Once again about Bolshevism and democracy. Review of Douds, L., J. Harris, and P. Whitewood, eds. The Fate of the Bolshevik Revolution: Illiberal Liberation, 1917–1941. London: Bloomsbury, 2020.

Abstract

The authors of the volume under review consider the development of the Soviet political system during the pre-war period. They focus on the long-standing and still relevant issue of the scenarios for this development and the possibilities to avoid the concentration of power in a single pair of hands and the cult of personality. At the same time, the authors move away from the traditional personification of the political process in the USSR, relegating the struggle within the leadership of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) (VKP(b)) in the 1920s to the background. The authors spotlight the episodes that seem to be mentioned on the pages of scholarly publications quite often but actually remain on the periphery of research, being considered as “well studied” and “of little uninformative value,” for example, the nation-wide discussion of the 1936 Constitution or Lenin’s views on democracy. The monograph shows current trends in historiography and will undoubtedly be of interest to historians and political scientists.

Keywords

• great russian revolution
• october revolution
• vladimir lenin
• joseph stalin
• the 1936 constitution