Paul Goble
Staunton, Feb. 1 – There is no period in Russian history which is murkier and about which less is known for certain than the last years and especially the last weeks and months of the rule of Joseph Stalin. As a result, Russians continue to revisit them out of a belief that what happened or didn’t happen then determined the future course of the country.
The latest to do so is Aleksey Chichkin, a Moscow historian who has written four books about Stalin and Stalinism. And in a new essay, he argues that Stalin was planning to conduct a Maoist-style cultural revolution to purge the country’s leaders and bring to power a younger generation (vpoanalytics.com/2023/02/01/o-nesostoyavshejsya-stalinskoj-kulturnoj-revolyutsii/).
In the view of some historians with which Chichkin clearly agrees, “before his sudden end, Stalin decided to radically renew all levels of the party-state leadership since the old leader cadres had already lost their devotion to socialism and therefore the restoration of capitalism and the disintegration of the USSR.
The historian traces what happened in 1951 through early 1953 and points out that some in the Chinese communist party leadership including Mao and a few in the CPSU who were influenced by Mao reached the conclusion that renewal of cadres was required to save the two systems (great-country.ru/rubrika_articles/mels/00031.html).
History suggests, Chichkin says, that Stalin and Mao were right and their opponents were wrong. After all, the CPSU and the USSR are no more while the CPC and the Peoples Republic of China continue to function.
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