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Article: Stalin in Power: the Revolution from Above.
- Article from:
- The Economist (US)
- Article date:
- May 11, 1991
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1991 Economist Newspaper Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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NEARLY 40 years after his death, Stalin's influence over his unhappy country still exceeds that of any of its current leaders. Most monuments to the 20th century's greatest dictator were toppled decades ago. But the crippling centralisation, paranoid public life, arbitrary government and rapacious communist-party apparatus that continue to strangle the country are Stalin's real monuments. They are proving despairingly difficult to dismantle.
No other modern leader has so effectively, or brutally, moulded a great state to reflect his own obsessions. Stalin can be cited to support either the theory that history is an inexorable march of pre-determined events or its ...