The Stalin cult : a study in the alchemy of power /​ Jan Plamper

Title

• The Stalin cult : a study in the alchemy of power / Jan Plamper.

Author

• Plamper, Jan, 1970-

Published

• Stanford, Calif. : Hoover Institution, Stanford University ; New Haven : Yale University Press, 2012.

Content Types

• text

Carrier Types

• online resource
• volume

Physical Description

• 1 online resource (xx, 310 pages, [16] pages of plates) : illustrations (some color).
• xx, 310 p., [16] p. of plates : ill. ; 27 cm.

Series

• The Yale-Hoover series on Stalin, Stalinism, and the Cold War
• Yale-Hoover series on Stalin, Stalinism, and the Cold War

Subjects

• Stalin, Joseph, 1879-1953.
• Stalin, Joseph, 1878-1953 -- Influence.
• Stalin, Joseph, 1878-1953 -- Public opinion.
• Stalin, Joseph, 1878-1953 -- In mass media.
• Stalin, Iosif V., 1879-1953.
• Stalin, Iosif V.
• Stalin, Joseph, 1878-1953.
• Personenkult.
• Cults -- Political aspects -- Soviet Union -- History.
• Political culture -- Soviet Union -- History.
• Public opinion -- Soviet Union -- History.
• Mass media -- Political aspects -- Soviet Union -- History.
• Cults -- Political aspects.
• Influence (Literary, artistic, etc.)
• Mass media.
• Mass media -- Political aspects.
• Political culture.
• Political science.
• Public opinion.
• Soviet Union -- Politics and government -- 1917-1936.
• Soviet Union -- Politics and government -- 1936-1953.
• Soviet Union.
• Stalin, Joseph, 1879-1953 -- In mass media.
• Stalin, Joseph, 1879-1953 -- Influence.
• Stalin, Joseph, 1879-1953 -- Public opinion.

Summary

• Between 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.

Contents

• Paths to the Stalin cult
• pt. 1. Cult products
• Stalin's image in time
• Stalin's image in space
• pt. 2. Cult production
• The political is personal, art is political : Stalin, the cult, and patronage
• How to paint the leader? Institutions of cult production
• The audience as cult producer : exhibition comment books and notes at celebrity evenings
• Appendix: The statistics of visual representations of Stalin in Pravda.

Notes

• Formerly CIP.
• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Form

• Print version Plamper, Jan, 1970- Stalin cult 9780300169522

Language

• English

ISBN