title: Stalin in Power: The Revolution from Above, 1928-1941
author:  Robert C. Tucker 
description: Many Western historians portray Stalin as a pragmatic, if disastrously blundering revolutionary who had no overarching vision of where Russia was heading under his leadership. Not so, argues Tucker in this massive, provocative history; Stalin acted with forethought. Driven by a need to prove himself "a second and greater Lenin," he boldly and confidently implemented his collectivist schemes, backed by a policy of terror and accomplished through the seizure of peasant lands and households, mass murder, forced resettlement and prison camps. His state-directed, state-enforced "revolution from above," in Tucker's ( Stalin as Revolutionary ) view, was a throwback to the state-building of the earliest Muscovite grand princes. The author illumines the "Stalinist culture" the dictator promoted in everything from movies to "folk" songs, with its master themes of heroism and communal uplift. This gripping history is crucial reading for anyone seeking to understand Stalin or contemporary Soviet affairs. Photos. <br />Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
zlib_text: Stalin’s Constitution: Soviet Participatory Politics and the Discussion of the
  1936 Draft Constitution
  
  Upon its adoption in December 1936, Soviet leaders hailed the new so-called
  Stalin Constitution as the most democratic in the world. Scholars have long
  scoffed at this claim, noting that the mass repression of 1937–1938 that
  followed rendered it a hollow document. This study does not address these
  competing claims, but rather focuses on the six-month-long popular discussion
  of the draft Constitution, which preceded its formal adoption in December
  1936. Drawing on rich archival sources, this book uses the discussion of the
  draft 1936 Constitution to examine discourse between the central state
  leadership and citizens about the new Soviet social contract, which delineated
  the roles the state and citizens should play in developing socialism. For the
  central leadership, mobilizing its citizenry in a variety of state-building
  campaigns was the main goal of the discussion of the draft Const