This thought-provoking collection of essays, assembled in honour of renowned historian Geoffrey Roberts, analyses the complex, multi-faceted, and even contradictory nature of Stalinism and its representations.

Stalinism was an extraordinarily repressive and violent political model, and yet it was led by ideologues committed to a vision of socialism and international harmony. This volume 'revisions' Stalin in his various guises - despot and diplomat, soldier and statesman, rational bureaucrat and paranoid politician - and explores the complex picture that this created in Russia during the period. Broadly speaking, three important areas of debate are examined, united by a focus on political leadership:

* The key controversies surrounding Stalin's leadership role
* A reconsideration of Stalin and the Cold War
* New perspectives on the cult of personality

Revisioning Stalin and Stalinism is a crucial volume for all students and scholars of Stalin's Russia and Cold War Europe.

List of Contributors Acknowledgements Introduction: Revisioning Stalin and Stalinism, James Ryan (Cardiff University, UK) and Susan Grant (Liverpool John Moores University, UK) Part I. The Controversial Vozhd': Stalin as Leader and Statesman 1. The Many Lives of Joseph Stalin: Writing the Biography of a 'Monster', Christopher Read (Warwick University, UK) 2. Stalin's Purge of the Red Army and Misperception of Security Threats, Peter Whitewood (York St. John University, UK) 3. Stalin and the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939: The New Historiography, Daniel Kowalsky (Queen's University Belfast, UK) 4. Brute Force and Genius: Stalin as War Leader, Chris Bellamy (University of Greenwich, UK) Part II. Challenging Stalinist Models: Cults of Personality 5. The Stalin Cult in Comparative Context, Judith Devlin (Trinity College Dublin, Ireland) 6. From Heroic Lion to Streetfighter: Historical Legacies and the Leader Cult in 20th Century Hungary, Balazs Apor (Trinity College Dublin, Ireland) Part III. New Ways of Understanding the Stalinist System: The Cold War 7. Revisioning Stalin's Cold War, Caroline Kennedy-Pipe (Loughborough University, UK) 8. Working Towards the Vozhd'? Stalin and the Peace Movement, Geoffrey Roberts (University College Cork, Ireland) 9. Construction of a Confession: The Language and Psychology of Interrogations in Stalinist Czechoslovakia, Molly Pucci (Trinity College Dublin, Ireland) Part IV. In Lieu of an Epilogue 10. Reckoning with the Past: Stalin and Stalinism in Putin's Russia, James Ryan (Cardiff University, UK) Select Bibliography Index