

    Google Scholar 

  39. Davies, Popular Opinion in Stalin’s Russia, pp. 113 and 131. There is recent archival evidence that such ‘anti-Soviet’ sentiment continued to exist well into the post-Stalinist era. See V. A. Kozlov, S. Fitzpatrick and S. V. Mironenko (eds), Sedition: Everyday Resistance in the Soviet Union under Khrushchev and Brezhnev (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011).

    Google Scholar 

  40. Davies, Popular Opinion in Stalin’s Russia, p. 126. On sexual ‘degeneration’ among local bureaucrats, see L. E. Holmes, ‘A Symbiosis of Errors: The Personal, Professional, and Political in the Kirov Region, 1931–1941’, in L. H. Siegelbaum (ed.), Borders of Socialism: Private Spheres of Soviet Russia (New York: Palgrave, 2006), pp. 217–25.

    Google Scholar 

  41. O. Kharkhordin, The Collective and the Individual in Russia: A Study of Practices (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999); I. Halfin, Terror in my Soul: Communist Autobiographies on Trial (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003); I. Halfin, Stalinist Confessions: Messianism and Terror at the Leningrad Communist University (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009).

    Google Scholar 

  42. See O. V. Khlevniuk, In Stalin’s Shadow: The Career of’ sergo’ Ordzhonikidze (Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 1995).

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Authors
  1. Kevin McDermott
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Universität Erfurt, Germany

    Alf Lüdtke (Honorarprofessor Historische Anthropologie) (Honorarprofessor Historische Anthropologie)

Copyright information

© 2016 Kevin McDermott

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

McDermott, K. (2016). Stalinism ‘From Below’?: Soviet State, Society, and the Great Terror. In: Lüdtke, A. (eds) Everyday Life in Mass Dictatorship. Mass Dictatorship in the Twentieth Century. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137442772_6

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137442772_6

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-349-56036-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-137-44277-2

  • eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation