The Dynamic of Self-Preservation and Ideological Legitimacy in the Stalinist Soviet Union

Abstract

The Stalinist regime has long been considered an enigmatic political entity in the annals of history. Scholars have attempted to understand the primary motivations of this regime. Some have focused entirely on its brutality and nature as a totalitarian system. This viewpoint has often resulted in the conclusion that the regime served almost entirely for the purpose of satisfying Stalin’s megalomaniacal desires. This viewpoint often purports that the regime’s ideology of Marxism-Leninism was a secondary feature of the regime, which used it simply as a tool to bend at will in order to justify its autocratic desires. This thesis will contradict elements of that claim. While the Stalinist regime was certainly brutal and totalitarian in nature, its core Marxist-Leninist principles were by no means a secondary feature of its rule. Furthermore, these principles, far from acting as a malleable tool to justify any action, acted as a set of guidelines and restrictions. The regime could, at times, be flexible with some of these boundaries, but by no means could it outright neglect or contradict them. From this system emerged the overarching dynamic of the regime: self-preservation and ideological legitimacy. This the core insecurities and polices of the regime in both the 1930s and the Second World War as the regime sought to keep this volatile dynamic in balance at all times.