‘The people need a tsar’: The emergence of national Bolshevism as Stalinist ideology, 1931–1941

IN A SIGNIFICANT DEPARTURE from the materialist proletarian internationalism characteristic of the first 15 years of Soviet rule, the role of the state, individual and Russian ethnos underwent a major rehabilitation in the mid-to-late 1930s. While it would be rather simplistic to accept N. Timasheff's description of this ideological transformation as a 'great retreat',1 the era's flux in state ideology is as dramatic as it is puzzling. Although some of the changes may have been related to the emerging cult of personality,2 it would be unwise to limit oneself to identifying this as the sole or even central ideological innovation of the era. Equally important-and distinct from the cult-is the development of a state-oriented patriotic ideology reminiscent of tsarist 'great power' (velikoderzhavnye) and russocentric traditions, something which M. N. Ryutin referred to as 'national Bolshevism'.3 Statements of Stalin's typically associated with the personality cult-'don't forget that we are living in Russia, the land of the tsars ... the Russian people like it when one person stands at the head of the state' and 'the people need a tsar'-are actually better understood as symptomatic of the party hierarchy's etatist view of history.4 This article details the emergence of national Bolshevism as a statist component of official Soviet ideology between 1931 and 1941.