During the 1930s, Stalin and his entourage rehabilitated famous names from the Russian national past in a propaganda campaign designed to mobilize Soviet society for the coming war. In a provocative study, David Brandenberger traces this populist "national Bolshevism" into the 1950s, highlighting the catalytic effect that it had on Russian national identity formation.

Bringing together leading authorities and cutting edge scholars, this collection re-examines the defining concepts of Stalinism and the Stalinization odel. The aim of the book is to explore how the common imperatives of a centralized movement were experienced across national boundaries.

A critical edition of the text that defined communist party ideology in Stalin’s Soviet Union The Short Course on the History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks) defined Stalinist ideology both at home and abroad. It was quite literally the the master narrative of the USSR—a hegemonic statement on history, politics, and Marxism-Leninism that scripted Soviet society for a generation. This study exposes the enormous role that Stalin played in the development of this all-important text, as well as the unparalleled influence that he wielded over the Soviet historical imagination.

Stalinism and the Politics of Mobilization offers a new interpretation of Bolshevik ideology, examines its relationship with Soviet politics between 1917 and 1939, and sheds new light on the origins of the political violence of the late 1930s. While it challenges older views that the Stalinist system and the Terror were the product of a coherent Marxist-Leninist blueprint, imposed by a group of committed ideologues, it argues that ideas mattered in Bolshevik politics and that there are strong continuities between the politics of the revolutionary period and those of the 1930s. By exploring divisions within the party over several issues, including class, the relations between elites and masses, and economic policy, David Priestland shows how a number of ideological trends emerged within Bolshevik politics, and how they were related to political and economic interests and strategies. He also argues that central to the launching of the Terror was the leadership's commitment to a strategy of mobilization, and to a view of politics that ultimately derived from the left Bolshevism of the revolutionary period.

Boris Konstantinovich Lifschitz 'Souvarine' was born in in 1895 in Kiev to a Jewish family. His family moved to Paris in 1897. He came into contact with the French Socialist movement while working as an apprentice jeweler. But World War I and his experiences in the French army turned him toward politics and the pacifist movement. His talents at a writer developed during the war years and he began signing his articles with a new name: Souvarine. He supported the November 1917 Russian Revolution and being bilingual he helped to write about those events for French socialists. He hoped that Communist and Socialist Parties could together create a proletarian democracy in Russia. And feared a dictatorship of the Bolsheviks and their leader. He became an executive member of the Comintern, but by 1924 he was removed from the his official roles and expelled from the Comintern. In France Souvarine participated in a variety of organizations and journals of the anti Stalinist left. In the 1920s he also had growing differences with Trotsky, who described him as a journalist and not a revolutionary. In 1935 he published his book on Stalin, Staline, aperçu historique du bolchévisme .He also criticized Lenin. His criticisms of Stalinism were important sources for some less orthodox Trotskyists, such as C.L.R. James, who translated his book Stalin into English.--Amazon.com.