This is a select bibliography of post-World War II English-language books (including translations) and journal articles about Stalinism, Joseph Stalin, and the Stalinist era of Soviet history.

Stephen Kotkin's biography of Stalin has an extensive bibliography; Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928 contains a 52-page bibliography and Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929–1941 contains a 50-page bibliography covering both the life of Stalin and Stalinism in the Soviet Union.

Works listed here are cited in the notes or bibliographies of scholarly sources. Each is published by an academic or major press, written by a recognized expert, or substantially reviewed in scholarly journals; borderline cases are omitted. A selection of primary sources are included. Many of the books below carry their own bibliographies; see the Further reading section for other bibliographies, and the External links section for historical sites, academic sites, and museums.

Citations follow APA style. Book have citations to academic journal or mainstream published reviews when available. For books only partly about the subject, relevant chapter or section titles are provided when useful and available. Translators of the original-language edition are included when possible. In cases where a title or name has appeared with more than one English spelling, the most recent published form is used and a footnote documents any earlier title under which the work appeared.

About Inclusion criteria The period covered is 1924–1953, beginning approximately with the death of Lenin and ending approximately with the death of Stalin. This bibliography does not include the de-Stalinisation period.

Topics include the post-Lenin period of Stalin's consolidation of power from 1924 to 1926 and closely related topics; for works on the Soviet involvement in World War II, see Bibliography of the Soviet Union during World War II. Biographies of prominent individuals associated with the Stalinist era and the expansion of Stalinism during the immediate post World War II era. This bibliography does not include fiction, newspaper articles (expect in references), photo collections, or films created during or about Stalinism or the Stalinist Era.

Works included are referenced in the notes or bibliographies of scholarly secondary sources or journals. Included works should either be published by an academic or widely distributed publisher, be authored by a notable subject matter expert as shown by scholarly reviews and have significant scholarly journal reviews about the work. To keep the bibliography length manageable, only items that clearly meet the criteria should be included.

Citation style This bibliography uses APA style citations. Entries do not use templates. References to reviews and notes for entries do use citation templates. Where books which are only partially related to Russian history are listed, the titles for chapters or sections should be indicated if possible, meaningful, and not excessive.

If a work has been translated into English, the translator should be included and a footnote with appropriate bibliographic information for the original language version should be included.

When listing works with titles or names published with alternative English spellings, the form used in the latest published version should be used and the version and relevant bibliographic information noted if it previously was published or reviewed under a different title.

Overviews of Russian history

General surveys of Soviet history

These works contain significant overviews of the Stalinist era. Cohen, S. F. (2011). Rethinking the Soviet Experience: Politics and History since 1917. New York: Oxford University Press. Figes, O. (2015). Revolutionary Russia, 1891–1991. New York: Metropolitan Books. Heller, M., Nekrich, A. M., & Carlos, P. B. (1986). Utopia in Power: The History of the Soviet Union from 1917 to the present. New York: Simon and Schuster. Hosking, G. (1987). The First Socialist Society: A History of the Soviet Union from Within (Second Edition). Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Kort, M. G. (2019). The Soviet Colossus (8th Edition). London: Routledge. Kenez, P. (2017). A History of the Soviet Union from the Beginning to its Legacy. New York: Cambridge University Press. Lewin, M. (2016). The Soviet Century. (G. Elliot, Ed.). New York: Verso. Malia, M. (1995). Soviet Tragedy: A History of Socialism in Russia 1917–1991. New York: Free Press. Mccauley, M. (2007). The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union. London: Routledge. Nove, A. (1993). An Economic History of the USSR 1917–1991 (3rd Edition). London: Arkana Publishing. Suny, R. G. (Ed.). (2006). The Cambridge History of Russia: Volume 3, The Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ——. (2013). The Structure of Soviet History: Essays and Documents (2nd ed.). New York: Oxford University Press.

Period surveys and monographs (1924–1953)

Angotti, T. (1988). The Stalin Period: Opening up History. Science & Society, 52(1), 5–34. Antonov-Ovseenko, A. (1983). The Time of Stalin: Portrait of a Tyranny. New York: Harper & Row. Armstrong, J. A. (1961). The Politics of Totalitarianism : The Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1934 to the Present. New York: Random House. Hoffmann, D. L. (2018). The Stalinist Era. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kuromiya, H. (2007). Stalin and His Era. The Historical Journal, 50(3), 711–724. McCagg, W. O. (1978). Stalin Embattled: 1943–1948. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press. Pipes, R. (1997, orig. ed. 1954). The Formation of the Soviet Union: Communism and Nationalism 1917–1923, Revised Edition. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Shearer, D. (2018). Stalin at War, 1918–1953: Patterns of Violence and Foreign Threat. Jahrbücher Für Geschichte Osteuropas, 66(2), 188–217. Smith, S. A. (2017). Russia in Revolution: An Empire in Crisis, 1890 to 1928 (Chapters 5–7). New York: Oxford University Press. Smele, J. (2016). The "Russian" Civil Wars, 1916–1926: Ten Years That Shook the World (Chapter 6 and Conclusion). New York: Oxford University Press. Snyder, T., & Brandon, R. (Eds.). (2014). Stalin and Europe: Imitation and Domination, 1928-1953. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Tucker, R. C. (1992). Stalin in Power: The Revolution from Above, 1928–1941. New York: Norton.

