Reading Stalinism: Stalinist Culture as a Research Feld in the West

Abstract

This article analyses the research field of Stalinist culture, which has been rapidly changing since the early 1990s when the study of Stalinism left the sphere of traditional Sovietology and gradually became one of the dominant subjects in the history of the 20th century. Among the main factors that influenced the formation of this research field, one can name the change of generations of scholars, inter-disciplinarity and methodological shifts, democratization, and the opening of archives, as well as changes in the academic economy. However, in general, the analysis of Western historiography reveals numerous gaps in the study of Stalinism and the need for new methodological and institutional changes.