Rittersporn Gábor T. Stalinist Simplifications and Soviet Complications: Social Tensions and Political Conflicts in the USSR, 1933-1953

Harwood Academic Publishers, 1991. — 334 p.This study interprets the phenomenon usually referred to as “Stalinism” as the outcome of the daily workings of the Soviet regime and its relations with the rest of society. It demonstrates that the tragic events of the 1930s and 1940s, far from being the result of an omnipotent tyrant’s whim, were due to the incapacity of the Soviet elite to control the functioning of its relations with society in the aftermath of collectivization and industrialization. This is a revised and enlarged version of the 1988 French edition, which includes material that has only recently [sic] become available from Soviet and German archives.