Abstract
Samuelson presents a long-range overview of the always contradictory approaches to Stalin and Stalinism, beginning in the 1930s with Barbusse's hagiographic approaches and Souvarine's critically prophetic interpretations. He briefly discusses some outstanding work of the 1960s to 1980s, focussing on the complex results of the «Archival Revolution» in post-Soviet Russia in the 1990s. Since then, scholars have read and interpreted tens of thousands of until then publicly unknown documents. These have substantially deepened our understanding of the mechanisms of rule and terror, but also of the social structures, economic development, the relations between central decision making and regional politics. Last but not least, these documents give us insights on the daily life of the oppressed as well as of those who came out as winners of the system or who lived their lives removed from politics. The «Archival Revolution» has not yet ended. Much research remains to be done.