2018/12/28 by Matthew E. Lenoe · 3 citations
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Chinese history and philosophy #Communism #Context (archaeology) #Dictator #Gulag #Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis #History #Law #Political science #Politics #Power (physics) #Sociology #State (computer science) #Vietnamese History and Culture Studies
paper · doi:10.1093/ahr/rhy475
openalex publication_date 2018/12/28 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929–1941, the second volume of Stephen Kotkin’s projected three-volume biography of the dictator, is ambitious, informative, and comprehensive. In many ways the book channels literature of the “totalitarian” school by an earlier generation of scholars including Robert Conquest and Martin Malia, Kotkin’s own mentor. Kotkin emphasizes Stalin’s immense willpower and his ability as dictator to control whatever matter he turned his attention to, at least within the Soviet Union. It was the combination of Marxist-Leninist ideology with Stalin’s dominating and suspicious personality, Kotkin argues, that made Soviet history between 1929 and 1953 so bloody. Waiting for Hitler has many strengths. Kotkin does a fine job of placing Stalin’s actions in their geopolitical context, which encompassed the Spanish Civil War, Japanese aggression against China, the search for collective security in the 1930s, and much more. The dictator, he shows, was consumed by statecraft as well as by domestic politics. In this context, Kotkin argues persuasively that there was no contradiction between the Communist goal of world revolution and the dictator’s dedication to revival of Russia’s great power status. In Stalin’s mind the Soviet state, dominated by Russia, bore the torch of international revolution. The book also offers a compelling personal portrait of the dictator, suggesting for example that his extreme brutality and sadism stemmed not from a traumatic childhood but from political struggles and his increasing power.