This is a study of the origins of the Stalinist political system. It has its own origins in my dissatisfaction with the way in which this question has been handled by scholars in the West. For the most part, attempts to explain the emergence of the Stalinist system (as opposed to the victory of Stalin personally) have been deficient in ways that are outlined briefly in the introduction. This book attempts to fill the gap between those works which concentrate upon Stalin personally and the intricacies of the course of elite conflict, and those which place overwhelming emphasis upon contextual or metaphysical forces, like economic backwardness or bureaucratism. This book's focus is the development of those regime structures which shaped the course of systemic development in such a way that it culminated in the sort of political system which was present in 1941. Its focus is thus the structures (both institutional and value) of the Soviet system and how these changed over time. No attempt is made to provide a chronology of events during this period; individual events are discussed only insofar as they had an affect upon the structural bases of the Stalinist political system and their development. Nor is use of the word ‘system’ meant to imply a rationally ordered or efficiently operating network of parts, because as this study shows, the Stalinist system was not structured in this way. The word is therefore used in its vernacular rather than its technical sense.

Many people have contributed to the writing of this book, mainly by commenting upon papers which have stemmed from it or by discussing some of the issues which have arisen in it.