It is clearly an interesting time to be teaching the Stalin era – more and more ‘new thinking’ is coming out and books are being published with regularity. With this in mind, Alan Wood, senior lecturer in Russian History at Lancaster has clearly seen fit to bring out the second edition of this book which was first published in 1990. In particular Wood has developed his discussion of the social and cultural aspects of Stalinism in the light of current thinking and available evidence as well as further examination of the ‘intentionalist’ vs ‘structuralist’ debate – which for so long people have been discussing in relation to that other ‘baddie’ of the 20th century, Adolf Hitler.

Wood gives a good background to the topic in the section entitled ‘The Historical Setting’ – which I found useful as our course starts in 1924 and I could easily get bogged down in giving an overview of Russia up to this point – after all an understanding of the Tsars and the Revolution is essential to explain what came next. Wood gives sufficient background and in a clear, succinct way. He then goes on to give chapters on Stalin’s time as General Secretary, his rise to power, the consolidation of power, industrialization and the terror. There is a particularly useful and meaty chapter on ‘the Cold Warrior’ – looking at Stalin and his role in the origins of the Cold War. I was pleased to see this as too many commentators seem to stop at 1945, whereas Stalin’s story 1945-1953 is just as fascinating in that he is the only one of the pre-war leaders who survives and the USSR becomes a superpower. As the OCR syllabus goes up to Stalin’s death in 1953, this was particularly helpful!

My students find the Routledge series easy to use and I find it gets the key points across well and gives a good overview of some often confusing topics. In this way, it also acts as a good starting point prompting areas for wider reading that students need for success at A/S. The bibliography has been updated as have the suggestions for further reading and the glossary and chronological overview also prove useful

I would recommend this book for anyone teaching this topic at A/S or A2 as well as for those with a general interest in this fascinating topic.