Stalin's Personality Cult

[Pretty Flaco]

How did Stalin develop it?

[Rafiq]

He came to power and helped industrialized the shit out of his country. Plus he wad the leader of the bolshevik party. Do the math.

[Pretty Flaco]

Well I'd like to know more about how that was done.

And also specifically how the propaganda worked.

[Rooster]

MLs are going to tell you that it grew out of the workers themselves as a spontenaous reaction to the greatness that the Stalin lead bureaucarcy created in the USSR. What could Stalin do if people just burst out on the streets demanding to praise him as the father figure of the nation? Then they'll maybe say how Molotov said that Stalin ended up using that for political ends. I somehow doubt that that's the whole story.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

It's difficult to say, for sure.

The most dominant theory is that, during and after the growing political and economic centralisation of the Soviet Union from the late 1920s onwards, bureaucratic functionaries who owed their careers to Stalin (after a great many purges of his enemies) encouraged the cult of his person. It is more than likely that this is true. What is open to discussion/interpretation is whether Stalin encouraged and even worked to ferment this reverence, or whether he genuinely tried to dissuade it.

Personally, I don't think it matters either way. If he tried to dissuade it, he failed. That shows that the problem of cult of personality largely lies in an inadequate, unaccountable, out of control bureaucracy that is acting in its own interests rather than that of the working class. In many ways, the leader can be just a figurehead at times, a la Kim Jong Il.

[RedTrackWorker]

I think the key first step was developing a cult around Lenin after his death, including by first embalming the corpse rather than burying or cremating it. The next key step in that was using quotes from Lenin against Trotsky--without dates or context--making it about "personality" rather than critical thinking about the interests of the working class. Stalin's "cult" was established more by "expropriating" and embalming the prestige of the Russian revolution attached to Lenin than by industrializing Russia--which came later and only then its part.

[HEAD ICE]

I think the key first step was developing a cult around Lenin after his death, including by first embalming the corpse rather than burying or cremating it. The next key step in that was using quotes from Lenin against Trotsky--without dates or context--making it about "personality" rather than critical thinking about the interests of the working class. Stalin's "cult" was established more by "expropriating" and embalming the prestige of the Russian revolution attached to Lenin than by industrializing Russia--which came later and only then its part.

Coming here to post just this. The Stalin 'personality cult' was just an extension of the 'cult' of Lenin that was developed right after his death. When Lenin was alive there were great disagreements with him within the Bolshevik party, but everything remained amicable. In fact it was a disagreement with Bukharin that lead Lenin to adjust his views on the state, leading him to publish 'State and Revolution.' Stalinists vomit up quotations of Lenin (most of the time without context) and talk about what "Lenin thought." I don't need to point out how blatantly idealist this is.

[Marxach-Léinínach]

"On December 21, 1929, the nation celebrated Stalin's fiftieth birthday with unprecedented extravagance... It was the beginning of the Stalin cult, which developed on a phenomenal scale.

The frenetic adulation was in part the enthusiastic work of the party machine in Moscow and of the party officials throughout the country. They were praising and ensuring that the people joined by praising their chief, the General Secretary of the party. They owed their positions to him and they knew how his authority could reach into the most distant corners of the party organization. But servility and self-interest were accompanied by genuine veneration...

While accepting the need for the cult, however, Stalin probably took little active part in promoting it. The Yugoslav communist Milovan Djilas, meeting him in 1945, formed the opinion that "the deification of Stalin . . . was at least as much the work of Stalin's circle and the bureaucracy, who required such a leader, as it was his own doing."
(Ian Grey. Stalin: Man of History. 1st ed. New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1979.)

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Could it also be argued that the long-term authoritarian nature of Russia's system, pre-Socialism, meant that establishing a cult of personality in Russia was easier than it might have been in another country?

[Ismail]

The Webbs in their book Soviet Communism attributed the receptiveness of the cult amongst the populace to pre-Soviet veneration for the Tsar amongst the peasantry. When Lenin was alive, although his cult wasn't as big as Stalin's, it certainly did exist and various party members in the countryside would replace icons of saints with Lenin in some areas.

And yes, as rooster said, Molotov did note that Stalin didn't like the cult, but he didn't mind using it for political ends. There's another instance (in Russian only) where Stalin is criticizing Bukharin in 1937 or so for acting in a servile manner in his speeches and constantly praising Stalin.

Otherwise, see: http://www.mltranslations.org/Britain/StalinBB.htm

Anyway, to answer the original question, in official biographies Stalin was portrayed as a genius who personally led the Russian Revolution side-by-side with Lenin, various projects and ideas were attributed to Stalin, there were songs about Stalin, movies about Stalin, books about Stalin and various aspects of his life, portraits, busts and statues of Stalin, Stalin's speeches distributed across the country, and that whole WWII thing. Plus Stalin was mentioned in the Soviet anthem after Lenin until after his death.

Through tempests shined on us the sun of freedom,
And the great Lenin lit us the way.
Stalin brought us up -- on loyalty to the people,
He inspired us to labor and to heroism!It's rather easy to develop a personality cult for leaders like Lenin and Stalin, or Hoxha and Mao, or even Kim Il Sung and to a lesser extent Castro. These weren't some dudes who just led countries as "boring" bourgeois politicians. They saw industrialization, the transformation of cultural norms, large literacy campaigns (most literacy campaigns had Lenin and Stalin literature or speeches that one had to learn how to read from), and so on. "Stalin" in the eyes of most Soviet citizens in the 1930's and 40's embodied the Soviet state itself and all of its successes.


When Lenin was alive there were great disagreements with him within the Bolshevik party, but everything remained amicable. In fact it was a disagreement with Bukharin that lead Lenin to adjust his views on the state, leading him to publish 'State and Revolution.' Stalinists vomit up quotations of Lenin (most of the time without context) and talk about what "Lenin thought." I don't need to point out how blatantly idealist this is.This is assuming Stalin viewed any sort of inner-party discussions and debates as anathema to his insatiable lust for total domination or whatever.