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Humanitarian sciences in Siberia

2021 year, number

ON THE QUESTION OF THE POLITICAL CULTURE OF THE STALINIST ERA IN THE HISTORY OF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE USSR (Book review: Velikanova O. “The Constitution of 1936 and the mass political culture of Stalinism”. Moscow, 2021. 360 p.)

I.N. Strekalov
The Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russian Federation
Keywords: constitution, socialism, communism, Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, society

Abstract

The review’s author considers the monograph on the history of the creation of the Constitution of the USSR of 1936 written by Olga Velikanova. The review’s author analyzes which sources are introduced by the Velikanova into academic circulation, points out which conclusions are new in the context of the historiography of the question and, finally, recognizes what is the scientific significance of the results of the study conducted by the historian. The conclusion of O. Velikanova relating the political culture of the era of Joseph Stalin, in the context of other periods of history of the constitutional development of the USSR, is analyzed in detail. The author of the review belleve that such a conclusion is controversial. The political culture of the post-war USSR with its decisive rejection of the Stalinist heritage can hardly be considered as the coexistence of the opinion of some single majority with the “islets,” as the researcher expresses, of liberal culture; the whole Soviet society had become much more complex, more diverse, and a number of opinions had appeared on various issues of the development of the state and society.