What is History? The Case of Late Stalinism

Abstract

The first part of this article examines the construction of the history of the high politics of Late Stalinism by reviewing five episodes in the period c.1946 to 1953. I suggest that these episodes are usually narrated as examples of either ‘monolithic orthodoxy’ or ‘neo-pluralism’, and conclude that a third narrative structure could be added: ‘pressured elites’. The second part of the article analyses these three narratives as cultural artefacts, and avers that they depend for their effect on a variety of rhetorical and literary devices which tell us as much, if not more, about the construction of history as they do about the past. The article concludes with a consideration of how non-narrative histories of Late Stalinism might be imagined.