Stalinism as a Civilization: New Perspectives on Communist Regimes
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1478-9299.2004.00006.x |
| Published date | 01 April 2004 |
| Author | Astrid Hedin |
| Date | 01 April 2004 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Stalinism as a Civilization:
New Perspectives on Communist Regimes
Astrid Hedin
Stanford University
A new line of inquiry into the history of communist regimes and the cold war has emerged.
Pioneered by Stephen Kotkin and other American historians, it views Stalinism as the defin-
ing era of socialism, building a specific anti-capitalist and illiberal modernity that mustered
voluntary participation and international legitimacy. This model of Stalinism as a rival civi-
lization, held together by participatory totalitarianism, challenges older research on commu-
nist regimes – both revisionist and totalitarian studies. However, the degree of originality of
this perspective is questioned here, citing precursors, parallels and contrasts within European
research and political science.
The Soviet Union claimed to represent a politically, culturally and morally supe-
rior modernity – a new civilization. A young generation of American historians
take this claim seriously, focusing on the translation of ideological claims into
discursive practice and how discourse helped secure the astonishing inner sta-
bility of communist regimes. From this perspective, the most important foreign
relation between the former East bloc and the West was neither the arms race
nor the technological and economic rivalry, but the struggle for legitimacy –
the clash of civilizations as competing modernities (compare Westad 2000;
Wohlforth, 2001, pp. 224–7). In this review, I will focus on this new American
research perspective on communist regimes, concentrating on the work of
Stephen Kotkin as pioneer and trendsetter. I will offer a terminology to
describe the new paradigm and outline its themes and some surrounding
debates. Throughout, reference will be made to some parallels and unrealized
points of connection and contrast with European research and political
science.1
A New Paradigm
Stephen Kotkin’s magnum opus, Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization,
was published in 1995.2With time, it has proven to be perhaps the key refer-
ence to the themes and methods common to a new generation of American
researchers into communist regimes. For lack of an established name, I suggest
that the two interconnected lines of research pioneered by Kotkin be dubbed
‘competing modernities’ and ‘participatory totalitarianism’. In a compact
summary, the claim of communist regimes to represent a superior modernity
was key to their success in making Stalinism participatory.
Both these concepts – competing modernities and participatory totalitarianism
– highlight the paradigm’s intellectual indebtedness to both totalitarian theory
POLITICAL STUDIES REVIEW: 2004 VOL 2, 166–184
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STALINISM AS A CIVILIZATION 167
and revisionist research. But they also describe the innovative break with them.
In 222 pages of long footnotes, Magnetic Mountain gave a blazing critique of
older revisionist accounts and the totalitarian literature. But at the same time,
it revived and revised themes from the earlier classics. Whereas totalitarian
theory had traditionally assumed Soviet citizens to be subjugated and atom-
ized, Kotkin highlighted their positive integration and willing participation.
While the revisionist convergence theory assumed that, with time, the two
systems would grow more similar, his point of departure was the communist
aspiration to be different from capitalism and the regimes’ competitive quest
for legitimacy – that is, for discursive domination.
Since its publication, Magnetic Mountain has been lauded as ‘certainly the
outstanding contribution to the literature of the last decade’ (Europe-Asia
Studies), a ‘monumental study’ (Journal of Modern History), ‘a splendid book’
(The Russian Review), and ‘a masterpiece ... sure to become a classic’ (Slavic and
East European Journal). Still, not surprisingly, it has not pleased all camps. The
praise from revisionist reviewers seems particularly reluctant: Kotkin may
perhaps be ‘one of the aspirant leaders of the new scholarship of the 1990s’
(Fitzpatrick, 2000, p. 7). But, in the eyes of these reviewers, it builds both too
much and too little on earlier revisionist work. Lynne Viola saw the work of
Kotkin and his followers as much inspired by revisionist scholarship of the
1980s, such as Sheila Fitzpatrick’s writings on everyday life under Stalinism
(Viola, 2002). Gabór Rittersporn, on the other hand, complained of the reverse
– that Kotkin offers only a ‘déjà vu’ of the totalitarian thesis that what shaped
the Soviet system were the grand designs of Bolshevik ideology, rather than
the resistance to the official propaganda that is emphasized in revisionist
scholarship (Rittersporn, 1996).
Sources versus Perspectives
New to Kotkin’s research is, of course, the improved access to historical sources.
He was one of the first wave of researchers to gain extensive access to Soviet
archives in the latter half of the 1980s. Magnetic Mountain is a focused and
detailed case study of the construction of the famous metal works and adja-
cent Magnetic Mountain City (Magnitogorsk). It shows how Soviet industrial-
ization in the late 1920s and early 1930s was part and parcel of an effort to
build a new socialist civilization. Stalinist civilization made a proud claim to its
own ‘language’ (Bolshevism), ‘religion’ (Marxist–Leninism), a particular under-
standing of world history, new and ‘modern’ customs and institutions, and a
self-identification as the superior modernity. Magnetic Mountain draws on
state and party archives, contemporary press coverage, reader’s letters and
debates from various Soviet publications, small and large. He has also stumbled
on a gold mine for his particular project – documents, interviews and memoirs
of Magnitogorsk inhabitants, collected for a Soviet research project. (‘[T]he
project and its leadership were “liquidated” in 1938’, Kotkin tersely remarked
on page 371.)
Still, the academic impact of Magnetic Mountain, as Kotkin would be the first
to agree, derived not from any unique access to the archival material, but more
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