"This book explores how the communist cult of the individual was not
just a Soviet phenomenon but an international one. When Stalin died in 1953,
the communists of all countries united in mourning the figure that was the incarnation
of their cause. Though its international character was one of the
distinguishing features of the communist cult of personality, this is the first
extended study to approach the phenomenon over the longer period of its
development in a truly transnational and comparative perspective.
Crucially
it is concerned with the internationalisation of the Soviet cults of Lenin and
Stalin. But it also ranges across different periods and national cases to
consider a wider cast of bureaucrats, tribunes, heroes and martyrs who
symbolised both resistance to oppression and the tyranny of the party-state.
Through studying the disparate ways in which the cults were manifested, Kevin
Morgan not only takes in many of the leading personalities of the communist
movement, but also some of the cultural luminaries like Picasso and Barbusse
who sought to represent them. The cult of the individual was one of the most
fascinating, troubling and revealing features of Stalinist communism, and as
reconstructed here it offers new insight into one of the defining political
movements of the twentieth century."
More details and the content of book here.
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