Book Discussion: Stalin's Usable Past: A Critical Edition of the 1937 "Short History of the USSR," by David Brandenberger

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Brief Description

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, it turns out, had broken with two decades of Bolshevik propaganda that styled the 1917 Revolution as the start of a new era. In its place, he crafted 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.

Published Stanford University Press, “Stalin's Usable Past” supplies a critical edition of the 1937 “Short History” that both analyzes the text and places it within historical context. By highlighting Stalin's precise redactions and embellishments, it reveals the scope of the dictator’s personal involvement in the textbook's development, as well as his plans for the transformation of the USSR’s historical imagination.

This round table assembles a group of experts to discuss the scale, impact and implications of the dictator’s 1937 rewriting of the preceding millennia of Eurasian history.

Sub Unit

• History: 1900-1945

Chair

• David Brandenberger, U of Richmond

Roundtable Members

• Alexey Golubev, U of Houston

• Ronald Grigor Suny, U of Michigan

• David L. Hoffmann, Ohio State U

• Karen Petrone, U of Kentucky