Conclusion

Abstract

In this work we have examined the way in which Machiavelli’s ideas were received, presented and used in Russia. In January 1932 Trotsky described Stalinism as ‘a hodge-podge of the most heterogeneous elements, held together by plain Stalinist ignorance’.¹ No one has adequately explored what this amalgam of ideas was. What we have attempted in this book is to explore a more complex set of ideas, in part Marxist, but in part borrowed from other sources and incorporated into the Stalinist scheme of thought. In many respects, Marxism-Leninism left great lacunae with regard to the question of power, the organization of government, the question of state and society. In this we take a contrary approach to Neil Harding on Lenin and Erik van Ree on Stalin, both of whom emphasize the extent to which their subjects were orthodox Marxists.² We have argued that Bolshevism and Stalinism represented a synthesis of various ideological currents, that shared together certain key characteristics; that Bolshevism and Stalinism were part of a longer tradition of revolutionary thought and practice, which we have labelled ‘revolutionary Machiavellism’.