Stalin's Usable Past: A Critical Edition of the 1937 Short History of the USSR (StanfordHoover Series on Authoritarianism)

At the height of the Great Terror in 1937, Joseph Stalin took a break from the purges to edit a new textbook on the history of the USSR. Published shortly thereafter, the Short History of the USSR amounted to an ideological sea change. Stalin had literally rewritten Russo-Soviet History, breaking with two decades of Bolshevik propaganda that styled the 1917 Revolution as the start of a new era. In its place, he established a thousand-year pedigree for the Soviet state that stretched back through the Russian empire and Muscovy to the very dawn of Slavic civilization. Appearing in million-copy print runs through 1955, the Short History transformed how a generation of Soviet citizens were to understand the past, not only in public school and adult indoctrination courses, but on the printed page, the theatrical stage, and the silver screen. Stalin's Usable Past supplies a critical edition of the Short History that both analyzes the text and places it in historical context. By highlighting Stalin's precise redactions and embellishments, historian David Brandenberger reveals the scope of Stalin's personal involvement in the textbook's development, documenting in unprecedented detail his plans for the transformation of Soviet society's historical imagination. Cover Title Page Copyright Contents List of Illustrations List of Maps Acknowledgments A Note on Conventions Terms and Acronyms Introduction to the Critical Edition The Short History of the USSR Introduction I. Our Country in the Distant Past II. The Kiev State III. Eastern Europe under the Rule of the Mongol Conquerors IV. The Rise of the Russian National State V. The Expansion of the Russian State VI. The Peasant Wars and Revolts of the Oppressed. Oppressed Peoples in the 17th Century VII. Russia in the 18th Century. The Empire of Landlords and Merchants VIII. Tsarist Russia—the Gendarme of Europe IX. The Growth of Capitalism in Tsarist Russia X. The First Bourgeois Revolution in Russia XI. The Second Bourgeois Revolution in Russia XII. The Great October Socialist Revolution in Russia XIII. Military Intervention. The Civil War XIV. The Turn to Peaceful Labour. Economic Restoration of the Country XV. U.S.S.R. is the Land of Victorious Socialism Chronological Table Notes Appendix: Further Revisions to Stalin’s Usable Past, 1937–1955 Index Back cover