The Stalin Cult: A Study in the Alchemy of PowerBetween the late 1920s and the early 1950s, one of the most persuasive personality cults of all times saturated Soviet public space with images of Stalin. A torrent of portraits, posters, statues, films, plays, songs, and poems galvanized the Soviet population and inspired leftist activists around the world. In the first book to examine the cultural products and production methods of the Stalin cult, Jan Plamper reconstructs a hidden history linking artists, party patrons, state functionaries, and ultimately Stalin himself in the alchemical project that transformed a pock-marked Georgian into the embodiment of global communism. Departing from interpretations of the Stalin cult as an outgrowth of Russian mysticism or Stalin's psychopathology, Plamper establishes the cult's context within a broader international history of modern personality cults constructed around Napoleon III, Mussolini, Hitler, and Mao. Drawing upon evidence from previously inaccessible Russian archives, Plamper's lavishly illustrated and accessibly written study will appeal to anyone interested in twentieth-century history, visual studies, the politics of representation, dictator biography, socialist realism, and real socialism. |
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Aleksandr appeared archive Army artists asked became birthday Bolshevik called celebrated Central circle close Committee competition Comrade Stalin created criticism cultural dated death December depicted directed early entire example exhibition face fact factory February first founded front further gaze Gerasimov hand head ibid institutions Iskusstvo issue Italy January Katsman Kremlin later leader Lenin letter living look March Marxism mass meeting Moscow Museum newspaper November October opened organized original painters painting Party patron personality cult photograph picture political Pravda production publishing realist received representations RGALI RGASPI role Russian sculpture shown social socialist realism society Soviet Union Stalin cult Stalin portrait symbolic tion tsar turned University Press visual Voroshilov workers writer wrote