Essay Questions for Thinking through Sources 21

1. Defending Stalinism: Develop an argument that the fundamental goals of Stalinism (building socialism) were largely achieved during the 1930s.
2. Criticizing Stalinism: Develop an argument that socialist ideals and values were essentially betrayed or perverted by the developments of the Stalin era.
3. Assessing change: In what ways did the Stalin era represent a revolutionary transformation of Soviet society? In what ways did it continue older patterns of Russian history?
4. Considering moral judgments: Why do you think that historians have found it so difficult to write about the Stalin era without passing judgment on it? Does this represent a serious problem for scholars? Should students of the past seek to avoid moral judgments or are they an inevitable, perhaps even useful, part of the historian’s craft?