Postwar era Hahn, W. G. (1982). Postwar Soviet Politics: The Fall of Zhdanov and the Defeat of Moderation, 1946–53. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Kirschenbaum, L. (2011). Remembering and Rebuilding: Leningrad after the Siege from a Comparative Perspective. Journal of Modern European History, 9(3), 314–327. Ruble, B. (1983). The Leningrad Affair and the Provincialization of Leningrad. The Russian Review, 42(3), 301–320. Werth, A., & Salisbury, H. E. (1971). Russia: The Postwar Years. London: Hale. White, E. (2007). After the War Was over: The Civilian Return to Leningrad. Europe-Asia Studies, 59(7), 1145–1161. Zubkova, Elena. (2004). The Soviet Regime and Soviet Society in the Postwar Years: Innovations and Conservatism, 1945–1953. Journal of Modern European History, 2(1), 134–152.

Social history

Bettelheim, C., & Pearce, B. (1978). Class Struggles in the USSR: Second Period 1923–1930. New York: Monthly Review Press. Campeanu, P., & Vale, M. (1988). The Genesis of the Stalinist Social Order. International Journal of Sociology, 18(1/2), 1–165. Caroli, D., & Williams, R. (2003). Bolshevism, Stalinism, and Social Welfare (1917–1936). International Review of Social History, 48(1), 27–54. Cohen, S. F. (1986). Stalin's Terror As Social History. The Russian Review, 45(4), 375–384. Davies, S. (1997). "Us against Them": Social Identity in Soviet Russia, 1934–41. The Russian Review, 56(1), 70–89. ———. (1999). Popular Opinion in Stalin's Russia: Terror, Propaganda and Dissent, 1934–1941. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Edele, M. (2011). Stalinist Society: 1928–1953. New York: Oxford University Press. ———. (2014). The New Soviet Man as a "Gypsy": Nomadism, War, and Marginality in Stalin's Time. Region, 3(2), 285–307. Figes, O. (2008). The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia. New York: Picador. Fitzpatrick, S. (1979). Stalin and the Making of a New Elite, 1928–1939. Slavic Review, 38(3), 377–402. ———. (1984). The Russian Revolution and Social Mobility: A Re-examination of the Question of Social Support for the Soviet Regime in the 1920s and 1930s. Politics & Society, 13(2), 119–141. ———. (1989). War and Society in Soviet Context: Soviet Labor before, during, and after World War II. International Labor and Working-Class History, (35), 37–52. ———. (1999). Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s. New York: Oxford University Press. Galmarini, M. (2016). The Right to Be Helped: Deviance, Entitlement, and the Soviet Moral Order (NIU Series in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies). DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press. Ginsburgs, G. (1957). The Soviet Union and the Problem of Refugees and Displaced Persons 1917– 1956. The American Journal of International Law, 51(2), 325–361. Hoffmann, D. L. (2011). Cultivating the Masses: Modern State Practices and Soviet Socialism, 1914–1939. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Kiaer, C. (2008). Everyday Life in Early Soviet Russia: Taking the Revolution Inside. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Lewin, M. (1976) Society and the Stalinist State in the Period of the Five Year Plans. Social History, 1(2), 139–175. ———. (1994). The Making of the Soviet System: Essays in the Social History of Interwar Russia. New York: New Press. Lorimer, F. (1979). The Population of the Soviet Union: History and Prospects. New York: AMS Press. Mawdsley, E., & White, S. (2004). The Soviet Elite from Lenin to Gorbachev: The Central Committee and Its Members, 1917–1991. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Noskova, O. G. (1996) The Social History of Industrial Psychology in Russia. Journal of Russian & East European Psychology, 34(4), 8–25. Nove, A. (1983). The Class Nature of the Soviet Union Revisited. Soviet Studies, 35(3), 298–312. Siegelbaum, L. H. (1994). Soviet State and Society Between Revolutions, 1918–1929. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Weiner, A. (1999). Nature, Nurture, and Memory in a Socialist Utopia: Delineating the Soviet Socio-Ethnic Body in the Age of Socialism. The American Historical Review, 104(4), 1114–1155. Yekelchyk, S. (2014). Stalin's Citizens: Everyday Politics in the Wake of Total War. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Zubkova, E., & Ragsdale, H. (2015). Russia After The War: Hopes, Illusions, and Disappointments, 1945–1957. London: Routledge.

Culture

Anderson, J (2018). The Spatial Cosmology of the Stalin Cult: Ritual, Myth and Metanarrative. University of Glasgow. Barber, J. (1981). Soviet Historians in Crisis, 1928–1932. London: Macmillan. Baraban, E. V. (2014). Filming a Stalinist War Epic in Ukraine: Ihor Savchenko's "The Third Strike." Canadian Slavonic Papers / Revue Canadienne Des Slavistes, 56(1/2), 17–41. Baumgartner, M. and Buehler, K. (2017). The Revolution is Dead - Long Live the Revolution: From Malevich to Judd, From Deineka to Bartana. New York: Prestel/Random House. Clark, K. (2001). Moscow, the Fourth Rome: Stalinism, Cosmopolitanism, and the Evolution of Soviet Culture, 1931–1941. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Congdon, L. (2017). Solzhenitsyn: The Historical-Spiritual Destinies of Russia and the West (NIU Series in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies). DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press. Enteen, G. (1989). The Stalinist Conception of Communist Party History. Studies in Soviet Thought, 37(4), 259–274. Feinstein, E. (2007). Anna of all the Russias: The Life of Anna Akhmatova. New York: Knopf. Fitzpatrick, S. (1971). The Emergence of Glaviskusstvo. Class War on the Cultural Front, Moscow, 1928–29. Soviet Studies, 23(2), 236–253.