Contemporary American historiography of Stalin's Russia: methodological advances and traditional interpretations

The article analyzes two recent scholarly works by prominent American historians in the field of the Soviet history. Contextualizing them within contemporary American historiography of Stalin’s Russia, it demonstrates that they combine recent methodology with the traditional, even archaic, interpretations. Further on, the article contemplates upon their use of the methodology of the earlier generations of Soviet historians, and upon recent trends as well as general tendencies in the field. In particular, the article juxtaposes the contemporary, postmodernist and poststructuralist approach of Yuri Slezkine, based on the studies of the “Soviet subjectivity” through the analysis of literary works, with his rather traditional generalizations and discusses the common features between them accordingly. In the second work under analysis, Stephen Kotkin attempts to create a new biography of Joseph Stalin through deep and detailed analysis of his political and personal surroundings. However, eventually he offers a rather simplified version of the Soviet history of the 1930s, where major events and processes of the 1930s are viewed through the lens of “Stalin vs. Hitler” history and explained with the help of the outdated conceptions.