Neo-Stalinism - History of The Term

History of The Term

The American Trotskyist Hal Draper used "neo-Stalinism" in 1948 to refer to a new political ideology – new development in Soviet policy, which he defined as a reactionary trend whose beginning was associated with the Popular Front period of the mid-1930s, writing that "The ideologists of neo-Stalinism are merely the tendrils shot ahead by the phenomena – fascism and Stalinism – which outline the social and political form of a neo-barbarism”

Frederick Copleston, S.J. portrays neo-Stalinism as a "Slavophile emphasis on Russia and her history": "what is called neo-Stalinism is not exclusively an expression of a desire to control, dominate, repress and dragoon; it is also the expression of a desire that Russia, while making use of western science and technology, should avoid contamination by western 'degenerate' attitudes and pursue her own path."

Political geographer Denis J.B. Shaw considers the Soviet Union as neo-Stalinist until the post-1985 period of transition to capitalism. He identified neo-Stalinism as a political system with planned economy and highly developed military-industrial complex

During the 1960s, the CIA distinguished between Stalinism and neo-Stalinism in that "The Soviet leaders have not reverted to two extremes of Stalin's rule – one-man dictatorship and mass terror. For this reason, their policy deserves the label 'neo-Stalinist' rather than -Stalinist."

Katerina Clark, describing an anti-Khrushchevite, pro-Stalin current in Soviet literary world during the 1960s, described the work of "neo-Stalinist" writers as harking back to "the Stalin era and its leaders... as a time of unity, strong rule and national honor."