Stalin
& the Soviet Union
Form
of Authority
  Marxism/Leninism
functioned as a triumverate, with Marx as "spirit", Lenin
as "father", and Stalin (and subsequent leaders) as "sons".
The revolutionary Soviet regime
used coercion, both to collectivize the peasants and to achieve
rapid industrialization. Although there was widespread international
disapproval and citizens lived in constant fear of being sent to
brutal gulags, successive regimes
gained loyalty by improving living standards, creating equality
of opportunity, and positioning the Soviet people as the vanguard
of history.
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Death
& Transition
  Following
Stalin's death in 1953, he was placed in the tomb alongside Lenin's
mummy, before later being removed to his own grave. The Lenin mausoleum
functioned as a shrine where followers worshipped the symbolic Father.
Successive attempts to complete the burial of these leaders beginning
with Khrushchev in 1957 failed, largely because Soviet authority
could not exist without the image of the
Father.
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Consequences
  Following
Gorbachev's reforms of glasnost
and perestroika, monuments
to the past were dismantled. Sacrifices
made for the cause of socialism
and during World War II counted for little. After 1991 the Soviet
Union dissolved into an array of smaller states, all representing
themselves as formally democratic,
but taking different historical trajectories. The Soviet habit of
preserving fathers persists as Boris Yeltsin repeatedly rises from
his sick bed to reassert his authority, appear at parties, and dance.
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Prepared by John Borneman, & Linda Fisher, January 1999
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