"Thank God, a person sitting in the Kremlin now is not so paranoid"

David ⁠shirer. Photo: Presidential Center Boris Yeltsin Yeltsin.ru

Professor of Delaware University David Shirer is a specialist in the history of the Stalin era, the author of many studies of the Soviet economy and the repressive apparatus. At the tenth International Conference from the History of Stalinism, held in Moscow on December 5–7 (organized with the participation of the Yeltsin Center, the RGASPI, the Presidential Council of Human Rights), he tried to offer his answer to the question of what moved Stalin in the adoption of many cruel decisions. The study of the archival fund of the Soviet dictator led the Shirer to the conclusion that the paranoid logic of the actions of the Soviet leader was largely associated with the experience of the civil war. Her successes and failures have moved his actions for decades.

- David, how did your interest in Stalin and his era develop?

- I have been engaged in the history of Stalinism for a long time, but at first I studied it from the point of view of political economy. Then my interest gradually shifted to the social history of Stalinism. The result of this hobby was the book “Policing Stalin's Socialism” published in 2009. It is translated into Russian as "Stalin's military socialism." But still, I wrote quite little about the personality of Stalin. It seemed to me that I had little data for this. However, the more I studied the Stalin Foundation in the RGASPI (Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History.- Republic ), materials related to Stalin in Garf (the State Archive of the Russian Federation.- Republic ), that is, I looked that and when he read, what he reacted, which information was coming to him, the more I had the awareness of how important this is for understanding the Stalin's epoch. I began to deal with this topic directly when I was invited to a conference dedicated to the role of Stalin in the Second World War. It was held by the Higher School of Economics in May 2016. I never dealt with this topic, but the organizers insisted and suggested that I would definitely come up with something. And then the idea came to my mind. I realized that I could not explain the cycles of Stalinist repressions: why they rolled in waves and then retreated. Some general mechanism clearly acted here. I thought about domestic political or external reasons, but still there was no complete understanding. And then I decided to carefully study the materials of the Stalin Foundation related to the Civil War.

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