Stalinism is a word used to describe a particular brand of communism, often used of European communists or communist parties. It means the most hardline, inflexible and undemocratic version of Marxist-Leninism, and is associated with the style of policy and practice adopted by the Soviet ruler Joseph Stalin in the 1930s and 1940s. Stalinism places particularly heavy stress on the duty of rank-and-file members of communist movements to obey the hierarchy, denounces internal debate and, until the 1980s, demanded the strictest adherence to the Soviet line in any policy.
Unquestioning support for the leadership, and the total denial of the possibility of a non-revolutionary road to socialism, were parts of the Stalinist’s position. For most of the post-war period the Parti Communiste Français was seen as especially Stalinist, in contrast, for example, to the Eurocommunism of the Italian communist party. The concept is also used of the formerly Soviet-dominated Eastern European states, where relatively ‘liberal’societies like, for example, Yugoslavia or Czechoslovakia (before 1968), were contrasted with the more ‘Stalinist’ regimes in East Germany and, at one time, Poland. The term is sometimes used as a figurative description for anyone who wields political authority in a particularly heavy-handed way, with intolerance of debate or dissension.
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