Top Highlights

• HISTORY OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE SOVIET UNION (BOLSHEVIKS): SHORT COURSE was the central text of the Stalin-era ideological canon. Compulsory reading for Soviet citizens of all walks of life, it was ubiquitous in the U.S.S.R. between 1938 and 1956.
• The SHORT COURSE was, in other words, the U.S.S.R.’s master narrative—a hegemonic statement on history, philosophy, and ideology that scripted Soviet society for the better part of a generation.
• the SHORT COURSE ought to be considered one of the most influential books of the twentieth century.
• Stalin’s relationship to the book, insofar as he neither wrote it from scratch nor interpolated his own personal experiences into its narrative.
• Ultimately, the SHORT COURSE ought to be recognized as one of the most important texts for the study of Stalinism, the party canon, and modern communism as a whole.